There fell a heavy, breathless silence upon the three standing there under the stars. Terry shivered as though with cold and drew a step closer to Steve; he felt her hand on his arm. Barbee lighted his cigarette, his hands steady, but his face looking terribly serious in the brief-lived light shed upon it. "I heard you shootin'," said Barbee. "I rode this way, on the jump. I was only about a mile up the valley; maybe a shade less. He had his horse close an' was on him an' poundin' leather lively to get out. We come pretty close to runnin' into each other. I hollered at him to hold on an' he jus' rode on his spurs an' I shot. Emptied my gun. Got him twice, bein' that lucky, an' him that unlucky. He slid off his cayuse an' clawed aroun' an'--an' he's dead now," ended Barbee briefly. "Did he tell you anything? Did he say anything that would implicate anybody?" "Meanin'," said Barbee steadily, "did he squeal on his pals?" "Just that. Did he mention any names?" "No," replied Barbee thoughtfully. "He jus' cusses me an' dies game. But this here was in his pocket." He passed it to his employer. It was a bit of note-paper. Steve and Terry read it together as Steve struck one match after another. Then they looked into each other's faces, grown very tense, while Barbee smoked in silence. The few words were: BLENHAM: This here Mex don't seem to know what I mean. Next time send a man as can talk English. Anyway I am coming to-night. I don't want no killing if it ain't necessary, but there ain't going to be a hide or hoof left in Drop Off by morning. And the signature, cramped and stiff, was that of Steve's grandfather. "So," muttered Steve heavily. "The old man has gone the limit, has he? He meant it when he said he'd stop at nothing to smash me. And yet I can't believe----" "Let me see it again," Terry commanded. She took the paper from his fingers and with it his block of sulphur matches. For even Terry, to whom old man Packard was as relentless and unscrupulous as Satan himself, hesitated to believe that he was hand in glove with Blenham in this. There might be a way to read between the lines, to come to some other understanding of the baffling situation. Evidently the old man had given the note to the "Mex" who did not know enough of the English language to carry word of mouth; the Mex had passed it to Sprague. Steve and Barbee and the man with Barbee--an old Ranch Number Ten hand named Bandy Oliver--had stepped aside quietly. Terry stood with the note in her hand, forgetting it for the moment. So, at the last, matters had come to this: There lay a man over yonder, dead, with Barbee's lead in him. And old man Packard was coming to-night, now of all times when Steve's heart was hard, when his brain was hot with his fury, when he had just come upon men stealing his stock and had learned that his own grandfather, the old mountain-lion from the north, was one of them.