the dough!... I'm goin, to kill you in a minit or
so, jest as soon as you move one of them dirty paws of yourn. But I hope
you'll be polite an' let me say a few words. I'll never be happy again
if you don't.... Of all the--yaller greaser dogs I ever seen, you're the
worst!... I was thinkin' last night mebbe you'd come down an' meet me
like a man, so 's I could wash my hands ever afterward without gettin'
sick to my stummick. But you didn't come.... Beasley, I'm so ashamed of
myself thet I gotta call you--when I ought to bore you, thet--I ain't
even second cousin to my old self when I rode fer Chisholm. It don't
mean nuthin' to you to call you liar! robber! blackleg! a sneakin'
coyote! an' a cheat thet hires others to do his dirty work!... By
Gawd!--"

"Carmichael, gimme a word in," hoarsely broke out Beasley. "You're
right, it won't do no good to call me.... But let's talk.... I'll buy
you off. Ten thousand dollars--"

"Haw! Haw! Haw!" roared Las Vegas. He was as tense as a strung cord and
his face possessed a singular pale radiance. His right hand began to
quiver more and more.

"I'll--double--it!" panted Beasley. "I'll--make over--half the
ranch--all the stock--"

"Swaller thet!" yelled Las Vegas, with terrible strident ferocity.

"Listen--man!... I take--it back!... I'll give up--Auchincloss's ranch!"
Beasley was now a shaking, whispering, frenzied man, ghastly white, with
rolling eyes.

Las Vegas's left fist pounded hard on the table.

"GREASER, COME ON!" he thundered.

Then Beasley, with desperate, frantic action, jerked for his gun.

CHAPTER XXVI

For Helen Rayner that brief, dark period of expulsion from her home had
become a thing of the past, almost forgotten.

Two months had flown by on the wings of love and work and the joy of
finding her place there in the West. All her old men had been only too
glad of the opportunity to come back to her, and under Dale and Roy
Beeman a different and prosperous order marked the life of the ranch.

Helen had made changes in the house by altering the arrangement of
rooms and adding a new section. Only once had she ventured into the old
dining-room where Las Vegas Carmichael had sat down to that fatal dinner
for Beasley. She made a store-room of it, and a place she would never
again enter.

Helen was happy, almost too happy, she thought, and therefore made
more than needful of the several bitter drops in her sweet cup of
life. Carmichael had ridden out of