“Your orders?”

“I want to send Stewart over to fire Don Carlos an’ his vaqueros off the range.  They’ve got to go.  Don Carlos is breakin’ the law of the United States, an’ doin’ it on our property an’ with our hosses.  Hev I your permission, Miss Hammond?”

“Why, assuredly you have!  Stillwell, you know what to do.  Alfred, what do you think best?”

“It’ll make trouble, Majesty, but it’s got to be done,” replied Alfred.  “Here you have a crowd of Eastern friends due next month.  We want the range to ourselves then.  But, Stillwell, if you drive those vaqueros off, won’t they hang around in the foothills?  I declare they are a bad lot.”

Stillwell’s mind was not at ease.  He paced the porch with a frown clouding his brow.

“Gene, I reckon you got this Greaser deal figgered better’n me,” said Stillwell.  “Now what do you say?”

“He’ll have to be forced off,” replied Stewart, quietly.  “The Don’s pretty slick, but his vaqueros are bad actors.  It’s just this way.  Nels said the other day to me, ’Gene, I haven’t packed a gun for years until lately, and it feels good whenever I meet any of those strange Greasers.’  You see, Stillwell, Don Carlos has vaqueros coming and going all the time.  They’re guerrilla bands, that’s all.  And they’re getting uglier.  There have been several shooting-scrapes lately.  A rancher named White, who lives up the valley, was badly hurt.  It’s only a matter of time till something stirs up the boys here.  Stillwell, you know Nels and Monty and Nick.”

“Sure I know ’em.  An’ you’re not mentionin’ one more particular cowboy in my outfit,” said Stiliwell, with a dry chuckle and a glance at Stewart.

Madeline divined the covert meaning, and a slight chill passed over her, as if a cold wind had blown in from the hills.

“Stewart, I see you carry a gun,” she said, pointing to a black handle protruding from a sheath swinging low along his leather chaps.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Why do you carry it?” she asked.

“Well,” he said, “it’s not a pretty gun—­and it’s heavy.”  She caught the inference.  The gun was not an ornament.  His keen, steady, dark gaze caused her vague alarm.  What had once seemed cool and audacious about this cowboy was now cold and powerful and mystical.  Both her instinct and her intelligence realized the steel fiber of the man’s nature.  As she was his employer, she had the right to demand that he should not do what was so chillingly manifest that he might do.  But Madeline could not demand.  She felt curiously young and weak, and the five months of Western life were as if they had never been.  She now had to do with a question involving human life.  And the value she placed upon human life and its spiritual significance was a matter far from her cowboy’s thoughts.  A strange idea flashed up.  Did she place too much value upon all human life?  She checked that, wondering, almost horrified at herself.  And then her intuition told her that she possessed a far stronger power to move these primitive men than any woman’s stern rule or order.