“You will not!” Isabelle caught him by the arm. “That’s exactly what you must not do! I only told you so that you would be on your guard and refuse to be drawn into any argument, as you were at Bad Cañon the other day. Can’t you see? If you know how they feel, you can avoid coming into contact with them until they forget about it. It’s only because they were licked, and Peterson hates that worse than anything else.”
“And would you have me stick close to my station, then?” O’Neill’s eyes held a sparkle it was as well Isabelle did not see. “And what then, if they come after me there?”
“That,” cried Isabelle, “is beside the point! They would never dare attack you at the station. What I think they will do is probably start another quarrel with you, and when you are silly enough to fight, they mean to—to shoot you, for all I know! Little Bill said: ‘We’re goin’ to get him, next time, and get him good! And you’ve got to keep out, I tell you. All this fighting is exactly what they want.’
“And they’ll get what they’re wantin’ or my name is not Patrick O’Neill! Leave go my arm, Queen Isabelle, and let me carry the war to the enemy’s camp—for that’s what they taught me at West Point, and it’s one thing they taught that I thoroughly approve!”
“Oh,” wailed Isabelle, while tears of anger stood in her eyes, “you’re such a blithering fool! All you Irish can think of is fighting! You’re worse than Cushman or Waller or any of the other shoot-’em-up rangers that had to leave or get killed. You promised me you’d win them to you with kindness and courtesy, and if you break that promise, I hope they break your head!”
“And thank you for that same, Miss Boyce,” said Patrick O’Neill, with icy politeness, as he sprang to the saddle. “It’s a fine example of kindness and courtesy you’re setting me now—as like your father as one white bean is like another! So I’ll pass it along to Peterson and Little Bill, and crack their heads as you so sweetly wish them to do by me!”
He lifted his hat from his thick brown hair and gave her a courtly bow that left her furiously stamping her foot and gritting her teeth at him as he galloped away, headed north to the Box S Range that lay along Bad Cañon Creek, between Lodgepole Basin and Trout Creek where the sheep had entered. That the trail led homeward as well never once occurred to Isabelle, who saw him going foolhardily to place his head in the jaws of the lion that roared for his bones to crunch; in other words, to fight on their own ground Peterson and his crowd that had boasted how they would get him.
“She’ll do me the favor to be thinking of me now,” said Patrick O’Neill to himself, though he never once looked back.
CHAPTER V. PLOTTERS AT WORK.
As the valley of the Stillwater River—so named because of its swiftness—approaches the high Rockies, it is divided into many sections by the streams that go rushing down to join the larger river; so that the valley resembles a giant hand with outstretched fingers pointing toward the higher peaks to the westward.