“That’s correct?” said Hallam, glancing at Deringham.

“I knew who you were when I saw you.”

“Yes,” said Deringham.  “The taste is questionable, but I can’t deny its comparative accuracy.”

“Then,” said Hallam, “Alton stands between you and this Carnaby property?”

“I believe so,” said Deringham quietly.

“It’s a big estate?” said Hallam, and Alice Deringham, who knew his capabilities, wondered when her father would effectually silence this presumptuous stranger.  In the meanwhile he, however, showed no intention of doing so.

“No,” he said languidly.  “It is a small one, and heavily in debt.  I presume you know rancher Alton by the interest you show in him?”

“Yes,” said Hallam, “and I don’t like him.”

Deringham scarcely glanced at his daughter, but she realized that her presence was not especially desired, and when she rose and went back into the building her father glanced steadily at Hallam.

“I wonder why you told me that,” he said.

Hallam laughed.  “Well, I generally talk straight, and I feel like that,” he said.  “Now, they don’t keep anything that doesn’t burn a hole in you here, and I’ve a bottle of English whisky.  Don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t take a drink with me?”

“No,” said Deringham indifferently.  “I am, however, a somewhat abstemious man.”

Hallam went into the building and returned with a cigar-case and a bottle.  The contents of both were good, and Deringham sat languidly glancing over the curling smoke towards the glimmering snow.  It towered white and cold against a pale green, shining high above climbing pines and dusky valley, while the fleecy mist crept higher and higher athwart the serried waves of trees that fell to the river hollow.  Alice Deringham saw it, and drinking in the wonderful freshness that came down from the peaks and permeated the silence of the valley, realized a little of that great white rampart’s awful serenity.  She also wondered vacantly what the two men on the verandah were talking about; but in this she was wrong, for Hallam, overcharged with Western vivacity, was talking, and her father waiting quietly.

“No,” said the former, returning to the subject with an affectation of naive directness.  “I don’t like Alton, and I figure he don’t like me.  Nothing wrong with the man that I know of, but I’m not fond of anybody who gets in my way, and Alton of Somasco has taken out timber rights all over the valley where we’re running the Tyee.  He got in with his claim a day or two ahead of me.”

“A capable man?” said Deringham quietly.

“Oh, yes,” said the other.  “He’s capable, so far as he sees, but the trouble is he doesn’t see quite far enough.  Now, there’s not room enough for two men with notions round about Somasco, and a one-horse rancher can’t fight men with money, so Alton’s got hold of a good deal bigger contract than he can carry through.  Anyway, now I’ve told you what I think of your relation, you can if you feel like that let right go of me.”