“Better turn around an’ go home,” Robin counseled. “No good actin’ like a crazy woman. Go home an’ make a clean breast of it to the old man an’ let him deal with Shinin’ Mark.” “He’s afraid. Everybody’s afraid of Mark Steele,” she sneered. “He’d say I was to blame for givin’ in, an’ he’d about kill me. All he thinks anything of is his cattle. He’s wild now because Mark backed out of the partnership. Says Mark’s a darned cheatin’ cow thief.” “He is, too,” Robin said coldly. “Only he’s as bad as Mark because he knew that long ago.” “Oh, I don’t care what he is,” she cried. “I don’t care. I’m so near crazy I don’t care who is what, or what happens.” “No good feelin’ like that,” Robin tried to soothe her. “Go home an’ try to settle down an’ forget it. You ain’t the first girl that trusted a man that was no good. You’re better off without him.” Ivy began to whimper again. Against that flood of rage and grief and fear Robin was helpless. He was sorry, but there was nothing he could do. He had his own crow to pick with Mark Steele. Ivy’s plight added only a more burning contempt to the score already laid against the man. So far as he was concerned Ivy Mayne and the Bar M Bar was a closed book. “I got to go,” he said gently. “Don’t cry. Don’t worry. You’ll come out all right. So long.” He swung up on his horse. Ivy made no move to stay him. Only she looked up at him with big dusky eyes in which a fire glowed, the old dumb sullen protest that he remembered when she was crossed in her desires. Sam Connors waited for him on the crest of the opposite bank. Robin joined him, rode a little way, and looked back. Ivy had mounted, she was galloping away from his cabin--but not toward home. She took to the bench land above the creek. As far as Robin watched her she loped steadily north--straight toward the Block S. He remembered her threat, wondered if she would try to make it good, and the thought made him a little sick at heart. Shining Mark wouldn’t be at the Block S. Ivy was just frantic enough to do anything, say anything. The storm in her breast was driving her mad. He shook up his horse and bore away toward the round-up ground where the J7 riders had bunched their cattle. He worked that herd with a troubled mind. There were too many crossed wires. A sense of something like impending disaster harassed him far into the night. Long after the cook was snoring in the opposite corner of the chuck tent Robin lay staring at the canvas overhead, listening to the faint jingle of bells among the grazing _remuda_, hearing the night wind flutter the guy ropes. In his mind there suddenly flashed up the picture of Shining Mark sagging to his knees that frosty afternoon in the Birch Creek line camp. “I wish to God I _had_ killed him that time,” Robin thought. “I’ll have to kill him yet. He’s done more damage already than any man should do an’ live.”