Left alone the big, blue stallion turned his alert head and looked at the men on the porch, drawing a deep breath and rolling the wheel in his half-breed bit. It was as the bearded man had said—intelligence in a marked degree looked out of the starry eyes in the blue face. That individual reached out a covetous hand, but the horse did not move. He knew his business too well as Kate Cathrew’s servant. Inside the store the woman took two letters which McKane gave her from the dingy pigeonholes that did duty as post office, read them, frowned and put them in the pocket of her leather riding skirt. Then she selected a few things from the shelves which she stowed in a flour-sack and was ready to go. McKane followed her close, his eyes searching her face with ill-concealed desire. She did not notice the men on the porch, who regarded her frankly, but passed out among them as though they were not there. It was this cool insolence which cleared the path before her wherever she appeared, as if all observers, feeling the inferiority her disdain implied, acknowledged it. But as she descended the five or six steps that led down from the porch, she came face to face with a newcomer, one who neither gaped nor shifted back, but looked her square in the face. This was a man of some thirty-four or five, big, brawny, lean and fit, of a rather homely countenance lighted by grey eyes that read his kind like print. He looked like a cattleman save for one thing—the silver star pinned to the left breast of his flannel shirt, for this was Sheriff Price Selwood. “Good day, Kate,” he said. A red flush rose in the woman’s face, but it was not set there by any liking for the speaker who accosted her, that was plain. “It’s never a good day when I meet you,” she said evenly, “it’s a bad one.” The Sheriff smiled. “That’s good,” he answered, “but some day I’ll make it better.” McKane, his own face flushed with sudden anger, stepped close. “Price,” he said thinly, “you and I’ve been pretty fair friends, but when you talk to Miss Cathrew like that, you’ve got me to settle with. That sounded like a threat.” “Did it?” said Selwood. “It was.” The trader was as good as his word. With the last syllable his fist shot out and took the speaker in the jaw, a clean stroke, timed a half-second sooner than the other had expected, though he _had_ expected it. It snapped his head back on his shoulders, but did not make him stagger, and the next moment he had met McKane half-way with all the force of his two hundred pounds of bone and muscle. In the midst of the whirlwind fight that followed, Kate Cathrew, having pulled on her gloves and coolly tied her sack in place on her saddle, mounted Bluefire and rode away without a backward look. * * * * *