"I'll take care of that for you," answered Hardy pointedly. "Now you pile onto that mule of yours and pull your freight, will you?" He led the black mule up close and boosted its master into the saddle, but Swope was not content. "Where's that dastard, Jeff Creede?" he demanded. "Well, I wanter see him, that's all. And say, Mr. Smart Alec, I want that gun, too, see?" "Well, you won't get it," said Hardy. "I will that," declared Swope, "'nd I'll git you, too, Willie, before I git through with you. I've had enough of this monkey business. Now gimme that gun, I tell ye, or I'll come back with more of 'em and take it!" He raised his voice to a roar, muffled to a beast-like hoarseness by his swollen jaws, and the _ramada_ reverberated like a cavern as he bellowed out his challenge. Then the door was snatched violently open and Jefferson Creede stepped forth, looking black as hell itself. In one hand he held the sheepman's pistol and in the other his own. "Here!" he said, and striding forward he thrust Swope's gun into his hand. "It's loaded, too," he added. "Now, you--if you've got any shootin' to do, go to it!" He stepped back quickly and stood ready, his masterful eyes bent upon his enemy in a scowl of unquenchable hate. Once before they had faced each other, waiting for that mysterious psychic prompting without which neither man nor beast can begin a fight, and Jim had stepped in between--but Hardy stood aside without a word. It was a show-down and, bulldog fighter though he was, Jasper Swope weakened. The anger of his enemy overcame his hostile spirit without a blow, and he turned his pistol away. "That's all I wanted," he said, shoving the gun sullenly into its holster. "They's two of you, and--" "And you're afraid," put in Creede promptly. He stood gazing at the downcast sheepman, his lip curling contemptuously. "I've never seen a sheepman yet," he said, "that would fight. You've listened to that blat until it's a part of ye; you've run with them Mexicans until you're kin to 'em; you're a coward, Jasp Swope, and I always knowed it." He paused again, his eyes glowing with the hatred that had overmastered his being. "My God," he said, "if I could only git you to fight to-day I'd give everything I've got left!" The sheepman's gaze was becoming furtive as he watched them. He glanced sidewise, edging away from the door; then, pricking his mule with his spurs, he galloped madly away, ducking his head at every jump as if he feared a shot. "Look at the cowardly dastard!" sneered Creede bitterly. "D'ye know what he would do if that was me? He'd shoot me in the back. Ah, God A'mighty, and that dog of his got Tommy before I could pull a gun! Rufe, I could kill every sheepman in the Four Peaks for this--every dam' one of 'em--and the first dog that comes in sight of this ranch will stop a thirty-thirty." He stopped and turned away, cursing and muttering to himself.