"Toads are fat animals," he corrected her. "I'm not. More like a bullfrog, if you like. What am I going to do? Why, just squat, I guess." As he leaned back against the limb which offered its support to his shoulders Terry noted that he wore in full sight at his side the heavy Colt he had bought the other night in Red Creek. A new habit, with Steve Packard. "Gunman, are you?" she jeered. "I might have known it. Gunmen are all cowards." He sighed. "You can be the most irritating young lady I ever met. And why? What have I ever done to you--besides save you from drowning? Since we are neighbors, why not be good friends? By the way, where do you carry your gun?" "It's different with a girl," she said bluntly. "There's some excuse for her. With the kind that's filling the woods lately she's apt to need it." "And you wouldn't be afraid to use it?" "I'm not here to chin with you all day," observed Terry coolly. "And you haven't told me what you're doing on my land." "Your land?" he demanded. "On my side of the line, then." He considered the question. "I'm here to meet some one," he answered finally. "I like your nerve! Arranging to meet your friends here! Steve Packard, you are the--the--the----" "Go on," he prompted. "You'll need a cuss-word now; any other finish will sound flat." "--the _Packardest_ Packard I ever heard of!" she concluded. "You and your friend----" "No more my friend than he is yours," he said, interrupting her. "An individual named Blenham. And I'm not here so much to meet him as--let's say to head him off." Terry set it down that, since it was next to impossible at any time for a Packard to speak the truth, he was just lying to her for the sake of the devious exercise. As she was on the point of saying emphatically when Steve said "Sh!" and pointed. She heard a breaking of brush and saw the horns of a steer; the animal was coming into the trail from the Packard side. "You just watch," whispered Steve. "And sit right still. It won't do you any harm to know what's going on." The big steer broke through into the trail, stopped and sniffed, and then came on up the stream. Behind came another and another, emerging from the shadows, passing through the swiftly fading light of the open, gone again into the shadows that lay over the wooded Temple acreage. In all nine big fat steers. And behind them, sitting loosely in his saddle, came Blenham. Only when the last steer had crossed the line did Steve rise suddenly, standing upright on the great log, his hands on his hips. Terry looking up into his face saw that all of the good humor had gone from it and that there was something ominous in the darkening of his eyes. "Hold on, Blenham!" he called. Blenham drew a quick rein. "That you, Packard?" he asked quietly. "It is," answered Steve briefly. "On the job, too, Blenham. All the time." Blenham laughed.