His fingers had just touched the gold disc when the quiet of the night was punctured by a shot ... then four more in quick succession. He squatted low, holding his breath. He heard booted feet running over rocks, heard a man speak gruffly to a horse and, in a moment, heard galloping hoofs carrying a rider away. He waited a half hour, then stole back to his bed. The tarp and blankets were drilled by five bullet holes. "Maybe I'm superstitious," he muttered, fastening the gold chain about his neck, "but this thing, or whatever is in it, has saved my hide twice in one week." The man who had fired into his blankets had trailed him deliberately, had waited until satisfied that he was asleep and had stolen up to murder him without offering a fighting chance. * * * * * "Hepburn has gone into partnership with Webb," Jane told him on his return to the ranch. "The Reverend brought in that word. What do you make of it?" "Not much. Without my help it makes about the finest couple of snakes that could be brought together!" Tom muttered. "And somebody tampered with the ditch in the upper field. Curtis and the men started the water down late in the afternoon. They left their tools there and the ditch bank was broken. They tell me it surely was shoveled out. The water is low and losing it hurt." "That looks quite like war," he told her. War it was. That night the men in the bunk house were awakened by a bright glare and looking out Beck saw that four stacks of hay, totaling more than a hundred tons of feed left from the winter, were in a blaze. While the others hastily dressed and ran toward the stack yard in the futile hope that some portion might be saved, the foreman stayed behind ... listening. From far up the road he heard the faint, quick rattle of a running horse. In the morning a note was found stuck in the latch of the big gate. It was addressed to Jane Hunter and, in a rude scrawl, had been written: "The longer you stay the more you will lose." She showed it to Beck and after he had read and re-read and turned the single sheet of paper over in his hands he looked up to see her eyes tear filled. "It isn't worth it!" she cried with a stamp of her foot. "This is only the start. Do you know what they are saying in town? The word has been passed that first you are to be driven out and that then I will have to go. People are saying that the others are too many and too ruthless for you, that they are bound to drive us away. It is being said that you are too straight to win a crooked fight! "I could risk losing the things I own, my property, but I wouldn't risk you, Tom dear ... I wouldn't do that!" "And there's somethin' else you wouldn't do," he said lowly, stroking her forehead. "You wouldn't let 'em drive you out. You didn't start that way. You come out here to beat the game and if you quit cold you wouldn't think much of yourself, would you? We didn't want trouble, but we've got to go and meet it!"