* * * * * At the same time that the dog met the farmer who hurled the block of wood at him, Jeff Tarrant was walking down a dusty road that led into the town of Cressman. Two days past his eighteenth birthday, his face betrayed his youth. Healthy as sunshine, he walked with a spring in his step and his head held high. His rather loose lips formed a grin that seemed permanently fixed. His blue eyes sparked and a shock of curly red hair that needed cutting tumbled on his head. Even if it were not for the pack he carried, he would have commanded a second glance. The pack, made of both canvas and leather and with straps at strategic intervals, was huge. It began at Jeff's hip line, extended two inches over the top of his head, and it was bulging. Across it, in black letters as big as the pack would accommodate, was: TARRANT ENTERPRISES Ltd. Jeff himself had designed the pack to fit his needs, and he had done the lettering. It described him perfectly, for what nobody except Jeff knew was that Tarrant Enterprises was limited to whatever might be in the pack. He walked cheerfully, for it was a cheerful day, and he gave thanks for the sparsely-settled country and the little-traveled road on which he found himself. In the first place, this was the only kind of country in which Tarrant Enterprises, Ltd., could flourish. Secondly, the day was made for walking. When Jeff found himself on traveled roads, he was forever being offered rides, and for the sake of both courtesy and good business he always accepted. But there had been no rides today. Descending a hill, Jeff looked down at a junction of two forested valleys, up one of which a train was puffing. He looked at it closely, while the smile in his eyes and that on his mouth seemed to grow a little more pronounced. Railroad tracks meant towns somewhere, and the sort of business Tarrant Enterprises, Ltd., could do in towns depended on circumstance. Jeff sniffed deeply, for part of his success depended on an ability to sense what lay ahead, just as a hunter must sense what is in the offing. Now he had wood smoke in his nostrils, and he was not surprised when he rounded an outjutting corner of the hill and saw a farm house. Jeff whistled happily as he approached the house and knocked on the front door, and he had the most gracious smile Tarrant Enterprises, Ltd., could muster up for the woman who opened it. "Good afternoon, ma'am. I represent Tarrant--" "Don't want nothin'!" she rasped. "Never buy nothin' from peddlers!" Hard work, loneliness and collapsed dreams had all left their marks, so that she was almost as weather-beaten as the house. But Jeff saw at a glance that the place was neat and clean, and since she did not close the door, he entered, swung the pack from his back, and laid it on a table. "Get it off!" she scolded. "Don't want no dirty pack on my table! Don't want nothin' from no peddler nohow!"