preferred to Chan Heminway, who sat at his left
who, a weaker man than either Ray or Neilson, was simply a tool in the
latter's hand,--a smashing sledge or a cruel blade as his master wished.
He was vicious without strength, brutal without self-control. Locks of
his blond hair, unkempt, dropped over his low forehead into his eyes.

"Where's Beatrice?" Neilson asked at once. "I thought I heard her
voice."

Ray searched for a reply, and in the silence all three heard the girl's
tread as she went around the house. "She's going in the back door.
Likely she didn't want to disturb us."

Ray looked up to find Neilson's eyes firmly fixed upon his face. Try
hard as he might he couldn't restrain a surge of color in his cheeks.
"Yes, and what's the rest of it?" Neilson asked.

"Nothing--I know of."

"You've got some white marks on your cheeks--where it ain't red. The kid
can slap, can't she--"

Ray flushed deeper, but the lines of Neilson's face began to deepen and
draw. Then his voice broke in a great, hearty chuckle. He had evidently
tried to restrain it--but it got away from him at last. No man could
look at him, his twinkling eyes and his joyous face, and doubt but that
this soft-eyed, strong-handed daughter of his was the joy and pride of
his life. He had heard the ringing slap through the ramshackle walls of
the house, and for all that he favored Ray as his daughter's suitor, the
independence and spirit behind the action had delighted him to the core.

But Ray's sense of humor did not run along these lines. The first danger
signal of rising anger leaped like a little, hot spark into his eyes.
Many times before Ray had been obliged to curb his wrath against
Neilson: to-night he found it more difficult than ever. The time would
come, he felt, when he would no longer be obliged to submit to Neilson's
dictation. Sometime the situation would be reversed; he would be leader
instead of underling, taking the lion's share of the profit of their
enterprises instead of the left-overs, and when that time came he would
not be obliged to endure Neilson's jests in silence. Neilson himself, as
he eyed the stiffening figure, had no realization of Ray's true attitude
toward him. He thought him a willing helper, a loyal partner, and he
would not have sat with such content in his chair if he could have
beheld the smoldering fires of jealousy and ambition in the other's
breasts The time would come when Ray would assert himself, he
though