"Yes. Fleming wouldn't sell the homestead-boys anything after they broke in his store. Steele's our man, and it was Carter they got their provisions from. Now, Carter had given Jackson a bond for two thousand dollars when he first came in, and as he hadn't made his payments lately, and we have our thumb on Jackson, the Sheriff has closed down on his store. He'll be glad to light out with the clothes he stands in when we're through with him." Torrance nodded grim approval. "Larry wouldn't sit tight." "No," said Clavering. "He wired right through to Chicago for most of a carload of flour and eatables, but that car got billed wrong somehow, and now they're looking for her up and down the side-tracks of the Pacific slope. Larry's men will be getting savage. It is not nice to be hungry when there's forty degrees of frost." Torrance laughed softly. "You have fixed the thing just as I would." Then his daughter stood up with a little flush in her face. "You could not have meant that, father?" she said. "Well," said Torrance, drily, "I quite think I did, but there's a good deal you can't get the hang of, Hetty--and it's getting very late." He looked at his daughter steadily, and Flora Schuyler looked at all of them, and remembered the picture--Torrance sitting lean and sardonic with the lamplight on his face, Clavering watching the girl with a curious little smile, and Hetty standing very slim and straight, with something in the poise of her shapely head that had its meaning to Miss Schuyler. Then with a "Good-night" to Torrance, and a half-ironical bend of the head to Clavering, she turned to her companion, and they went out together before he could open the door for them. Five minutes later Hetty tapped at Miss Schuyler's door. The pink tinge still showed in her cheeks, and her eyes had a suspicious brightness in them. "Flo," she said, "you'll go back to New York right off. I'm sorry I brought you here. This place isn't fit for you." "I am quite willing, so long as you are coming too." "I can't. Isn't that plain? This thing is getting horrible--but I have to see it through. It was Clavering fixed it, any way." "Put it away until to-morrow," Flora Schuyler advised. "It will be easier to see whether you have any cause to be angry then." Hetty turned towards her with a flash in her eyes. "I know just what you mean, and it would be nicer just to look as if I never felt anything, as some of those English folks you were fond of did; but I can't. I wasn't made that way. Still, I'm not going to apologize for my father. He is Torrance of Cedar, and I'm standing in with him--but if I were a man I'd go down and whip Clavering. I could almost have shaken him when he wanted to stay here and tried to make me ask him." "Well," said Flora Schuyler, quietly, "I am going to stay with you; but I don't quite see what Clavering has done."