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CHAPTER XIII
THE BARGAIN

But in spite of the dinner bell, Hervey made for the corrals instead of the house, roped and saddled the fastest pony in his string, jogged out to the eastern trail, and then sent his mount at a run into the evening haze. After a time he drew back to a more moderate gait, but still the narrow firs shot smoothly and swiftly past him for well over half an hour until the twilight settled into darkness and the treetops moved past the horseman against a sky alive with the brighter stars of the mountains. He reached the hills. The trail tangled into zigzag lines, tossing up and down, dodging here and there. And in one of these elbow turns, a team of horses loomed huge and black above him, and against the stars behind the hilltop it seemed as though the team were stepping out into the thin air. Behind them, Lew Hervey made out the low body of the buckboard and on the seat a squat, bunched figure with head dropped so low that the sombrero seemed to rest flat on the shoulders.

Hervey raised his hand with a shout of relief: "Hey, Jordan!"

The brakes crashed home, but the impetus of the downgrade bore the wagon to the bottom of the little slope before it came to a stop and Hervey was choked by the cloud of dust. He fanned a clear path for his voice.

"It's me. Hervey." And he came close to the wagon.

"Well, Lew?" queried the uninterested voice of the master.

Hervey leaned a little from the saddle and peered anxiously at the "big boss." He counted on creating a panic with his news. But a man past hope might very well be a man past fear. Hopeless Oliver Jordan certainly had been since his accident, hopeless and blind. That blindness had enabled Hervey to reap tidy sums out of his management of the ranch, and now that the coming of the sharp-eyed girl had cut off his sources of revenue he was ready to fight hard to put himself back in the saddle as unquestioned master of the Valley of the Eagles. But he could only work on Jordan through fear and what capacity for that emotion remained in the rancher. He struck at once.

"Jordan, have you got a gun with you?"

"Gun? Nope. What do I need a gun for?"

"Take this, then. It's my old gat. You know it pretty near as well as I do."

A nerveless hand accepted the heavy weapon and allowed it to sink idly upon his knee.

"How come?" drawled Jordan, and the heart of Lew Hervey sank. This was certainly not the voice of a man liable to panic.

"You and me got a bad time coming, Jordan, when we get to the ranch. He's there, and he's a devil for a fight!"

"Who?"

"Him! You remember that fight you got into in that saloon up in Wyoming? That night you and me was at the cross-roads saloon and you got off your feed with red-eye?"

The figure on the seat of the buckboard grew taller.

"Do I remember? Aye, and I'll never forget! The one downright bad thing I've ever done, Hervey. It was the infernal red-eye that made me a crazy man. You should of let me go back and see how bad he was hurt, Lew!"

"Nope. I was right. Best thing a gent can do after he's dropped his man is to climb a hoss and feed it leather."

"He didn't have a gun," groaned Jordan heavily. "But I forgot it. The red-eye got to working on me. I was losing. It was the one rotten yaller thing I ever done, Lew!"

"I know. And now he's here. He's Red Perris!"

"Red Perris!" breathed Oliver Jordan. "The man Marianne sent for? Why— why it's like fate, her bringing him right to the ranch!"

Hervey was discreetly silent.

"But," cried Jordan suddenly, and there was a ghost of the old ring in his voice, "I dropped him once by a crooked play and now I'll drop him fair and square, if he's here looking for trouble! I don't want your help, Lew. Mighty fine of you to offer it, but I ain't plumb forgot how to shoot. I don't want help!"

Hervey waited a moment for that heat of defiance to die away. Then he said with the quiet of certainty: "No use, Jordan. No use at all. Shorty seen this gent do some shooting on the way up to the ranch. He pulled on a squirrel that dodged across the trail. First slug knocked dust into the squirrel's belly-fur and the second chipped off his tail. Both of them slugs would have landed dead-center in a target as big as the body of a man!"

He paused again. He could hear the heavy breathing of Oliver Jordan and the figure of the driver swayed a little back and forth in the seat as a man will do when his mind is swinging from one alternative to another.

