d she want to fire Trevors for?" asked Benny, the cook.

Carson, looking at him contemptuously, spoke in contemptuous answer
about the stem of his pipe. "Any man on the job can answer you that,
Cookie. It's been open an' shut the last month Trevors is either crazy
or crooked. I said, didn't I, Western Lumber's itching to get its
devil-fish legs wropped aroun' Blue Lake timber? They've busted more
than one rancher up in the mountains. Trevors is in with 'em. Any man
on the ranch that don't know that, don't want to know it!" He removed
his pipe at last, and his look upon Benny was full of meaning. "Roll
that in your dough, Cookie, an' make biscuits out'n it."

"Go easy there, grandfather," growled Benny.

"That's something I ain't learned," was old Carson's ready answer,
lightly given. "I've told you before, if you don't want your name
printed plain don't come around asking me to spell it."

Benny growled an answer but did not take up the quarrel. He knew
Carson well enough to know that there was no man living readier for a
fight or abler to conduct his own part of it. Carson, smaller than
Benny, was wiry, quick-footed, hard-eyed. There was something about
him that caused a man of Benny's sort to stop and think.

"_Que hay_, Bud?" called a voice, and old Jose, his face shining with
his joy--Bud was certain that Judith had actually kissed the leathery
cheek and wondered how she could do it!--came down the knoll. "_La
senorita_ wants you!"

"Haw!" gurgled Bandy O'Neil facetiously. "It's your manly beauty, Bud!
You ol' son-of-a-gun of a lady-killer!"

Bud Lee swung about upon his heel to glare at Bandy. But suddenly
conscious of a flush creeping up hotly under his tan, he turned his
back and strode away to the house. Bandy's "haw, haw!" followed him.
Lee's face was flaming when he entered the office.

"What do you want with me?" he said shortly, angered at Bandy, Judith
Sanford and himself.

"Bow, wow!" retorted Judith, looking up from Trevors's table. "Whose
dog art thou? Do you want me to think you are as fierce as you look?"

"You sent for me?" he said coolly.

She looked up at him critically. "What's come over you, Lee? I took
you for a cool head--Heaven knows I need a few cool heads around me
right now!--and here you show up with red in your eye, barking at me."

"Let's pass up what I look like," said Lee stiffly. "What can I do for
you. Miss Sanford?"

"Hm," said Judith. "On your