aight that Blackwell would
like nothing better than to put a bullet through your father. But I've got
a hold on the fellow that ties him. He's got to do as I say. But if I'm
not there and it comes to a showdown--if Bucky O'Connor for instance
happens to stumble in--then it's all off with Luck Cullison. Blackwell
won't hesitate a second. He'll kill your father and make a bolt for it.
That's one reason why I'm taking you. I want to pile up witnesses against
the fellow so as to make him go slow. But that's not my main object.
You've got to persuade Luck to come through with an agreement to let go of
that Del Oro homestead and to promise not to prosecute us. He won't do it
to save his own life. He's got to think you come there as my prisoner.
See? He's got to wrestle with the notion that you're in the power of the
damnedest villain that ever went unhung. I mean Blackwell. Let him chew on
that proposition a while and see what he makes of it."

She nodded, white to the lips. "Let us go at once, please. I don't want to
leave Father alone with that man." She called across to the corral.
"Manuel, saddle the pinto for me. Hurry!"

They rode together through the wind-swept sunlit land. From time to time
his lazy glance embraced her, a supple graceful creature at perfect ease
in the saddle. What was it about her that drew the eye so irresistibly?
Prettier girls he had often seen. Her features were irregular, mouth and
nose too large, face a little thin. Her contour lacked the softness, the
allure that in some women was an unconscious invitation to cuddle. Tough
as whipcord she might be, but in her there flowed a life vital and strong;
dwelt a spirit brave and unconquerable. She seemed to him as little subtle
as any woman he had ever met. This directness came no doubt from living so
far from feminine influences. But he had a feeling that if a man once
wakened her to love, the instinct of sex would spring full-grown into
being.

They talked of the interests common to the country, of how the spring
rains had helped the range, of Shorty McCabe's broken leg, of the new
school district that was being formed. Before she knew it Kate was
listening to his defense of himself in the campaign between him and her
father. He found her a partisan beyond chance of conversion. Yet she heard
patiently his justification.

"I didn't make the conditions that are here. I have to accept them. The
government establishes forest reserves on the range. No