He was right. Old Rex had not the slightest inention of standing it. He ate no more, but with lowered head gazed at this curiously clad intruder, who was hesitating, not knowing whether to advance or to turn back. Old Rex decided for him. He did the advancing. One shake of his heavy head, crowned with long, sharp horns, one cloud of dust as he pawed the ground, and one tremendous bellow warned Carver Standish III to do no tarrying in that locality. A shout from Donald following Old Rex's roar determined Carver's direction. He fled toward MacDuff at a speed which would have won any twenty-five yard cup in New England! Old Rex followed. The other cattle, curiously enough and much to Donald's relief, let their champion fight it out alone. Donald, every moment drawing nearer, freed his left foot from the stirrup. Carver must somehow be made to jump behind the saddle, and jump quick! There was not an instant to lose. Old Rex was gaining, and Carver was growing tired. It was too hot up there for a red sweater. With the bull a scant thirty feet away Donald pulled in MacDuff, and yelled to Carver to jump, which he did, aided by the stirrup, Donald's arm, and the last bit of ancestral nerve he possessed. When Old Rex, baffled and defeated, saw his foe being championed by one whom he full well knew, it took but a yell from Donald and a mighty crack of his quirt to send him back among the herd. There seemed little enough to say as MacDuff bore his double load down over the hills to the lower range, where white trousers and red sweaters might be countenanced. But something had returned to Carver, something which for two weeks had been on a vacation. As they neared the home foot-hills, he slid from MacDuff. "If you're not in a hurry, Don," he said, "let's rest here a minute. MacDuff is tired, I know, and there are some things I want to get straightened out before we go down home." * * * * * The next afternoon while Jack searched the ranch for his scattered possessions and tried in vain to stow them all away in his trunk, while three crestfallen girls packed at the Hunter ranch, Carver, fresh from an interview with Mr. Keith, sat down to write his father. The letter, received four days later in place of its author by the Standish family, brought surprise and consternation in its wake. "I simply can't understand it," said Mrs. Carver Standish II, on the verge of hysterical tears. "I've never known him to do such a thing before. There's Ruth Sherman's house-party coming off, and the St. Clair wedding, and the tennis tournament, and our trip to the Adirondacks--and everything! Whatever shall I tell people who inquire? There's something wrong with him, Carver! I never did want him to go to that place, anyway. You'd better wire!"