high horse, are you? All right, stay
there. What I want is some information. How long have you been on the
Blue Lake pay-roll?"

"A little over six months," he answered colorlessly.

"_Over_ six months?" A quick look of interest came into her eyes.
"Trevors hired you? Or dad?"

"Your father."

"Then"--and a sudden, swift smile came for the first time that morning
into the girl's eyes--"you're square! Thank God for one man to be sure
of."

She had risen with a quick impetuosity and put out her hand. Lee took
it into his own, and felt it shut hard, like a man's.

"Just how do you know I'm square?" he asked slowly.

"Dad was human," she replied softly. "He made some mistakes. But he
never made a mistake in a horse foreman yet. He has said to me a dozen
times: 'Judy, watch the way a man treats his horse if you want to size
him up! And never put your horses into the care of a man who isn't
white, clean through.' Dad knew, Bud Lee!"

Lee made no answer. For a little Judith, back at the long table and
looking strangely small in the big, bare room before this massive piece
of furniture, stared into vacancy with reminiscent eyes. Then, with a
little shrug of her shoulders, she turned again to the tall foreman.

"Why did you tell Trevors this morning that you were going to quit
work?" she asked with abrupt directness.

"Because," he answered, and by now his flush had subsided and his grave
good-humor had come back to him with his customary serenity, "I felt
like moving on."

"Because," she insisted, "you know that there was some dirty work afoot
and did not care to be messed up in it?"

Now here, most positively, Bud Lee said within himself, was a person to
reckon with. How did she know all that? She was just a girl,
somewhere, as old Carson put it, between eighteen and twenty-two. What
business did a kid like this have knowing so blamed much?

"You've got your rope on the right pair of horns," he said after his
brief pause.

"How did you know that Trevors was working the double-cross on this
deal?" she demanded.

"I didn't know," he said stiffly. "I just guessed. The same as you.
He was spending too much money; he was getting too little to show for
it; he was selling too much stock too cheap."

"What's the matter with you?" cried the girl, surprising him with the
heat of her words and the sudden darkening of her eyes. "Why do you
insist on being so downright stand-offish and stiff and alo