ove it is
his! Understand? If he can prove that these steers belong to him--and
I don't believe he can and you can tell him that, too--why then, let
him send me the money to pay for their pasturage and he can have them.
And in the meantime, Mr. Blenham, get out and be damned to you!"

For the moment Steve lost all thought of Terry sitting very still so
close to him, his mind filled with his grandfather and his
grandfather's chosen tool. So when he thought that he heard the
suspicion of a stifled giggle, a highly amused and vastly delighted
little giggle, he was for the instant of the opinion that Blenham was
laughing at him.

But the intruder was all seriousness. He sat motionless, his glance
stony, his thought veiled, his one good eye giving no more hint of his
purpose than did the patch over the other eye. In the end he shrugged.

"My orders," he said finally, "was simply to haze them steers back to
the Big Bend. The ol' man didn't say nothin' about startin' anything
if you got unreasonable." Again he shrugged elaborately. "I'll come
again if he says so," he concluded and, jabbing his spurs viciously
into his horse's flanks, his sole sign of irritation, Blenham rode away
through the woods.

"He let go too easy," murmured Terry. "He's got a card in the hole
yet."

Her eyes followed the departing rider, she pursed her lips after him.

Steve turned and looked down upon her.

"I hope you don't mind if I trespass to the extent of riding after
those steers?" he offered. "I want to drive them back and at the same
time I don't mind making sure that Blenham is still on his way."

Terry regarded him long and searchingly.

"Go ahead," she said at last. And, as though an explanation were
necessary, she continued: "There's just one animal I hate worse than I
do a Packard! For once the fence is down between you and Temple land,
Steve Packard."

"Let's keep it down!" he said impulsively. "You and I----"

"No, thanks!" Terry rose swiftly to her feet, balancing on her log,
reminding him oddly of a bright bird about to take flight. "You just
remember that there's just one animal I hate _almost_ as much as I do
Blenham; and that that's a Packard."

And so she jumped down from the log and left him.

CHAPTER XVI

TERRY DEFIES BLENHAM

Blenham must have ridden late into the night. For at a very early hour
the next morning he was at the Big Bend ranch fifty miles to the north
and reporting to his em