ty?"

"No. Look here, Bud; what are you driving at? I don't get you."

"No?" answered Lee absently.

What Bud Lee was thinking was: "Here are too many coincidences!"
Little things, each one in itself safe from suspicion. But when he
meditated that the offer had come from this particular firm, that it
had come just a few days before Judith's first departure from the
ranch, that it had been addressed not to her but to Hampton, so that he
must have the opportunity to read it, that she had been called suddenly
to the city, that that call had come after the house was quiet, its
occupants in bed, that no letter had come since she had left, that no
one knew where to reach her--when he passed all of these things in
review the bitterness in his heart died under them and the first
anxiety sprang up anew, grown almost into fear for her.

"There's just one thing, Hampton," he said, his eyes hard on the boy's
face. "We don't sell a single hoof in the morning. Not a cow nor a
horse until Judith is here herself."

Hampton, new in his role of general manager, flushed hotly, his own
eyes showing fight.

"I like you, Lee," he said sharply, his tone that of master to man.
"And I don't want us to quarrel. But Judith wired me to sell, I've
wired the buyers an acceptance and we do sell in the morning!"

For a full minute Bud Lee stood stone still, staring into Hampton's
face. Then, tossing the telegram to the table, he turned and went out.
His face had gone suddenly white.

"They've got you somehow, Judith girl," he whispered through tense
lips. "But the fight is still to be made. And, by God, there's a day
of squaring accounts coming for a man named Bayne Trevors!"

He went to the bunk-house, neither seeing Marcia nor hearing her when
she called after him, and with a word to Carson brought the irate
cattle foreman hurriedly outside.

XXIII

THE WRATH OF POLLOCK HAMPTON

Bayne Trevors's way had ever been to play safe, the way of a coward or
a wise man. Even now, no doubt he was giving an account of himself in
legitimate endeavor at the lumber camp, putting in his appearance at
his regular hour, safe miles lying between him and that which might
occur upon the Blue Lake ranch, establishing alibis, conducting himself
like the man he wished the world to think him. But in the mind of Bud
Lee there was no question, no doubt. Bayne Trevors, or one of Bayne
Trevors's gang, was even at this instant holding Judith some