"I wouldn't make any bad moves if I were you," said the girl, glancing at the rancher's grave face.
"Business is business, Nell. We needn't begin that old argument. Only, understand this: I'll play square just as long as the other side plays square. There's going to be trouble before long and you know why. It won't begin on the west side of the Concho."
"Good-bye, John," said the girl, reining her pony around.
He raised his hat. Then he wheeled Chinook and loped toward the ranch.
Eleanor Loring, riding slowly, thought of what he had said. "He won't give in an inch," she said aloud. "Will would have given up the cattle business, or anything else, to please me." Then she reasoned with herself, knowing that Will Corliss had given up all interest in the Concho, not to please her but to hurt her, for the night before his disappearance he had asked her to marry him and she had very sensibly refused, telling him frankly that she liked him, but that until he had settled down to something worth while she had no other answer for him.
She was thinking of Will when she rode in to the rancho and turned her horse over to Miguel. Suddenly she flushed, remembering John Corliss's eyes as he had held her in his arms.
CHAPTER VI
THE BROTHERS
As Corliss rode up to the ranch gate he took the mail from the little wooden mail-box and stuffed it into his pocket with the exception of a letter which bore the postmark of Antelope and his address in a familiar handwriting. He tore the envelope open hastily and glanced at the signature, "Will."