tted Royce. "Chicago, I think. Or New York.
Or Pennsylvany. One of them towns. Shucks. She'd ought to come on
home where she belongs."

"Oh, I don't know," said Steve.

But in Royce's ears the voice didn't ring quite true. It was meant to
be careless in the extreme and--no, it didn't ring quite true.

Hot, cloudless skies as the season dragged on, dry, burning fields
under a blazing sun, the cattle seeking shade wherever it was to be
had, crowding at the water-holes, browsing early and late and
frequenting the cooler canons during the heat of the days. And nights
of stars and a vast silence and emptiness.

A girl had come, had for a little posed laughing outlined against the
window of a man's soul, had flashed her unforgettable gray eyes at him
and had gone. And so, and just because of her, the blistering hills
seemed but ugly, lonely miles, the nights under a full moon were just
the more silent and empty.

But Steve Packard held on, grown grim and determined. He had entered
the game, lightly enough he had demanded his stack of chips, now he
would stay for the show-down. Either he would clear his ranch of its
mortgage and thus make clear to his meddlesome old grandparent that he
was a man grown and no mere boy to be disciplined and badgered
willy-nilly, or else his meddlesome old grandparent would in truth
"smash" him.

In either case there would be the end soon. For, win or lose, Steve,
tired of the game, would draw out and set his back to Ranch Number Ten
and the country about it and go back to the old rudderless life of
vagabondage. Just because a girl had come, had tarried, and then had
gone.

So, though the game had long ago lost its zest, Steve Packard like any
other thoroughbred played on for a finish. Now and then, but seldom,
he saw Blenham. Often, in little, annoying, mean ways Blenham made
himself felt. Early in the season Steve's riders had found three of
his steers dead on the outskirts of the range; a rifle bullet had done
for each one of them.

Since old man Packard had promised to stop at nothing, since Blenham
was full of venom, Steve never for a moment doubted whose hand had
fired the three shots. But he merely called his cowboys together, told
them what had happened, ordered them to keep their eyes open and their
guns oiled, and hoped and longed for the time when he himself could
come upon Blenham busied with some act like this.

There were other episodes which he attribute