CHAPTER XI—A Rejected Suitor IN Dick Willoughby’s presence Marshall Thurston contented himself with sullen looks. But beyond his sight and hearing he spoke truculently of what he was going to do some day to get level with “the hired hand who had had the infernal insolence to call him down in public.” So all the little world on the rancho knew, or at least believed, that a bitter feud was in progress. Two or three of the cowboys fostered young Marshall’s feelings of animosity, partly out of sheer devilment, partly because they deemed it good policy to keep in the good graces of the heir to the rancho. Moreover, so long as old Ben Thurston knew nothing about it, they were always willing to break a bottle with the dissipated spendthrift, not only because good liquor was not to be despised at any time, but also for the sake of the amusement afforded by Marshall, in his cups, with his stories of fast life in New York and his apparently inexhaustible fund of highly spiced anecdotes. Even his braggart threats against Willoughby had an element of fun. “Why don’t you cut him out with the girl?” one of his boon companions had suggested on an occasion of this kind. “By gad, I will,” Marshall had responded with vehemence. “You just watch me.” Thenceforward this thought was uppermost in his alcohol-sodden brain. Marshall Thurston had met Mrs. Darlington and her daughter on several occasions, but, although he had been formally introduced, he had never been invited to call at La Siesta. Nor up to the present had he felt any inducement to take the initiative. Like clings to like, and these people were not of his kind—in the presence of pure and refined womanhood the human toad becomes uncomfortably conscious of his own loathsomeness. But now there was a valid reason to egg him on. He would show Dick Willoughby who was who on the San Antonio Rancho. If the heir to all those broad acres chose to pay court to Merle Farnsworth, the girl would only be too glad to jump at him and his millions. He would tell her, too, that Willoughby was going to be fired and that the fellow was not worth a moment’s consideration. Such was his mood one afternoon when, his motor car being in the repair shop, he had not made his usual trip to Bakersfield. “Yes, he would ride over that very day to La Siesta;” and he proceeded to fortify the resolve by opening a bottle of champagne in the solitary seclusion of his den. After gulping down the wine he felt brave enough to face the devil himself. Yet, when mounted on his horse, he still evinced sufficient discretion to make a wide detour lest Willoughby should catch sight of him and divine his intentions.