e had had the opportunity to check up
carefully in Terry's interests.

Calves, cows, steers, and horses, he knew to the head just what Terry
numbered them. And in the round-up, going over his figures carefully,
he had found that wearing the Temple brand there were six steers more
than there should be. A matter of some five or six hundred dollars.

Were it only the financial end of it Steve would have thought little of
the matter. But, going over the herd animal by animal, he made a
discovery which shocked him. He found six big steers in the lot which
wore fairly recently burned Temple brands--crudely scrawled over the
brands of the Big Bend ranch, old man Packard's favorite outfit in the
north.

It was impossible to know just how long ago a searing-hot iron had
altered the range indication of ownership; Steve could merely stare and
wonder and finally hazard a guess. Temple had been hard-driven; he had
succumbed to temptation and opportunity as he had to whiskey and many
other things. Seeing life obliquely he had no doubt told himself that
he was squaring accounts. So, in the end, Steve was inclined to
believe.

Just what to do he did not know. It seemed best to him to bide his
time, to keep his eyes open, to hope for the way out of an embarrassing
situation. He would willingly have made restitution himself, to save
Terry from knowing and to save her name from the smudge which old man
Packard would eagerly put upon it were he offered the opportunity. And
right here was the trouble; he did not care to let his grandfather know
what had happened.

While striving with this matter the other was brought to his attention.
Also at the time of the round-up Barbee reported a black-and-white
steer missing, the prize of the beef herd, said Barbee. Strayed into
some far out-of-the-way canon, perhaps. But as the days went by other
cattle, finally totalling a score, were reported missing. And Steve
remembered how one evening he and Terry from a log had watched Blenham
driving off a string of steers.

"My beloved grandfather has no love for the courts of law," mused Steve
many a time. "And he knows that in that I am like him. So to his way
of thinking it's just Packard eat Packard and the rest of the world
'Hands Off.' And so he is going the limit. Well, I guess that's as
good a way as any other."

The day came when Steve put his cattle into Drop Off Valley. The
herds, his and Terry's, were counted twice, once