And I
tell you: he's the wind on four feet."

"You'll do all this and then give him to me when he's gentled and
broken--if that can be done? Then why do you want him?"

"I want to show him that he's got a master. He's played with me and
plumb fooled me all these weeks. I want to get on him and show him
he's beat." His fierce joy in the thought was contagious. "I want to
make him turn when I pull on the reins. I'll have him start when I
want to start and stop when I want to stop. I'll make him glad when I
talk soft to him and shake when I talk hard. He's made a fool of me;
I'll make a fool and a show of him. Lady, will you say yes?"

He had swept her off her feet and with a mind full of a riot of
imaginings--the frantic stallion, the clinging rider, the struggle for
superiority--she breathed: "Yes, yes! A thousand times yes--and good
luck, Mr. Perris."

He tossed his arms above his head and cried out joyously.

"Lady, it's more'n ten years of life to me!"

"But wait!" she said, suddenly aware of Hervey, lingering in the
background. "I haven't the power to let you stay. It's Mr. Hervey who
has authority while my father is away."

The lips of Red Jim twitched to a sneering malevolence mingled with
gloom.

"It's up to him?" he echoed. "Then I might of spared myself all of
this talk."

It would all be over in a moment. The foreman would utter the refusal.
Red Perris would be in his saddle and bound towards the mountains.
And that thought gave Marianne sudden insight into the fact that the
Valley of the Eagles would be a drear, lonely place without Red Jim.

"You don't know Mr. Hervey," she broke in before the foreman could
speak for himself. "He'll bear no malice to you. He's forgotten that
squabble over--"

"Sure I have," said Lew Hervey. "I've forgotten ten all about it.
But the way I figure, Miss Jordan, is that Perris is like a chunk of
dynamite on the ranch. Any day one of the boys may run into him and
there'll be a killing. They're red-hot against him. They might start
for him in a gang one of these days, for all I know. For his own sake,
Perris had better leave the Valley."

He had advanced his argument cunningly enough and by the way
Marianne's eyes grew large and her color changed, he knew that he had
made his point.

"Would they do that?" she gasped. "Have we such men?"

"I dunno," said Lew. "He sure rode 'em hard that morning."

"Then go," cried Marianne, turning eagerly to Red Jim. "For heaven