HER
XXX. THE FIGHT
XXXI. YES, JUDITH WAS WAITING

ILLUSTRATIONS

Judith's spurs answered him, and the bit . . . brought him about,
whirling . . . bucking as only . . . a devil-hearted horse knows how to
buck . . . . . . _Frontispiece_

A lean, muscular hand fell lightly upon his shoulder and he was jerked
back promptly

Quinnion was down and shooting, with but ten steps . . . between him
and the man whom he sought to kill

"You'll find your work cut out for you."

Judith of Blue Lake Ranch

I

BUD LEE WANTS TO KNOW

Bud Lee, horse foreman of the Blue Lake Ranch, sat upon the gate of the
home corral, builded a cigarette with slow brown fingers, and stared
across the broken fields of the upper valley to the rosy glow above the
pine-timbered ridge where the sun was coming up. His customary gravity
was unusually pronounced.

"If a man's got the hunch an egg is bad," he mused, "is that a real
good and sufficient reason why he should go poking his finger inside
the shell? I want to know!"

Tommy Burkitt, the youngest wage-earner of the outfit and a profound
admirer of all that taciturnity, good-humor, and quick capability which
went into the make-up of Bud Lee, approached from the ranch-house on
the knoll. "Hi, Bud!" he called. "Trevors wants you. On the jump."

Lee watched Tommy coming on with that wide, rocking gait of a man used
to much riding and little walking. The deep gravity in the foreman's
eyes was touched with a little twinkle by way of greeting.

Burkitt stopped at the gate, looking up at Lee. "On the jump, Trevors
said," he repeated.

"The hell he did," said Lee pleasantly. "How old are you this morning,
Tommy?"

Burkitt blushed. "Aw, quit it, Bud," he grinned. Involuntarily the
boy's big square hand rose to the tender growth upon lip and chin
which, like the flush in the eastern sky, was but a vague promise of a
greater glory to be.

"A hair for each year," continued the quiet-voiced man. "Ten on one
side, nine on the other."

"Ain't you going to do what Trevors says?" demanded Tommy.

For a moment Lee sat still, his cigarette unlighted, his broad black
hat far back upon his close-cropped hair, his eyes serenely
contemplative upon the pink of the sky above the pines. Then he
slipped from his place and, though each single movement gave an
impression of great leisureliness, it was but a flash of time until he
stood beside Burkitt.

"Stick around a wee b