been worth the
snap of my thumb and finger."

"It isn't, anyway," said Steve. "I wouldn't swap your little finger
for a king's gold crown----"

"Moonshine," cut in Terry. "Listen to me, Steve Packard: You saw those
swapped brands and you kept your mouth shut."

"It is generally considered----"

"I said to listen to me! You didn't say a word to me because you
believed my dad was a cattle-thief!"

Steve, despite himself, shifted uneasily in his saddle and finally
dropped his eyes. Terry sat there staring at him fixedly, her own eyes
wide open and again harboring that look that was almost fear.

"You--you--Oh, Steve Packard! This is contemptible of you!"

Then he lifted his eyes and looked at her solely enough.

"Terry Temple," he said very gently, "I pray God that you are right and
that I am wrong. I did not know, I only saw what I saw, and wondered
and kept my mouth shut. But--listen to me now, Terry Temple. You are
not the one to dodge an issue, no matter how hard it is to face it.
Tell me: If your father did not shift those brands, then who did? And
why? Don't you see that is what it amounts to, that is what we've got
to answer?"

"Blenham!" she told him swiftly, hardly waiting for him to finish.
"Blenham, under orders. Orders from your precious old thief of a
grandfather!"

He smiled back at her, hoping to coax an answering smile to her lips
and into her troubled eyes. But she only shook her head and went on
steadily.

"Recrimination of a sort----"

"Recrimination is quite some word, no matter what it means," sniffed
Terry. "But we can leave it out. In words of one syllable, your old
thief of a grandfather ordered his pet dog and sub-thief to go tie
something on poor old dad. And you fell for it! You ought to go to a
school for the simple-minded."

"Just what," demanded Steve equably, "do you suppose a play like that
would win for anybody? Any time my old thief of a grandfather, as you
call him, hands an enemy of his several hundred dollars in beef cattle,
why, just please wake me up."

"A play like that is just what old Hell-Fire would be up to right about
now," she told him positively. "You have been proving something too
much for him to swallow whole and boots on; your chipping in with us
that time you took the mortgage over made him hungrier than ever to
gobble up the crowd of us. So he plays the dirty trick of making it
appear my father is a cattle-thief."

"Blenham might