The moment he rose out of the chair and faced them, Gainor had stopped short. He was quite capable of fast thinking, and now his glance flickered from Terry to the sheriff and back again. It was plain that he had shrewd suspicions as to the purpose behind that call. The sheriff was merely confused. He flushed as much as his tanned-leather skin permitted. As for Terry, the moment his glance fell on the sheriff he felt his muscles jump into hard ridges, and an almost uncontrollable desire to go at the throat of the other seized him. He quelled that desire and fought it back with a chill of fear. "My father's blood working out!" he thought to himself. And he fastened his attention on Mr. Gainor and tried to shut the picture of the sheriff out of his brain. But the desire to leap at the tall man was as consuming as the passion for water in the desert. And with a shudder of horror he found himself without a moral scruple. Just behind the thin partition of his will power there was a raging fury to get at Joe Minter. He wanted to kill. He wanted to snuff that life out as the life of Black Jack Hollis had been snuffed. He excluded the sheriff deliberately from his attention and turned fully upon Gainor. "Mr. Gainor, will you be kind enough to go over to that grove of spruce where the three of us can talk without any danger of interruption?" Of course, that speech revealed everything. Gainor stiffened a little and the tuft of beard which ran down to a point on his chin quivered and jutted out. The sheriff seemed to feel nothing more than a mild surprise and curiosity. And the three went silently, side by side, under the spruce. They were glorious trees, strong of trunk and nobly proportioned. Their tops were silver-bright in the sunshine. Through the lower branches the light was filtered through layer after layer of shadow, until on the ground there were only a few patches of light here and there, and these were no brighter than silver moonshine, and seemed to be without heat. Indeed, in the mild shadow among the trees lay the chill of the mountain air which seems to lurk in covert places waiting for the night.