Bill emitted a thin cloud of smoke into the money-lender's face. His eyes had suddenly become wide open and blazing with anger. He pointed to the door.
"I'll see you damned first! Now—git!"
At the door Lablache turned. In his face was written all the fury of hell.
"Mancha's debt is transferred to me. You will settle it without delay."
He had scarcely uttered the last word when there was a loud report, and simultaneously the crash of a bullet in the casing of the door. Lablache accepted his dismissal with precipitation and hastened to where his horses were stationed, to the accompaniment of "Lord" Bill's mocking laugh. He had no wish to test the rancher's marksmanship further.
CHAPTER XII - LABLACHE FORCES THE FIGHT
A month—just one month and the early spring has developed with almost tropical suddenness into a golden summer. The rapid passing of seasons, the abrupt break, the lightning change from one into another, is one of the many beauties of the climate of that fair land where there are no half measures in Nature's mode of dealing out from her varied store of moods. Spring chases Winter, hoary, bitter, cruel Winter, in the hours of one night; and in turn Spring's delicate influence is overpowered with equal celerity by the more matured and unctuous ripeness of Summer.
Foss River had now become a glorious picture of vivid coloring. The clumps of pine woods no longer present their tattered purplish appearance, the garb in which grim Winter is wont to robe them. They are lighter, gayer, and bathed in the gleaming sunlight they are transformed from their somber forbidding aspect to that of radiant, welcome shade. The river is high, almost to flooding point. And the melting snow on the distant mountain-tops has urged it into a sparkling torrent of icy cold water rushing on at a pace which threatens to tear out its deterring banks and shallow bed in its mad career.
The most magical change which the first month of summer has brought is to be seen in the stock. Cattle, when first brought in from distant parts at the outset of the round-up, usually are thin, mean-looking, and half-starved. Two weeks of the delicious spring grass and the fat on their ribs and loins rolls and shakes as they move, growing almost visibly under the succulent influence of the delicate vegetation.