Of course he knew that wild-running stallions who steal saddle stock must be cleared from a range, and by shooting if necessary.  He would have received such an order from a man and never thought the less of him, but the command was too stern for the smiling lips of Marianne.  To be sure, Perris was by no means a gentle rider.  In fact, he rode so very hard that only fine horses could measure up to his demands, and who, since the world began, has ridden many fine horses without coming to love the entire race?  Red Perris, at least, was such a man, and indeed he spent many an hour dreaming of some happy day when he should find beneath him a mount with speed like an eagle, soul of a lion, and the gentle, trusting heart of a child.

Finally, the evening ended.  He left the house and the puzzled smile of Marianne behind him and went to the bunkhouse and a sleep of happy dreams.  But every dream ended with the thought of a wild chestnut running into the circle of his rifle’s sights, leaping into the air at the report of his gun, and dropping inert on the grass.  What wonder, then, that when he wakened he thought of Marianne Jordan with mixed emotions?  Perhaps the really important point was that he thought of her so much, whether for good or evil.

He went in with the other men to breakfast in the long dining-room of the ranch house, and there was Marianne Jordan again presiding at the head of the table.  But half of the glamour of the evening before was gone from her and she kept her eyes seriously lowered, frowning.  In fact, she had much to think about, for late the preceding evening Lew Hervey had come to her and showed her the first note that her father had written.  She was not alarmed by this sudden trip over the mountains.  There had been so many vagaries in the actions of Oliver Jordan in the past few months that this unannounced drive to an undetermined destination was not particularly surprising.  It was only the delegation of such authority to Hervey that astonished her.

She forgot even Red Jim Perris and the lost Coles horses in her abstraction, for whenever she looked down the table she saw nothing saving the erect, burly form of the foreman, swelling, so it seemed to her, with a newly acquired and aggressive importance.  However, he had the written word of her father, and she had to set her teeth over her irritation and digest it as well as he could.

Hervey had presented reasonable excuses, to be sure.  There was certain work of fence-repairing, certain construction of sheds which he had called to the attention of Oliver Jordan and which Jordan had commissioned him to overlook during his absence.

“I told him they wasn’t any use in writing out a note like this one,” Hervey had assured her, “but you know how the chief is, these days.  Sort of set in his ways when he makes up his mind about anything.”

And this was so entirely true that she was half-inclined to dismiss the whole matter from her mind.  Oliver Jordan paid so little heed to the running of the ranch and when he did make a suggestion he was so peremptory about it, that this commission to Hervey was not altogether astonishing.  Nevertheless, it kept her absent-minded throughout breakfast.