With only the width of a narrow road between them they stared at each other. Then Blenham jeered:
"Oho! It's the skirt, huh? Stuck on her yourself, are you?"
Steve frowned, but met his piercing look with level contempt.
"Your language is inelegant, friend Blenham," he said slowly. "Like yourself it is better withdrawn from public notice. As to your meaning—why, by thunder, I half believe you are right! And I hadn't thought of it!"
Blenham caught In one of his rare bursts of heady rage shook his fist high above his head and cried out savagely:
"I'll beat you yet, the both of you! See if I don't. Yes you an' your crowd an' him an' her an'——"
"Don't take on too many all at once," suggested Steve.
Only the tail of his eye was on Blenham; he was looking wonderingly and a bit wistfully down the moonlit, empty road.
"I got him where I want him right now," snarled Blenham. "An' her—I'll have her, too, where I want her! An', inside less time than you'd think I'll have——"
But he clamped his big mouth tight shut, glared at Steve a moment and then, striking with spur and quirt together, so that his frightened horse leaped out frantically, he was gone down the road after Temple and Terry.