"I've given the word, but I'll do it my own way. Listen, Dave." Simon stood, head bent, deep in thought. "Could you arrange to have Linda and the old hag out of the house when Bruce gets back?" "Yes--" "We've got to work this thing right. We can't operate in the open like we used to. This man has taken up the blood-feud--but the thing to do--is to let him come to us." "But he won't do it. He'll go to the courts first." Simon's face grew stern. "I don't want any more interruptions, Dave. I mean we will want to give the impression that he attacked us first--on his own free will. What if he comes into our house-a man unknown in these parts--and something happens to him there--in the dead of night? It wouldn't look so bad then, would it? Besides--if we got him here--before the clan, we might be able to find out where that document is. At least we'll have him here where everything will be in our favor. First, how can you tell when he's going to come?" "He ought to be here very soon. The moon's bright and I can get up on the ridge and see his shadow through your field glasses when he crosses the big south pasture. That will give me a full half-hour before he comes." "It's enough. I'm ready to give you your orders now. They are--just to use your head, and on some pretext get those two women out of the house so that Bruce can't find them when he returns. Don't let them come back for an hour, if you can help it. If it works--all right. If it doesn't, we'll use more direct measures. I'll tend to the rest." He strode to the wall and took down a saddle from the hook. Quickly he threw it over the back of one of the cow ponies, the animal that he had punished. He put the bridle in Dave's hand. "Stop at the house for the glasses, then ride to the ridge at once," he ordered. "Then keep watch." Without words Dave led the horse through the door and swung on to its back. In an instant the wild folk, in the fringe of forest beyond, paused in their night occupations to listen to the sound of hoof beats on the turf. Then Simon slowly saddled his own horse. XIX The day was quite dead when Dave Turner reached his post on top of the ridge. The gray of twilight had passed, the forest was lost in darkness, the stars were all out. The only vestige of daylight that remained was a pale, red glow over the Western mountains,--and this was more like red flowers that had been placed on its grave in remembrance. Fortunately, the moon rose early. Otherwise Dave's watch would have been in vain. The soft light wrought strange miracles in the forest: bathing the tree tops in silver, laying wonderful cobweb tapestries between the trunks, upsetting the whole perspective as to distance and contour. Dave didn't have long to wait. At the end of a half-hour he saw, through the field glasses, the wavering of a strange black shadow on the distant meadow. Only the vivid quality of the full moon enabled him to see it at all.