andy," commanded Lee.

"Eight," said Sandy, "nine----"

"I lied!" snapped Quinnion. "An' I'm leavin' town for a while."

And lurching as he walked, he made his way out of the room, his eyes on
the floor, his face a burning red.

"Carson and I are riding back to the ranch as soon as our horses rest
up and get some grain," said Lee, his fingers slowly rolling a brown
cigarette. "We'll mosey out now, see Quinnion on his way and drop back
to make up a little game of draw for a couple of hours. Strike you
about right, Billy? And you, Watson? And you, Parker?"

They listened to him, took the cue from him, and allowed what lay
between him and Chris Quinnion to lie in silence. But there was not a
man there but in his own fashion was saying to himself:

"It's a good beginning. But where's the end going to be?"

XXI

BURNING MEMORY

As June had slipped by, so did July and August. On Blue Lake ranch
life flowed smoothly. Men were too busy with each day's work to sit
into the nights prophesying trouble ahead. And in truth it seemed that
if Bayne Trevors had ever actively opposed the success of the Sanford
venture he had by now accepted the role of inactivity forced upon him
by circumstance. He was with the Western Lumber Company, as director
and district superintendent, seemingly giving all his dynamic force to
the legitimate affairs of the company.

But there were those who placed no faith in the obvious. Bud Lee kept
in touch with Rocky Bend and learned that Quinnion had not come back;
that no one knew where he had gone. Carson's man, Shorty, was sought
by Emmet Sawyer and his disappearance was like that of a pricked
bubble; it seemed that Shorty had no actual physical existence or that,
if he had, he had taken it into some other corner of the world.
Quinnion's friends had also gone from Rocky Bend, like Quinnion leaving
behind them no sign to show where they had gone.

Knowing Quinnion as he did, and having his own conception of the
character of Bayne Trevors, Bud Lee said to himself that too great a
quiet portended strife to come. If Quinnion was the man to carry in
his breast the hate that drove him to the murder of Judith's father,
then he was the man to remember the humiliation he had suffered at
Lee's hands, to remember and to strike back when the time was ripe.

Judith had heard of the night in Rocky Bend, a lurid and wonderfully
distorted account from Mrs. Simpson, who had received it in