aughed as at last, with an exclamation which was as much a
groan as a curse, Blenham jerked out his gun and flung it down on his
quilt. Steve took it up and shoved it into his pocket.

"There's jus' a han'ful of men over to the cookhouse," said Woods
humorously. "Havin' stuck up me an' Blenham you oughtn't to have no
trouble over there!"

"How many men?" demanded Steve quietly. "Thirteen, if I counted right,
eh, Woods? That's no kind of a number to pin your hopes on! And now
listen; I'll cut it short: If there is any trouble this morning, if any
man gets hurt, remember that this is my land, that you jaspers are
trespassing, that I am simply defending my property. In other words,
you're in wrong. You'll be skating on pretty thin ice if you just
plead later on that you were obeying orders from Blenham; follow
Blenham long enough and you'll get to the pen. Now, I'm going outside.
You and Blenham stay in here until I call for you. I'll shut the door;
you leave it shut. Take time to roll yourself a smoke and think things
over before you start anything, Joe Woods."

Then swiftly he whipped open the door, stepped out, and snapped it shut
after him.

"I'm taking a chance," he muttered, his eyes hard, his jaw set and
thrust forward. "A good long chance. But that's the way to play the
game!"

The door of the cook's shed, facing him from across the creek, was
still closed. Steve moved a dozen paces down-stream; now he could
command Woods's cabin with the tail of his eye, look straight into the
kitchen when the door opened, keep an eye upon the one little square
window.

"It's all in the cards," he told himself grimly. "A man can win a jack
pot on a pair of deuces, if he plays the game right!"

At this point Packard's Creek is narrow; the distance between the spot
where he stood and the door of the cook-shed was not over forty feet.
He shifted Woods's gun to his left hand, taking into his right
Blenham's old-style revolver which was more to his fancy. Then, to get
matters under way in as emphatic a manner as he knew how, he sent a
bullet crashing through the cook's roof.

The murmur of voices died away suddenly; it was intensely still for a
moment; then there was a scrambling, a scraping of heavy boots and
dragging benches, and the cook's door snapped back against the outside
wall, the opening filled with hulking forms, as men crowded to see what
was happening. What they saw was the nose of Blenham's gun i