Buck Courtrey ain't to be met with vilence.
Now I'm playin' my trump card--now, tonight.

"Lola says you love this dude from below. That don't cut no ice
with me. I ain't carin' for no love from you at present. All I
want is _you_. I can make you love me once I've got you safe at
th' Stronghold. I ain't never failed with no woman yet. An' I mean
to have you, fair means or foul.

"Rather have you fair. So here's my last word.

"This Kenset ain't dead--yet. I went and took him. I've got him
safe as hell in the Canon Country. Ain't no man in th' Valley can
find God's Cup but me. He's guarded an' there's a lookout on th'
peak above th' Cup that can see a signal fire at th' Stronghold.
One fire out by my big corral means 'Send him out by False Ridge
with ten days' grub.' Two fires means 'Put a true bullet in his
head an' leave him there.' Now, here's the word. I've got a case
fixed up to divorce Ellen, legal. If you'll marry me soon's I'm
free, I'll build one fire out by that corral.

"If you say yes, you build one fire out by th' cottonwoods to th'
left of the Holdin'. I'm watchin' an' will see it at once. You can
see for yourself I mean bisness, as if you'll watch too, you'll
see that one fire here.

COURTREY."

For a long moment the Mistress of Last's stood in profound quiet, as
if she could not move. She was held in a trance like those dreadful
night-dreams when one is locked in deadly inertia, helpless. The net
which had been weaving in Courtrey's fertile brain was finished,
flung, and closing in upon her before she knew of its existence. An
awe of his cleverness, his trickery, gripped her in a clutch of ice.
The whole fabric of her own desires and plans and purposes seemed to
crumple like the white ash in a dead fire, leaving her nothing. She
had been out-witted instead of outfought. One more evidence of the
man's baseness, his unscrupulous cunning.

He played his trump card and it was a winner, sweeping the table--for
she knew before she finished that difficult reading that she would do
anything in all the world to stop that "true bullet" in the heart that
had pounded beneath her open palms.... Knew she would break her given
word to Jim Last--knew she would forsake the Holding--that she would
crawl to Courtrey's feet and kiss his hand, if only he would spare
Kenset of the foothills, would send him out to that vag