Lablache had carefully watched the effect of his words.  He was wondering whether the man he was dealing with was clever beyond the average, or a fool.  He was still balancing the point in his mind when Bill put the question.

Lablache looked away, produced a snuff-box and drew up a large pinch of snuff before answering.  He blew his nose with trumpet-like vehemence on a great red bandana.

“The only return asked of you is that you vacate the country for the next two years,” he said heavily.  And in that rejoinder “Lord” Bill understood the man’s guile.

It was a sudden awakening, but it came to him as no sort of surprise.  He had long suspected, although he had never given serious credence to his suspicions, the object the money-lender had in inveigling both himself and “Poker” John into their present difficulties.  Now he understood, and a burning desire swept over him to shoot the man down where he sat.  Then a revulsion of feeling came to him and he saw the ludicrous side of the situation.  He gazed at Lablache, that obese mountain of blubber, and tried to think of the beautiful, wild Jacky as the money-lender’s wife.  The thing seemed so preposterous that he burst out into a mocking laugh.

Lablache, whose fishy eyes had never left the rancher’s face, heard the tone and slowly flushed with anger.  For an instant he seemed about to rise, then instead he leant forward.

“Well?” he asked, breathing his monosyllabic inquiry hissing upon the air.

Bill emitted a thin cloud of smoke into the money-lender’s face.  His eyes had suddenly become wide open and blazing with anger.  He pointed to the door.

“I’ll see you damned first!  Now—­git!”

At the door Lablache turned.  In his face was written all the fury of hell.

“Mancha’s debt is transferred to me.  You will settle it without delay.”

He had scarcely uttered the last word when there was a loud report, and simultaneously the crash of a bullet in the casing of the door.  Lablache accepted his dismissal with precipitation and hastened to where his horses were stationed, to the accompaniment of “Lord” Bill’s mocking laugh.  He had no wish to test the rancher’s marksmanship further.

CHAPTER XII

LABLACHE FORCES THE FIGHT

A month—­just one month and the early spring has developed with almost tropical suddenness into a golden summer.  The rapid passing of seasons, the abrupt break, the lightning change from one into another, is one of the many beauties of the climate of that fair land where there are no half measures in Nature’s mode of dealing out from her varied store of moods.  Spring chases Winter, hoary, bitter, cruel Winter, in the hours of one night; and in turn Spring’s delicate influence is overpowered with equal celerity by the more matured and unctuous ripeness of Summer.