you: it's a free country. But--"
and she said it slowly, confronting them--"if you all throw me down and
leave me short-handed without giving me time to take on another set of
men, you are a pretty low-lived bunch!"

Then, without turning, she went swiftly to the ranch-house. Old man
Carson wiped the sweat from his forehead.

"I remember hearing about Luke Sanford's girl," he said simply. "This
is her, all right."

IV

JUDITH PUTS IT STRAIGHT

"Old man" Carson--so-called through lack of courtesy and because of the
sprinkling of gray through his black hair, a man of perhaps
forty-five--filled an unthinkably disreputable pipe with his own
conception of "real tobacca" and chuckled so that the second match was
required; before he was ready to say his say.

"You just listen to me, you boys!" he said. "I worked with the Down
River outfit a year before Trevors sent me word he had a job open here
at better pay. That's only seventy-five miles, and news does
percolate, give it time. None of you fellers ever saw old Luke
Sanford?"

"I'd been working here close to two weeks when he got killed," Bud said
as Carson's twinkling eyes went from face to face. "I got my job
straight from him, not Trevors."

"That's so," said Carson. "Well, Bud knows the sort Luke Sanford was.
He was dead and buried when I come to the Blue Lake, but I'd saw him
twice and I'd heard of him more times than that. Quiet man that
'tended to his own business and didn't say so all-fired much 'less he
was stirred up. And then--!" He whistled his meaning. "A fighter.
All he ever got he fought for. All he ever held on to he fought for.
He bucked Western Lumber for a dozen years, first and last. And, by
cripes, he nailed their durned hides on his stable-door, too!

"Well, I heard tell about this same Luke Sanford ten years ago and
more--about him and his little girl. From what folks said I guess
there never was a man wanted a boy-baby worse'n Luke Sanford before
Judith come. And I guess there never was a man put more stock in his
own flesh and blood than Luke did in her as soon as he got used to her
being a she. I don't know just exactly how old she was ten years ago,
women folks being so damn' tricky in the looks of their ages, but I'd
say she was eight or nine or ten or eleven years old. Anyhow, Luke had
took her in hand already."

"Taught her to ride, huh?" asked one of the men.

"You're shouting, Poker Face," nodded Carson wi