e went out that
way, I think. Look through the lilacs."

She ran on one way, Tripp hurrying the other, wondering. They saw the
lilacs standing still in the starlight, saw the thick shadows thrown by
the columns and grape-covered trellises, heard the murmuring of the
fountain.

"Jose, perhaps," suggested Tripp, coming at last to her side.

"No!" cried Judith. "It wasn't. It was somebody in his stocking feet,
standing in the hallway, listening to us. I heard him run before me; I
saw him for a second, framed against the square of the window as he
slipped through and out on the veranda. Who could it have been, Doc?"

But a close search through the shrubbery showed them nothing. It was
clear that if a man had been listening at the door he could have had
ample opportunity to slip away into the darkness. He would not be
loitering here now.

The telephone-bell was still insistently ringing and they turned back
to the office.

"Judy," said Tripp solicitously, "don't you go and get nerves, now."

"You think I imagined the whole thing!" She looked at him with clear,
confident eyes. "Don't you fool yourself for one little minute, Doc
Tripp. I'm not the imagining kind--yet!"

She snatched up the telephone instrument.

"Hello," said Judith. "Who is it?"

It was the telegraph operator in Rocky Bend. A message for Miss Judith
Sanford from Pollock Hampton, San Francisco. And the message ran:

What were you thinking of to chuck Trevors? Thoroughly excellent man.
You should have consulted me. Don't do anything more until I come.
Send conveyance to meet Saturday train. Bringing five guests with me.

POLLOCK HAMPTON.

Judith turned frowning to Tripp.

"As if I didn't have enough on my hands already," she exclaimed
bitterly, "without Hampton dragging his fool guests into the mix-up! I
could slap his face."

"Do it!" chuckled Tripp. "Good idea!"

VII

THE HAPPENING IN SQUAW CREEK CANON

Busy days followed for Judith Sanford and for every man remaining upon
Blue Lake ranch. A score of men, including the milkers, Johnson, the
irrigation foreman and his crew of laborers, had quit work, going over
openly to Bayne Trevors at the Western Lumber camp. He had work there
for every man of them, and Judith was not the only one upon the ranch
who came to wonder how much money Trevors--or the lumber company--was
prepared to spend in fighting her. From the first day she found the
outfit short-handed.