Nan, glancing again toward de Spain, seemed aware that he heard. She looked away. De Spain tightened up with a rage. The blood rushed to his face, the sarcasm struck in. If the birthmark could have deepened with humiliation it would have done so at the instant of the cold inspection of the girl's pretty eyes. But he cared less for Nan's inspection, cold as it was, than for the jibe of her satisfied cousin. Not content, Gale, calling ahead to the others, invited their attention to the man on the street corner. De Spain felt minded to hurl an insult at them in a body. It would have been four to one--rather awkward odds even if they were mounted--and there was a woman. But he only stood still, returning their inspection as insolently as silence could. Each face was faithfully photographed and filed in his memory, and his steady gaze followed them until they rode down the hill and clattered jauntily out on the swaying suspension bridge that still crosses the Rat River at Grant Street, and connects the whole south country--the Spanish Sinks, the Thief River gold-fields, the saw-toothed Superstition Range, Morgan's Gap, and Music Mountain with Sleepy Cat and the railroad. De Spain, walking down Grant Street, watched the party disappear among the hills across the river. The encounter had stirred him. He already hated the Morgans, at least all except the blue-eyed girl, and she, it was not difficult to divine from her expression, was, at least, disdainful of her morning rival. Reaching the station platform while still busy with his thoughts, de Spain encountered Jeffries and Lefever. "When are you coming up to take my job, Henry?" demanded the superintendent without any parley. "I am not coming up," announced de Spain bluntly. "Not coming up, eh? All right, we'll find somebody that will come up," retorted Jeffries. "John," he added, "wire Medicine Bend to send Farrell Kennedy here in the morning to see me." "What's the reason that fellow sticks so close to Medicine Bend?" demanded Jeffries, when Lefever joined him later in his office. "Don't ask me," frowned Lefever perplexed. "Don't ask me. Henry is odd in some ways. You can't tell what's going on inside that fellow's head by looking at the outside of it." Jeffries grunted coldly at this bit of wisdom. "I'll tell you what I should think--if I had to think: Henry de Spain has never found out rightly who was responsible for the death of his father. He expects to do it, sometime; and he thinks sometime he's going to find out right there in Medicine Bend." While they were talking the train was pulling out for Medicine Bend with de Spain on board.