"When we put up the barn ye got stan'ard pay. I allow ye're a useful man to handle logs, but I'm no' hiring help the noo."
"You reckoned me your hired man?" said Bob in an ominously quiet voice. "That was all the use you had for me?"
"Just that!" Jardine agreed. "Margaret has nae use for ye ava'."
"Then, if you reckon you're going to get my highbrow English boss for her, you're surely not very bright. His sort don't marry—"
"Tak' your pack and quit," said Jardine sternly. "Get off the ranch, ye blasted half-breed!"
Bob was very quiet, but his pose was alert and somehow like a hunting animal's. Perhaps instinctively, he felt for his knife. Jardine's ax leaned against a neighboring post. If he jumped, he could reach the tool, but he did not move. For a moment or two they waited, and then Bob picked up the flour bag and went down the path. Jardine went to the kitchen and lighted his pipe. Bob was gone, and Jardine hardly thought he would come back, but he was not altogether satisfied he had taken the proper line. Indian blood ran in Bob's veins; an Indian waits long and does not forget. For all that, Jardine did not see himself warning Leyland and enlightening Margaret.
A week afterwards, Stannard one evening occupied a chair at his table on the terrace. He had returned from the mountains with two good big-horn heads and nothing indicated that the game-warden knew the party had poached on the reserve. Stannard, however, was not thinking about the hunting excursion. The English mail had arrived and sometimes he studied a letter and sometimes looked moodily about.
Laura, Dillon, and two or three young men were on the steps that went down to the woods. Laura wore her black dinner dress and Stannard thought she had not another that so harmonized with her beauty. Dillon obviously felt her charm. He was next to Laura, and since it looked as if the others were ready to dispute his claim to the spot, Stannard imagined Frank would not have occupied it unless Laura meant him to remain.
After a time Stannard pushed the letter into his pocket and gave himself to gloomy thought, until Deering came along the terrace and asked him for a match.
"You look as if you were bothered," Deering remarked.