here. If
Carson can be made to understand that you will not let him take
advantage of the plot in which he has made you his innocent
accessory----"

"Set your mind entirely at rest," he cut in, with a curtness which was
born altogether of his determination, and not at all of his attitude
toward the woman he loved. "There will be no cattle-lifting in this
valley to-night--or at any other time until your own caretakers have
returned."

"Thank you," she said simply; and a minute later Ballard and young
Blacklock stood aside to let Bigelow remove himself, his companion, and
the smart little car swiftly from the scene.

"Say, Mr. Ballard, this is no end good of you--to let me in for a little
breather of sport," said the collegian, when the fast runabout was
fading to a dusty blur in the sunset purplings. "Bigelow gave me a hint;
said there was a scrap of some sort on. Make me your side partner, and
I'll do you proud."

"You are all right," laughed Ballard, with a sudden access of
light-heartedness. "But the first thing to do is to get a little hay out
of the rack. Come in and let us see what you can make of a camp supper.
Fitzpatrick bets high on his cook--which is more than I'd do if he were
mine."

XIV

THE MAXIM

Ballard and Blacklock ate supper at the contractor's table in the
commissary, and the talk, what there was of it, left the Kentuckian
aside. The Arcadian summering was the young collegian's first plunge
into the manful realities, and it was not often that he came upon so
much raw material in the lump as the contractor's camp, and more
especially the jovial Irish contractor himself, afforded.

Ballard was silent for cause. Out of the depths of humiliation for the
part he had been made to play in the plan for robbing Colonel Craigmiles
he had promised unhesitatingly to prevent the robbery. But the means for
preventing it were not so obvious as they might have been. Force was the
only argument which would appeal to the cattle-lifters, and assuredly
there were men enough and arms enough in the Fitzpatrick camps to hold
up any possible number of rustlers that Carson could bring into the
valley. But would the contractor's men consent to fight the colonel's
battle?

This was the crucial query which only Fitzpatrick could answer; and at
the close of the meal, Ballard made haste to have private speech with
the contractor in the closet-like pay office.

"You see what we are up against, Bourke," he su