Man in the Saddle. Ernest Haycox

      "I only said," repeated Isham evenly, "to be careful."

      Dutcher put down the glass. "I never thought much of Owen Merritt and never will."

      "Why?"

      Dutcher shook his shoulders together. There was weight to them, a latent crushing power. His broad hands moved idly before him. He spoke with a remembering darkness. "The man's a little too brash. Well, I'll be going."

      He went into the yard, changed his saddle to a fresh horse, and swung aboard. But instead of immediately lining out for the hills he came back to the front of the big house and stopped there, and laid his hands on the horn, watching Isham through a window. He saw Isham march up and down the room, and turn and settle into a. chair. Thereafter Dutcher raised his glance to the house's second floor, to the window of Sally Isham's room. He hated this woman with a sultry, secret thoroughness; he hated her for her intrusion, for the extra problem she created. Loyal to Skull, he felt she was a trespasser, and he knew at once, from the one brief glance she had given him during the night, that she distrusted him. But there was more to his resentment than that; there was a reason deeper and more personal for his instant antagonism. She was on Skull now; she was one of Skull's owners and its inheritor if Isham died. He thought of that quite carefully, his heavy mind weighing the fact against his own inner ambitions. Isham, he told himself, was a fool in this regard.

      The light in Sally's room died, whereupon Dutcher wheeled away from the yard and turned to the hills.

      Isham meanwhile listened to the delayed run of Dutcher's horse. He lighted his cigar and settled into a chair. There was no sound in the house. Chill came into it and daylight, long after, grayly stained the windows and his cigar burned out. But he continued to sit before the fireplace, small and half rigid, and he kept thinking of Owen Merritt because his mind would not leave the big man alone.