"He done that shooting from the hip," added Hervey, as though by afterthought.

There was a gasp from Jordan.

"Good God, Lew! You don't mean that!"

"That's what he done the shooting for—to show Shorty how to get off a quick shot. Shorty says he got his gun out and fired inside the time it'd take a common gun-man to wink twice. And that's why you and me have got to face him together, chief. You know I ain't particular yaller. But I'd as soon tackle a machine gun with a pea-shooter as run into this Perris all by myself. He's bad medicine, chief!"

"Two to one. That'd be worse'n murder, Lew. Neither you nor me could ever hold up a head around these parts again if the two of us jumped one gent."

"I know it," said Hervey solemnly. "But it's better to be shamed than to be dead. That's the way I figure. And I ain't so sure that both of us together could win out."

There was another interval of silence, far more important than many words. Through the hush Hervey, with a beating heart, strove to peer into the mind of the rancher.

"I'll go back and face him all by myself," said Jordan huskily. "I'll let him rub out that old score. If he finishes me—well, what good am I in the world, anyway? No good, Lew. I'm done for just as much as though somebody had plugged me with a gat. Let Perris finish the job." He added hastily: "But these five years have changed me a lot. Maybe he won't know me."

"You ain't changed that much, Jordan. Look at Howlands. He hadn't seen you for eight years. He knew you right off."

"Ay," growled Jordan. "That's true enough. But what makes you so sure that Perris is so hot after me. Ain't there been time enough for him to cool down?"

With the skill of a connoisseur, saving his choicest morsel for the end, Hervey had waited for the most favorable opportunity before striking home with his most convincing item.

"You remember you drilled him in the leg, chief?"

"I remember everything. The whole damned affair has never been out of my head for a whole day. I've gone over every detail of it a thousand times, Lew!"

"So has Perris," answered Lew Hervey solemnly. "That slug of yours—when the doctor cut it out of his leg he had it fixed up and now he wears it for a fob so's he won't forget the gent that shot him down that night when he wasn't armed!"

"Most like that's why he's practiced so much with a gun," muttered Jordan. "He's been getting ready for me."

"Most like," said the gloomy Hervey, but his voice well-nigh trembled with gratification.

The head of Jordan bowed again, but this time, as Hervey shrewdly guessed, it was in thought, not in despair.

"Why," chuckled Jordan at last, "what we wasting all this fool time about? You just slip back to the ranch and fire Perris."

In the favoring dark, Hervey threw back his head and made a grimace of joy. Exactly as he had prefigured, this talk was going. Every card was being played into his hand as though his wishes were subconsciously entering and ruling the mind of the chief.

"I can't do it," he answered firmly.

"You can't? Ain't you foreman?"

"No," said Hervey, and a trace of bitterness came into his voice. "I used to be. But you know as well as me that I'm only a straw boss now. Miss Marianne is running things, big and small. Besides, she picked up Perris. And she won't let him go easy, I tell you!"

"What do you mean by that, Hervey?"

"I seen her face when she met him. I was standing outside the bunkhouse. And she sure was tolerable pleased to see him."

A tremendous oath burst from Jordan.

"You mean she's sweet on this—this Perris?" But he added: "Why should that rile me? Maybe he's all right."

"He's one of them flashy dressers," said Lew Hervey. "Silk shirts and swell bandannas and he wears shopmade boots and keep 'em all shined up. Besides, it's dead easy for him to talk to a girl. He's the kind that get on with 'em pretty well."

The innuendo brought a huge roar from Oliver Jordan.

"By God, Lew, d'you think that's what it means? I thought she talked pretty strong about this Perris!"

"Maybe I've said too much," said Hervey.

"Not a word too much," said Jordan heartily, and reaching through the night he found the hand of Hervey and wrung it heartily. "I know how square you are, Lew. I know how you've stood by me. I'd stake my last dollar on you!"

