“I haven’t any.”  Douglas was still pale and his voice broke, childishly.  “Only, all of a sudden it seems cowardly to me for you to hit Mother.  She’s not a child.  You haven’t got the excuse that you’re training her.  And you know she can’t hit you.  You’re a good fighter, but I notice you don’t hit Peter Knight or Charleton Falkner, any time they peeve you a little.  It was all right to lick me and Jude when we were little.  But now I warn you.  I’m going to hit back.  And you got to leave Judith and her mother alone.”

John Spencer stood staring at his son.  Twice he raised his heavy fist to strike him.  Twice he dropped it.  Douglas, still pale and trembling, wondered at his own temerity.  He always had been so terribly afraid of his father!

“So you don’t intend to obey me any more!” sneered John.

“Sure I do,” replied Douglas.  “Only I’m not going to be licked into doing things blind, and I’m going to take care of Jude.”

John uttered a contemptuous oath.

Doug swallowed with an effort but his steady temper was well under control and he went on, “I’d like to be as good a rider and rancher as you are and handle a gun as good as you do, but I’m hanged if I want my woman to be as scared of me as Mother is of you.”

“Think yourself a man, eh?  Well, I’ll tell you, young fellow, as long as you live in that house, there, you’ll obey and take the lickings I give you.  My father built that house and I was born in it and so were you.  Hemen come from our breed and only a sissy refuses to obey.  I may not be as well educated as my ancestors back East were, but I’m just as well trained as any of ’em and you’re going to be too.  We Spencers boss our own households.  Go get me that whip!”

“No, sir, I won’t do it,” replied Douglas, a steady burning light in his eyes.

“You mean you’ll stand up to me and fight after you saw the way I could handle you a few minutes ago?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

For a long moment there was silence, while Mrs. Spencer twisted her hands together and Doug and his father stared at each other.  Then John gave a short laugh.

“By Sitting Bull! if you haven’t got nerve, Doug!  Go saddle Buster and get up to the old ranch after those three-year-olds.”  Then he climbed into the hay wagon, shouted at the team and was off.

Douglas’ lips parted.  The color returned to his face.  Then he sat down weakly on the lower bar of the buck fence and burst into tears, and he was more frightened by his own tears than he had been by his father’s anger.  Mary Spencer knelt in the snow before him and tried to pull his head to her shoulder.

“Doug!  Doug!  You are a man!” she whispered.  “You are a man!”

Douglas struggled heavily with the strangling sobs and after a moment sat erect and embarrassed.

“Douglas, what happened?  How did you come to do it?”

“Something he said to Jude last night scared me,” mumbled Doug.