"It's up to him?" he echoed. "Then I might of spared myself all of
this talk."
It would all be over in a moment. The foreman would utter the refusal.
Red Perris would be in his saddle and bound towards the mountains.
And that thought gave Marianne sudden insight into the fact that the
Valley of the Eagles would be a drear, lonely place without Red Jim.
"You don't know Mr. Hervey," she broke in before the foreman could
speak for himself. "He'll bear no malice to you. He's forgotten that
squabble over--"
"Sure I have," said Lew Hervey. "I've forgotten ten all about it.
But the way I figure, Miss Jordan, is that Perris is like a chunk of
dynamite on the ranch. Any day one of the boys may run into him and
there'll be a killing. They're red-hot against him. They might start
for him in a gang one of these days, for all I know. For his own sake,
Perris had better leave the Valley."
He had advanced his argument cunningly enough and by the way
Marianne's eyes grew large and her color changed, he knew that he had
made his point.
"Would they do that?" she gasped. "Have we such men?"
"I dunno," said Lew. "He sure rode 'em hard that morning."
"Then go," cried Marianne, turning eagerly to Red Jim.
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