Hervey blessed again the mercy of the darkness which concealed the crimson that spread hotly over his face. There was enough truth in what the rancher said to make the untruths the more painful. Before the accident Hervey had, indeed, been all that anyone could ask in a manager. But when too much authority came into his hands owing to the crippling of his chief, the temptation proved too strong for resistance. It was all so easy. A few score of cows run off here and there were never noted, and his share in the profit was fifty-fifty. Indeed, as the hand of Jordan crushed over his own he came perilously near to making a clean breast of everything, but the memory of his fat and growing bank-account gagged the confession.

"If that's the way things are standing," Jordan was saying, "we got to get rid of this skunk Perris. Good-looking, as I remember him, and Marianne is so darned lonely on the ranch that she might begin to take him serious and—Hervey, I'll give you a written note. That'll be authority. I'll give you a note to Marianne, telling her that I've got to go across the mountains and that I want you to have the running of the place till I get back. I guess that'll give you a free hand, Lew! You fire that Perris, and when he's gone, send me word over to the hotel in Lawrence. That's where I'll go."

Hervey appeared dubious with great skill.

"I'll take the note, Jordan," he said, putting all the despair he could summon into his tone. "But it sure goes hard—the idea of losing my place up here. I've been in the Valley so long, you see, that it's like a home to me."

"And who the devil said anything about you leaving? Ain't I just now about to give you a note to run the ranch while I'm gone?"

"Sure you are. And I'll take it—and fire Perris. But when you come back—that's the end of me!"

"What?"

"You know how your daughter is. She'll plumb hate me when I come back with orders to run things. She'll think I asked for 'em."

"I'll tell her different."

"Were you ever able to convince her, once she made up her mind?"

"H-m-m," growled Jordan.

"And she'll never rest till things are so hot for me that I got to get out. Not that I grudge it, Jordan. I'd give up more than this job for your sake. Only it sure makes me homesick to think about starting out at my time of life and riding herd for a strange outfit."

"You ride for another outfit?" said Jordan. "And after you've worked this game on Perris for me? I'll tell you what, Lew, if you get Perris safe off the ranch you can stop worrying. You're foreman for life! You have my word for it."

"But suppose—" protested Hervey faintly.

"Suppose nothing. You have my word. Besides, I'm tired of talking!"

With well-acted diffidence, Lew held out the paper, which Oliver Jordan snatched and smoothed on his knee. Then Hervey rode closer, lighted a match, and held it so that the rancher could see to write.

"Dear Marianne," scrawled the pencil, "this is to let you know that I have to go on business to—"

"Better not tell her where," suggested Hervey. "She might send after and ask a lot of bothersome questions. You know the way a woman is."

"You sure got a fine head for business, Lew," nodded Jordan, and continued his note: "to a town across the mountains and it may be a few days before I get back. I met Lew on the road, so I'm letting him take this note back to you Another thing: I've told Lew about several things I want done while I'm gone. Easier than explaining them all to you, honey, he can do them himself and tell you later.

Affectionately,"

As he scrawled the signature Hervey suggested softly: "Suppose you put down at the bottom: 'This will serve as authority to Lew Hervey to act in my name while I'm away.'"

"Sure," nodded Jordan, as he scribbled the dictated words. "Marianne is a stickler for form. She'll want something like that to convince her."

He shoved the paper into the trembling hand of Lew Hervey, and sighed with weariness.

"Chief," muttered Hervey, finding that even in the darkness he could not look into the tired, pain-worn face of the rancher, "I sure hope you never have no call to be sorry for this."

"Sorry? I ain't bothering about that. So long, Lew."

But Lew Hervey had suddenly lost his voice. He could only wave his adieu.

CHAPTER XIV
STRATEGY

Never had Red Perris passed a night of such pleasant dreams. For never, indeed, had he been so exquisitely flattered as during the preceding evening when Marianne Jordan kept him after dinner in the ranchhouse while the other hired men, as was their custom, loitered to smoke their after-dinner cigarettes in the moist coolness of the patio. For the building was on the Spanish-Mexican style. The walls were heavy enough to defy the most biting cold of winter and the most searching sun in summer. And they marched in a wide circle around an interior court which was bordered with a clumsy arcade of 'dobe pillars. By daylight the defects in construction were rather too apparent. But at night the effect was imposing, almost grand.

