"Tell Hervey to take his hand off me," said the horse-breaker. "He's
old enough to know better!"

If his words needed amplification it could be found in the wolfish
malevolence of his lean face or in the tremor which shook him; the
thin space of a thought divided him from action. Marianne sprang from
her chair. She knew enough of Hervey to understand that he could not
swallow this insult in the presence of his cowpunchers. She knew also
by the sudden compression of his lips and the white line about them
that her foreman felt himself to be no match for this tigerish
fighter. She thrust between them. Even in her excitement she noticed
that Hervey's hand came readily from the shoulder of Perris. The older
man stepped back with his hand on his gun, but in a burst of pitying
comprehension she knew that it was the courage of hopelessness. She
swung about on Perris, all her control gone, and the bitterness of a
thousand aggravations and all her failures on the ranch poured out in
words.

"I know your kind and despise it. You practice with your guns getting
ready for your murders which you call fair fights. Fair fights! As
well race a thoroughbred against a cowpony! You wrong a man and then
bully him. That's Western fair play! But I swear to you, Mr. Perris,
that if you so much as touch your weapon I'll have my men run you down
and whip you out of the mountains!"

Her outbreak gave him, singularly, a more even poise. There was never
a fighter who was not a nervous man; there was never a fighter who in
a crisis was not suddenly calm.

"Lady," he answered, "you think you know the West, but you don't. If
me and Hervey fell out there wouldn't be a man yonder across the patio
that'd lift a hand till the fight was done. That ain't the Western
way."

He had spoken much more than he was assured of. He had even sensed,
behind him, the rising of the cowpunchers as the girl talked but at
this appeal to their spirit of fair-play they settled down again.

He went on, speaking so that every man in the patio could hear: "If
I won, they might tackle me one by one and we'd have it out till a
better man beat me fair and square. But mobs don't jump one man,
lady--not around these parts unless he's stole a hoss!"

"I don't ask no help," said Lew Hervey, but his voice was husky and
uneven. "I'll stand my ground with any man, gun-fighter or not!"

"Please be quiet and let me handle this affair," said the girl. "As
a matter of fact, it's en