t difficulties. Now he understood, and
a burning desire swept over him to shoot the man down where he sat. Then
a revulsion of feeling came to him and he saw the ludicrous side of the
situation. He gazed at Lablache, that obese mountain of blubber, and
tried to think of the beautiful, wild Jacky as the money-lender's wife.
The thing seemed so preposterous that he burst out into a mocking laugh.

Lablache, whose fishy eyes had never left the rancher's face, heard the
tone and slowly flushed with anger. For an instant he seemed about to
rise, then instead he leant forward.

"Well?" he asked, breathing his monosyllabic inquiry hissing upon the
air.

Bill emitted a thin cloud of smoke into the money-lender's face. His
eyes had suddenly become wide open and blazing with anger. He pointed to
the door.

"I'll see you damned first! Now--git!"

At the door Lablache turned. In his face was written all the fury of
hell.

"Mancha's debt is transferred to me. You will settle it without delay."

He had scarcely uttered the last word when there was a loud report, and
simultaneously the crash of a bullet in the casing of the door. Lablache
accepted his dismissal with precipitation and hastened to where his
horses were stationed, to the accompaniment of "Lord" Bill's mocking
laugh. He had no wish to test the rancher's marksmanship further.

CHAPTER XII

LABLACHE FORCES THE FIGHT

A month--just one month and the early spring has developed with almost
tropical suddenness into a golden summer. The rapid passing of seasons,
the abrupt break, the lightning change from one into another, is one of
the many beauties of the climate of that fair land where there are no
half measures in Nature's mode of dealing out from her varied store of
moods. Spring chases Winter, hoary, bitter, cruel Winter, in the hours
of one night; and in turn Spring's delicate influence is overpowered
with equal celerity by the more matured and unctuous ripeness of Summer.

Foss River had now become a glorious picture of vivid coloring. The
clumps of pine woods no longer present their tattered purplish
appearance, the garb in which grim Winter is wont to robe them. They are
lighter, gayer, and bathed in the gleaming sunlight they are transformed
from their somber forbidding aspect to that of radiant, welcome shade.
The river is high, almost to flooding point. And the melting snow on the
distant mountain-tops has urged it into a sparkling torrent of ic