little; he held his gun ready, an' calmly sized up Piker's
hand, which was flattened out again the wall. I stood where I was, an'
the room was so quiet it hurt your ears.

A grin of wolfish joy came into Dick's face as he stood there with his
gun back of his head an' his thumb on the hammer--of course he was a
snap-shooter--these nervous fellers allus are. It seemed as if we had
all been in that same position for ages, when suddenly a voice said,
"Why, Dad, what's the matter?"

It was Barbie with her hair all rumpled up an' a loose gray wrapper on.
Dick dropped his hands to his side an' turned his face away; while
Jabez put his arm about her an' told her that we had had a little
mix-up but that it was all over now an' she must go back to bed. She
reared up an' vetoed the motion without parley; but the ol' man finally
convinced her, an' she agreed to go if we'd promise not to stir up any
more trouble. Me an' Jabez promised quick, but Dick never said a word.
She looked him in the face mighty beseechful, but he wouldn't look at
her; an' when he finally promised not to START any more fuss his voice
was so low you could hardly hear him.

She was pale as a ghost, an' Dick's voice made her all the more
suspicious. "I'll not go one step," she said at last, sinkin' down in a
chair; but Dick walked over to her an' asked her to step into the next
room with him a minute. They only talked together a few moments, an'
then we heard her give a stifled sob an' go back upstairs. I never see
such a change as had come over Jabez. His face was drawn an' haggard
like the face of a man lost in the desert without water.

The time had come at last when another man stood between his
daughter--his greatest treasure on earth--an' himself. I remembered
what Friar Tuck had said about the time comin' when she'd be all girl
an' would stand before him with the questions of life in her eyes, an'
I pitied him, God knows I pitied him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CAST STEEL

Jabez had got the rope on himself when Dick came back, an' he spoke to
him in the voice of a father sayin' farewell to the son who had gone
wrong once too often. "I don't care nothin' about the money, Dick," he
said. "You'd 'a' been welcome to all I had; but I can't forgive you
about my little girl. You made her love you, you schemed to do it, an'
you came here with that end in view. I trusted you from the ground up,
but I can see a heap o' things now 'at I wouldn't see bef