rs and turned away.

"If I'm fired," he growled in that ugly voice which was so fitting a
companion to that ugly mouth of his, "I quit right now. Get some of
your other Willies to turn your calves out."

For a moment, in the heat of her anger, Judith's quirt was lifted as
though she would strike him. Then she turned instead and ran to do her
own bidding. A moment later Miller was with her. The two of them got
the calves--there were seven of them--out of the sulphur-laden air and
into the corral. The poor brutes, coughing softly in paroxysms, some
of them frothing at the mouth, two of them falling repeatedly and
rising slowly upon trembling legs, filed by in a pitiful string. One
of the youngest lay still in the hospital, dead.

"He would have killed them all," said Judith, her teeth set as she
looked at the living calves in the corral where, with necks thrust far
out, they fought for each breath. "And Bayne Trevors ordered a
treatment that he knows has gone into the discard! Charlie, that man
has gone further than I thought he had the nerve to go."

"Crowdy did something else that don't look just right," said Miller,
gazing with eyes of longing after the burly, departing figure. "I saw
him do it just after Masters carried him your message. He drove three
of the sick calves--there's a dozen or more got the worms, you
know--out into the pasture with the well calves."

Judith didn't answer. She looked at Miller a moment as though she
thought this must be some wretched jest of his. And when she read in
his eyes the earnestness in his heart, there rose within her the
question: "How far has Bayne Trevors gone?"

"Charlie," she said finally, "I want you to close store for the rest of
the day. Get some one to help you and cut the sick calves out from the
bunch. Haze them back here into the detention corral. Tripp will
attend to them all in the morning. Now, tell me--what's wrong down at
the milk corrals? What are all of those men up to?"

"We're going to see, me an' you," answered Miller. "I don't just know.
But I do know there's a big guy down there that come onto the ranch a
couple of hours ago an' that don't belong here. He's that guy talking.
Name of Nelson. He ain't done any talking to me, but from a word or
two I picked up from one of the milkers I got a hunch he's been sent
over by Trevors."

Nelson, the big emissary for Trevors--for he admitted the fact openly
and pleasantly--took off his ha