"You're either a clever little actor, Mr. Barbee," muttered Steve sharply, "or you are straight, and I'm hanged if I know which. Just leave Blenham alone for a while; go back to your job."
Barbee, his spurs dragging disconsolately, went out. Steve saw how the boy's shoulders slumped and again asked himself if Barbee were acting or if Blenham were simply too sharp for him? In the end he decided that he had better move his headquarters to Drop Off Valley.
That same day there came a cowboy riding from the Big Bend ranch bringing a brief note from Steve's grandfather. It ran:
DEAR STEPHEN: Better not go too far, my boy. Eye for an eye is first-class gospel. And there ain't no game yet I ever been bluffed out on. Guess you understand.
PACKARD.
Steve didn't altogether understand but the messenger could add nothing save that the old man was chuckling with Blenham when he gave the message. Steve, in no mood to hear of his grandfather's high good humor, tore the letter to bits, distributed them upon the afternoon wind and told the lean cowboy that he could tell Grandfather Packard and Blenham to go straight to everlasting blazes. The cowboy laughed and rode away.
Steve, riding slowly through the lengthening shadows falling through the pines of the mountain slopes before one comes to Drop Off Valley, was overtaken by Terry Temple riding furiously. Terry's horse was dripping with sweat; Terry's face was troubled; there was a look almost of terror in her eyes.
"Steve Packard," she cried out as she came abreast of him and they stared into each other's eyes in the dusk under the big trees. "Tell me everything you know about those stolen steers! Everything."
So she knew, too? Yet he had cautioned Barbee not to talk and to instruct the other boys to keep their mouths shut until such time as they could understand this hand being played in the dark.
"Who told you?" he asked quickly.
"I saw them!" she told him, her spirit shining like fire in her eyes. "The whole six of them. I knew they were not our cattle. I saw how the brands had been worked, clumsily worked. Oh, my God, Steve Packard, what does it mean?"