Now she understood why there had as yet been no rifle-fire. The day, coming on slowly, still offered more gloom than radiance, but she could pick out two figures clearly. One was that of Steve. He had ridden on ahead of his men, perhaps a hundred feet ahead, and was upon a bit of higher ground. The other form, bulking big in the thin light, was indisputably that of old man Packard. Like Steve, he had ridden on in advance of his men. She could just make out a dull mass yonder behind him which might have been but a group of boulders had not the impatient stirring showed where his horsemen were waiting. It was very still there on the uplands in the dim dawning. In breathless watchfulness a few men behind Steve watched; a few men behind old man Packard watched; a girl upon a granite peak watched. Down toward the lower end of the valley where the floor of the plateau dropped precipitously into the steep-walled canon the fire Terry had set was still burning fiercely. But the wind carried its fury away from them, so that it was only an evil whisper. Here and there, elsewhere in the valley, the fires still burned on. There were wide stretches across which the flames had already swept so that now they were ink-black, burnt-out, smoking a little. Upon such an open space, still hot under their horses' hoofs, the two Packards, grandfather and grandson, came face to face. And they were stern, ominously set faces confronting each other. At last they had pulled rein, both of them, looking grotesquely like clockwork mechanisms, being actuated by the same impulse at the same time. Some ten feet only were between their horses' tossing heads. They were almost opposite Terry's lookout and at no great distance. In the quiet pervading the valley their voices came to her. Not each word, but a word now and then, lifted above its fellows, and always the purport. For there was no mistaking the quality of the two voices. Rage in old Packard was welcomed by wrath in young Packard. Heat and anger and explosive denunciation, these were to be looked for now. Never had it been the Packard way to temporize; always had it been the Packard way to leap in and strike. Few-worded always was the old man; as few-worded was the young man now. "You are a damn' scoundrel, sir!" "You will draw your men off. You will pay for the damage Blenham has done." "By God, sir!" There was little more said. That thunderous "By God, sir!" from the old man's lips carried to Terry where she stood tight pressed against her rock. And then all unexpectedly and from an unexpected quarter, came the first rifle-shot. The first shot and the second, close together. The bullets passed between grandfather and grandson, kicking up little puffs of dust beyond them. Neither looked to see whence the shots came. The thought was in each mind: "Is this a Packard I am dealing with? Setting one of his hired assassins to shooting from a blind?"