Her fight! Her fight, indeed! Perhaps this was a drawing to a head of the forces that had been arrayed against her. The man had mentioned Webb and Hepburn as though he considered their presence of significance. A pinto, this time, bore her away from the ranch, the man, tense and silent, riding beside her. She did not speak as they scrambled up the point and gained high country nor did she look at him as they set into a gallop again. An indistinct haze was coming in the west with a looming thunder head protruding from it here and there. The wind in their faces was hot and fitful. The scarf about her neck fluttered erratically. Jane had little attention for the detail of that ride. This was her fight and she raced to meet it with an eagerness born of necessity to retain what she might of the happiness she had made hers. And as she rode Tom Beck, pieces cut from his chaps bound about his feet to protect them on the long journey by foot, his retrieved canteen over his shoulder, limped into the camp, heard the cook's vague, disconnected story of the discovery that had been made in the Hole, borrowed boots, saddled a horse and rode swiftly across the hills. * * * * * The pinto took Jane down the trail in great lunges, for she had no thought for dangers of the descent. At the foot was one of her men, Baldy Bowen, sitting ominously on his horse with a rifle across the horn. He watched her come and before she could speak jerked his head and said: "They're waitin' for you, straight across there, ma'am." She glanced in his direction and set off with renewed speed, winding through the cedars. Against the far wall of the Hole was formed a curious group before a fence of brush and wire that blocked the entrance to a box gulch. HC riders were there, dismounted, in a silent, unsmiling cluster. Under a cedar tree sat Cole, the nester, knees drawn up, arms falling limply over them; more than ever he seemed to be drooping, in spirit as well as body. He did not glance up; just sat, staring from beneath drooping lids at the ground. Nearby lounged one of Jane's cowboys, his holster hitched significantly forward. Apart from these others stood Hepburn, Webb and Bobby Cole and one other, curiously out of place in his smart clothes: Dick Hilton. Now and then one of the four spoke and the others would eye the speaker closely; then look away, absorbed in a situation that was evidently beyond words. Sitting grouped on the ground were Webb's riders and Cole's Mexicans. They talked and laughed lowly among themselves and from time to time turned rather taunting grins at Jane Hunter's men. At a short distance stood horses, grazing or dozing; listless, all. But there was no listlessness among the men. The atmosphere was tense ... to the breaking point. A rider came through the brush and stopped his horse. It was Sam McKee. He looked with widening eyes at the gathering, hesitated, as though to turn and leave, then approached.