Once more Drew winced. He rose now and strode across the room and back; from the wall the heavy echo of his footfall came sharply back. And he paused in front of Nash, looming above his foreman like some primitive monster, or as the Grecian heroes loomed above the rank and file at the siege of Troy. He was like a relic of some earlier period when bigger men were needed for a greater physical labour. "What does he want?" "I don't know. Says he wants to ask for the right of hunting on your old place on the other side of the range. Which I'd tell a man it's jest a lie. He knows he can hunt there if he wants to." "Does he know me?" "Just your name." "Did he ask many questions about me?" "Wanted to know what you looked like." "And you told him?" "A lot of things. Said you were big and grey. And I told him that story about you and John Bard." Drew slumped into a chair and ground the knuckles of his right hand across his forehead. The white marks remained as he looked up again. "What was that?" "Why, how you happened to marry Joan Piotto and how Bard left the country." "That was all?" "Is there any more, sir?" The other stared into the distance, overlooking the question. "Tell me what you've found out about him." "I been after him these three days. Logan tipped him wrong, and he started the south trail for Eldara. I got on his trail three times and couldn't catch him till we hit Eldara." "I thought your roan was the most durable horse on the range, Steve. You've often told me so." "He is." "But you couldn't catch--Bard?" "He was on a faster horse than mine--for a while." "Well? Isn't he now?' "I killed the horse." "You showed your hand, then? He knows you were sent after him?" "No, he thinks it's because of a woman." "Is he tangling himself up with some girl?" frowned the rancher. "He's cutting in on me with Sally Fortune--damn his heart!" And Nash paled visibly, even through whiskers and mud. The other almost smiled. "So soon, Nash?" "With hosses and women, he don't lose no time." "What's he done?" "The first trace I caught of him was at a shack of an old ranchhouse where he'd traded his lame hoss in. They gave him the wildest mustang they had--a hoss that was saddle-shy and that hadn't never been ridden. He busted that hoss in--a little piebald mustang, tougher 'n iron--and that was why I didn't catch him till we hit Eldara." The smile was growing more palpable on the face of Drew, and he nodded for the story to continue. "Then I come to a house which was all busted up because Bard had come along and flirted with the girl, and she's got too proud for the feller she was engaged to--begun thinkin' of millionaires right away, I s'pose. "Next I tracked him to Flanders's saloon, where he'd showed up Sandy Ferguson the day before and licked him bad. I seen Ferguson. It was sure some lickin'." "Ferguson? The gun-fighter? The two-gun man?" "Him." "Ah-h-h!" drawled the big man.