bee's rifle, resting upon the rock, was steady. Between
its muzzle and Blenham's broad chest there was but the brief distance
of some fifty feet. The report of Barbee's rifle, the thin upcurling
smoke under the new sun--these were the chief matters in all the world
for their little fragment of time.

Then Blenham threw out his arms and pitched forward. His foot caught
in the stirrup. The frightened horse was plunging, running, dragging a
man whose body was whipped this way and that.

"I promised--a long time ago," whispered Barbee, "that I'd get you,
Blenham."

CHAPTER XXVII

IN HONOR OF THE FAIRY QUEEN!

"Guy Little!"

The old man's voice boomed out mightily as the old man himself strode
back and forth impatiently in the big barn-like library of his ranch
home. Guy Little appeared with a promptness savoring either of magic
or prepared expectancy.

"You rang, your majesty?"

"Rang, your foot!" shouted old Packard. "I hollered my ol' head off.
What's the day of the week, Guy Little?"

"It's Wednesday, your----"

"An' what's the day of the month?"

"It's the nineteenth, your----"

"Then tell me, sir," and the old man's tone was angry and challenging
to a remarkable degree, "why in the name of the devil my gran'son,
Stephen, ain't showed up yet!"

Guy Little might have remarked that it was rather early to expect any
one to show up. It was not yet six o'clock of a morning which promised
to be one of the very finest mornings ever known. The old man had, as
Guy Little expressed it, "been prancin' an' pawin' aroun'," for an hour.

Guy Little grinned like any cherub.

"He has showed up," he chuckled, though he had meant to hold back the
tidings teasingly. "He come in late las' night. You was asleep an'
sleepin' soun', so----"

"He did, did he?" bellowed the old man. "Crept in like a damn' thief
in the night, did he? Well, where is he now? Sleepin' yet, I'll be
bound. When he ought to be up an'-- Why, when I was a young devil his
age----"

"He's outside somewhere," said Guy Little. "He has been down to the
crick for a mornin' dip, I'd guess, your majesty."

"Why would you guess that?"

"Because pretty near all he had on was a towel an' a--a sort of
a----immodes' britch-cloth," explained Guy Little confidentially.

"An'," continued old man Packard, "where's--she?"

"Meanin' the Fairy Queen, your majesty?" Guy Little's voice was now a
whisper.

"Meanin' her--the Fairy Queen," s