"I know," replied Royce heavily. "Go to it. All you got to do is fire me."

And now the pure wonder of the moment was that Blenham did not discharge Royce in three words. It was his turn for hesitation, for which there was no explanation forthcoming. Then, gripped by a rage which made him inarticulate,--he whirled upon Barbee.

Yellow-haired Barbee at the table promptly stood up, awaiting no second invitation to that look of Blenham's. Were one staging a morality play and in search of the personification of impertinence, he need look no farther than this c.o.c.ksure youth. He was just at that age when one is determined that there shall be no mistake about his status in the matters of age and worldly experience; in short, something over twenty-one, when the male of the species takes it as the insult of insults to be misjudged a boy. His hair was short--Barbee always kept it close cropped--but for all that it persisted in curling, seeking to express itself in tight little rings everywhere; his eyes were very blue and very innocent, like a young girl's--and he was, all in all, just about as good-for-nothing a young rogue as you could find in a ten days' ride. Which is saying rather a good deal when it be understood that that ten days' ride may be through the cattle country back of San Juan.

"Goin' to eat me alive?" demanded Barbee lightly, "Or roast me first?"

"For two cents," said Blenham slowly, "I'd forget you're just a kid an'

slap your face!"

Barbee swept one of the fifty-cent pieces from the table and tossed it to the foreman.

"You can keep the change out'n that," he said contemptuously.

It was nothing new in the experience of Blenham, could be nothing unforeseen for any ranch foreman, to have his authority called into question, to have a rebellious spirit defy him. If he sought to remain master, the foreman's answer must be always the same. And promptly given.

"Royce," said Blenham, his hesitation pa.s.sed, "you're fired. Barbee, I'll take you on right now."

Few-worded was Blenham, a trick learned from his master. Across the room Bill Royce had floundered at last to his feet, crying out mightily:

"Hi! None o' that, Blenham. It's my fight, yours an' mine, with Barbee jus' b.u.t.tin' in where he ain't asked. If you want trouble, take a man your size, full-grown. Blind as I am--and you know the how an'

the why of it--I'm ready for you. Yes, ready an' anxious."

Here was diversion and the men in the bunkhouse, drawing back against the walls, taking their chairs with them that there might be room for whatever went forward, gave their interest unstintedly. So completely that they did not hear Steve Packard singing far out in the night as he rode slowly toward the ranch-house:

"An' I'd rather hear a kiote howl Than be the King of Rome!

An' when day comes--if day does come-- By cripes, I'm goin' home!

Back home! Hear me comin', boys?

Yeee! I said it. Comin' home!"

But in very brief time Steve Packard's loitering pace was exchanged for red-hot haste as the sounds winging outward from the bunk-house met him, stilled his singing, and informed him that men were battling in a fury which must have something of sheer blood-thirst in it. He raced to the closed door, swung down from the saddle, and threw the door open.

He saw Bill Royce being held by two men, fighting at them while he reviled a man whom Steve guessed to be Blenham; he saw Blenham and a curly-haired, blue-eyed boy struggling up and down, striking the savage blows of rage. He came just in time to see Blenham drive a big, brutal fist into the boy's face and to mark how Barbee fell heavily and for a little lay still.

The moment was charged with various emotions, as though with contending electrical currents. Bill Royce, championed by a man he had never so much as seen, had given fully of his grat.i.tude and--they meant the same thing to Bill Royce--of his love; after to-night he'd go to h.e.l.l for "yellow" Barbee.

Barbee, previsioning defeat at Blenham's hard hand, suffering in his youthful pride, had given birth, deep within him, to an undying hatred.

And Blenham, for his own reasons and after his own fashion, was bursting with rage.

"Get up, Barbee," he yelled. "Get up an', so help me----"

"I'm goin' to kill you, Blenham," said Barbee faintly, lifting himself a little, his blue eyes swimming. "With my hands or with a knife or with a gun or anyway; now or to-morrow or some time I'm goin' to kill you."

"They all heard you," Blenham spat out furiously. "You're a fool, Barbee. Goin' to get up? Ever goin' to get up?"

"Turn me loose, boys," muttered Bill Royce. "I've waited long enough; I've stood enough. I been like an ol' woman. Jus' let me an' Blenham finish this."

They had, none of them, so much as noted Steve Packard's entrance.

Now, however, he forced them to take stock of him.

"Bill Royce," he said sharply, "keep your shirt on. Barbee, you do the same. Blenham, you talk with me."

"You?" jeered Blenham. "You? Who are you?"

"I'm the man on the job right now," answered Packard crisply. "And from now on, I'm running the Ranch Number Ten, if you want to know. If you want to know anything else, why then you don't happen to be foreman any longer. You're fired! As for foreman under me--my old pardner, Bill Royce, blind or not blind, has his old job back."

Bill Royce grew rigid.

"You ain't--you ain't Stevie come back?" he whispered. "You ain't Stevie!"

With three strides Packard reached him, finding Bill Royce's hand with his.

"Right you are, Bill Royce," he cried warmly as at last his and Royce's hands locked hard.

"I'm fired, you say!" Blenham was storming, his eyes wide. "Fired?

Who says so, I want to know?"

"I say so," returned Packard shortly.

"You?" shouted Blenham. "If you mean ol' man Packard has sent you to take my place just because-- It's a lie; I don't believe it."

"This outfit doesn't happen to belong to old man Packard--yet," said Steve coolly. "Does it, Royce?"

"Not by a jugful!" answered the blind man joyously. "An' it never will now, Steve! Not now."

Blenham looked mystified. Rubbing his skinned knuckles he glared from Steve to Royce, then to the other faces, no less puzzled than his own.

"n.o.body can fire me but ol' man Packard," he muttered heavily, though his tone was troubled. "Without you got an order from him, all signed an' ready for me to read----"

"What I have," cut in Steve crisply, "is the bulge on the situation, Blenham. Ranch Number Ten doesn't belong to the old man; it is the property of his grandson, whose name is Steve Packard. Which also happens to be my name."

Blenham sneered.

"I don't believe it," he snapped. "Expect me to pull my freight at the say-so of the first stranger that blows in an' invites me to hand him my job?" He laughed into the newcomer's face.

Packard studied him a moment curiously, instinctively aware that the time might come when it would be well to have taken stock correctly of his grandfather's lieutenant. Then, before replying, he looked at the faces of the other men. When he spoke it was to them.

"Boys," he said quietly, "this outfit belongs to me. I am Steve Packard, the son of Philip Packard, who owned Number Ten Ranch and who mortgaged it but did not sell it to his father--my grandfather. I've just got back home; I mean to have what is mine; I am going to pay the mortgage somehow. I haven't jumped in with my sleeves rolled up for trouble either; had Blenham been a white man instead of a brute and a bully he might have kept his job under me. But I guess you all know the sort of life he has been handing Royce here. Bill taught me how to ride and shoot and fight and swim; pretty well everything I know that's worth knowing. Since I was a kid he's been the best friend I ever had.

Anything else you boys would like to know?"

Barbee had risen slowly from the floor.

"Packard's son or the devil's," he said quickly, his eyes never leaving Blenham, "I'm with you."

The man whom, over the card-table, Barbee had addressed as Spotty and whose nickname had obviously been gained for him by the peculiar tufts of white hair in a young, tousled head of very dark brown, cleared his throat and so drew all eyes to himself at his side of the room.

"Bill Royce bein' blind, if you could only prove somehow who you are--"