"Doug, you keep out of this, or I'll forget you are my son. You're smart and you've got a bossy way with you. But I'm still master here. There never was a Spencer that didn't rule his own family. Now, understand me. Keep out of this matter between me and Jude. I'm going to break that highty-tighty filly; and by God, she knows it!" "You'll never break her while I'm alive," said Douglas, and he walked out of the house. Mary, coming from the cow shed with a pail of milk, looked at him anxiously. "Let it go, Doug," she said in a low voice. "It's hard on Judith, but she's been very headstrong and she's point-blank disobeyed me in the matter. She deserves what she's got. Let it go." Douglas looked at Mary's care-worn face, so appealingly like, yet so unlike Judith's. Suddenly his tense muscles relaxed. "I guess you are right. I'd better be thankful it is as it is. But it sure is a rotten trick of Dad's." Mary shrugged her shoulders and went on into the house. Douglas went off to bring up horses for the fall round-up. A number of people rode up during the morning to see the start for Mountain City. They found the ranch deserted, except for Mary, who pleaded a sick headache and refused to talk. Inez had no such reticence, however, and at the post-office that night Judith's troubles ran neck and neck in popular interest with Little Marion's. Both situations were of a nature to appeal to Lost Chief's sense of humor. Douglas appeared during the session and learned that Charleton's wife had come home. "I hope she won't go crazy too," he said. "No danger!" Peter tossed a letter to Frank Day. "Charleton'll be in line by to-morrow. Too bad some one can't hobble John too." "Plumb unnecessary, the whole affair," grunted the sheriff. "I suppose the next thing on the program will be a big wedding." "I guess they'll manage it like the Browns did," volunteered Young Jeff, squirting his quid accurately to the center of the hearth. "Be around borrowing my car in two or three weeks, run up to Mountain City for to be married, then give a big party upstairs here, and nobody the worse off for anything." Everybody nodded and grinned. Douglas sat on a pile of mail order catalogs smoking, his hat on the back of his head, his eyes thoughtful. "Anybody know how Jimmy's been behaving to-day?" Frank Day laughed heartily. "I rode up there this morning after I heard the news, friendly like, of course. Grandma had Jimmy out in the yard, washing baby dresses, while she stood in the door giving him what for. Jimmy was dribbling cigarette ashes over the suds but he sure was game. He grinned and got red when he saw me. 'I'm the hen-peckedest damn fool in the Rockies,' he says." There was a roar of laughter. "What was Charleton doing?" asked Young Jeff, wiping his eyes. "I found him in the corral. He'd slept in the alfalfa stack and he wasn't quoting poetry. I didn't stay with him but a minute." Again there was laughter. "Big Marion will calm him," said Peter.