“O, you are!  And why?” demanded his father.

“Because!” replied Doug.  “Jude, you get down and get started on Swift.”

Astonishment, amusement, anger, pursued their way across the older man’s face.  Judith put out her tongue at her brother.

“Chase yourself, Doug Spencer!  You’re not my boss, you bet!”

John put his foot on the hub.  “Good-by, Doug; I hope you recover from your insanity by to-night.”

Douglas put an unsteady hand on his father’s shoulder.  “She can’t go with you, Dad!”

His father struck him roughly aside.  Douglas ran around the wagon.  Judith was sitting on the edge of the rick.  He reached up, pulled her into his arms, ran her into the feed shed, turned the key in the padlock and put the key in his pocket.  As he turned, his father met him with a blow between the eyes.  Mary Spencer appeared on the doorstep, pale and silent.

It was but the work of a moment to subdue the boy, and to unlock the door.

“Get into the wagon, Judith!” ordered John.

Douglas strode uncertainly to his father’s side.  “Judith, you go get on your horse!”

The young girl stood staring at the two, something impish in the curl of her lips, something wistful and unafraid and puzzled in her beautiful gray eyes.  Back of the two men lay the unblemished blue white of the snow-choked fields and in awful proximity to these, Dead Line Peak flung its head against the cloudless heavens.  Judith looked from the Peak to father and son as though deliberately appraising them.  John, with ashen hair, with bloodshot eyes and the tell-tales lines from nose to lip corner, but handsome, dominating, choleric, with his reputation as a conqueror of women, as a subduer of horses, as a two-gun man.  Douglas, with his thatch of gold blowing in the cold morning air, thin, awkward, only a boy but with a spirit glowing in his blue eyes that Judith never before had seen there.  The girls of Lost Chief were sophisticated almost from the cradle.  Judith could interpret the lines in her stepfather’s face.  But she did not know what the strange light in Douglas’ eyes might mean.  Suddenly she sprang to Swift’s back and put her to the gallop.

“You know what to expect when you come back, miss!” roared John.

But Judith did not seem to hear.  Spencer turned to his son.  “Now, sir, you go into the house and get the whip!”

Douglas did not stir.  “You aren’t going to whip me any more, Dad.  If you want to fight me, put up your fists.”

Mary Spencer ran through the snow toward the two.  “Don’t fight him, John!  Don’t!  He’s just a child!”

John whirled at her with his fists raised.  Douglas jumped before his step-mother and caught the blow on his raised elbow.

“And that’ll be about enough of that, too, Dad!”

John caught his breath, then poured out a string of oaths and invectives, ending with, “Now before I thrash the cussedness out of you, young fellow, what excuse have you got to put up?”