Number Ten. At a logging-camp well up on the slope of the mountains
just after he had forded the upper waters of Packard's Creek, he
breakfasted on warmed-over coffee and greasy hot cakes.

He opened his eyes interestedly as he watched a gang of timberjacks
cutting into a forest of his pines.

"Old man Packard's crowd?" he asked the camp cook.

"Sure thing," was the cook's careless answer. Steve Packard rode on,
grown more thoughtful than before. But he directed his course this way
and that on a speculative tour of investigation, seeking to see the
greater part of the big, sprawling ranch, to note just what had been
done, just what was being done, before having his talk with Blenham.
And so the first stars were out before he came once more to the home
corrals.

While Steve was turning down into Packard's Grab from the foot-hills
the men working for Ranch Number Ten, having eaten their supper, were
celebrating the end of a hard day's work with tobacco smoke and
desultory talk.

There were a dozen of them, clear-eyed, iron-muscled, quick-footed to
the last man of them. For wherever Packard pay was taken it went into
the pockets of just such as these, purposeful, self-reliant, men's men
who could be counted on in a pinch and who, that they might be held in
the service which required such as they, were paid a better wage than
other ranches offered.

Young, most of them, too, boisterous when upon occasion their hands
were idle, devil-may-care scalawags who had earned in many a little
cattle town up and down the country their title as "that wild gang of
Packard's," prone to headlong ways and yet dependable.

There are such men; Packard knew it and sought them out and held them
to him. The oldest man there, saving Bill Royce only, was Blenham the
foreman, and Blenham had yet to see his thirty-fifth birthday.

Ten years ago, that is to say before he came into the cattle country
and found work for Packard, Blenham had been a sergeant in the regular
army, had seen something of service on the border. Now, in his
dealings with the men under him, he brought here all that he had
learned from a military life.

He held himself aloof, was seldom to be found in the bunk-house, making
his quarters in the old ranch-house. He was crisp and final in his
orders and successful in exacting swift attention when he spoke and
immediate obedience when he ordered.

Few of his men liked him; he knew this as well as another and ca