At his bunk, he produced writing materials scribbled hastily.

“Dear Jordan,

“Hell has busted loose.

“I played Perris with a long rope.  I gave him a week because Miss Jordan asked me to.  But at the end of the week he still wasn’t ready to go.  Seems that he’s crazy to get Alcatraz.  Talks about the horse like a drunk talking about booze.  Plumb disgusting.  But when I told him to go to-night, he up and said they wasn’t enough men in the Valley to throw him off the ranch.  I would of taken a fall out of him for that, but Miss Jordan stepped in and kept me away from him.

“Afterwards I had a talk with her.  She begged me not to go after Perris because he would fight and that meant a killing.  I told her I had to do what I’d said I’d do.  Then she busted out and told me that she loved Perris.  Seemed to think that would keep me from going after Perris.  She might of knowed that it was the very thing that would make me hit the trail.  I’m not going to stand by and see a skunk like Perris run away with your girl while you ain’t on the ranch.

“I’ve just given orders to a couple of the boys to see that she don’t get a horse to go out to Perris.  Tomorrow or the next day I’ll settle his hash.

“This letter may make you think that you’d better come back to the ranch.  But take my advice and stay off.  I can handle this thing better while you’re away.  If you’re here you’ll have to listen to a lot of begging and crying.  Come back in a week and everything will be cleared up.

“Take it easy and don’t worry none.  I’m doing my best for you and your daughter, even if she don’t know it.

“Sincerely,

“LEW HERVEY.”

This letter, when completed, he surveyed with considerable complacence.  If ever a man were being bound to another by chains of inseparable gratitude, Oliver Jordan was he!  Indeed, the whole affair was working out so smoothly, so perfectly, that Hervey felt the thrill of an artist sketching a large and harmonious composition.  In the first place, Red Jim Perris, whom he hated with unutterable fervor because the younger man filled him with dread, would be turned, as Hervey expressed it, “into buzzard food.”  And Hervey would be praised for the act!  Oliver Jordan, owing the preservation of his daughter from a luckless marriage to the vigilance of his foreman, could never regret the life-contract which he had drawn up.  No doubt that contract, as it stood, could never hold water in the law.  But Jordan’s gratitude would make it proof.  Last of all, and best of all, when Perris was disposed of, Marianne would never be able to remain on the ranch.  She would go to forget her sorrow among her school friends in the East.  And Hervey, undisputed lord and master of the ranch, could bleed it white in half a dozen years and leave it a mere husk, overladen with mortgages.

No wonder a song was in the heart of the foreman as he sealed the letter.  He gave the message to Slim, and added directions.