But while the cowhands smoked in the patio, the noise of their laughter and their heavy voices penetrated no louder than the dim humming of bees to the ear of Red Jim Perris, sitting tête-à-tête with Marianne in an inner room. And he did not envy the sprawling freedom of those outside.

Pretty girls had come his way now and again during his wanderings north and south and east and west through the mountain deserts. But never before had he seen one in such a background. She had had the good taste to make the inside of the house well-nigh as Spanish as its exterior. There were cool, dim spaces in the big rooms; and here and there were bright spots of color. Her very costume for the evening showed the same discrimination. She wore drab riding clothes. But from her own garden she had chosen a scentless blossom of a kind which Red Perris had never seen before. The absent charm of perfume was turned into a deeper coloring, a crimson intense as fire in the darkness of her hair. That one touch of color, and no more, but it gave wonderful warmth to her eyes and to her smile.

And indeed she was not sparing in her smiles. Red Jim Perris pleased her, and she was not afraid to show it. To be sure, she talked of the business before them, but she talked of it only in scattered phrases. Other topics drew her away. A score of little side-issues carried her away. And Jim Perris was glad of the diversions.

For the only thing which he disliked in her, the only thing which repelled him time and again, was this eagerness of hers to have the chestnut stallion killed. She spoke of Alcatraz with a consuming hatred. And Perris was a little horrified. He knew that Alcatraz had stolen away the six mares, and Marianne explained briefly and eloquently how much the return of those mares meant to her self-respect and to the financial soundness of the ranch. But this, after all, was a small excuse for an ugly passion. If he could have known that with her own eyes she had seen the chestnut crush Cordova to shapelessness and almost to death, the mystery might have been cleared. But Marianne could not refer to that terrible memory. All she could say was that Alcatraz must be killed—at once! And she said it with her eyes on fire with detestation.

Indeed, that touch of angry passion in her was the flower of Hermes to Red Jim, keeping him from complete infatuation when she sang to him, playing her own lightly-touched accompaniment at the piano. He had never been entertained like this before. And when a girl sang a love ballad and at the same time looked at him with eyes at once serious and laughing, he had to set his teeth and shake himself to keep from taking the words of the poet too literally. Perhaps Marianne was going a little farther than she intended. But after all, every good woman has a tremendous desire to make men happy, and handsome Jim Perris with his straight, steady eyes and his free laughter was such a pleasant fellow to work with that Marianne quite forgot moderation.

And before the evening was over, Jim had come within a hair's breadth of plunging over the cliff and confessing his admiration in terms so outright that Marianne would have closed up her charming gaiety as a flower closes up its beauty and fragrance at the first warning chill of night. A dozen times Red Perris came to this alarming point, but he was always saved by remembering that this delightful girl had brought him here for the purpose of—killing a horse. And that memory chilled Jim to the very core of his manly heart.

Of course he knew that wild-running stallions who steal saddle stock must be cleared from a range, and by shooting if necessary. He would have received such an order from a man and never thought the less of him, but the command was too stern for the smiling lips of Marianne. To be sure, Perris was by no means a gentle rider. In fact, he rode so very hard that only fine horses could measure up to his demands, and who, since the world began, has ridden many fine horses without coming to love the entire race? Red Perris, at least, was such a man, and indeed he spent many an hour dreaming of some happy day when he should find beneath him a mount with speed like an eagle, soul of a lion, and the gentle, trusting heart of a child.

Finally, the evening ended. He left the house and the puzzled smile of Marianne behind him and went to the bunkhouse and a sleep of happy dreams. But every dream ended with the thought of a wild chestnut running into the circle of his rifle's sights, leaping into the air at the report of his gun, and dropping inert on the grass. What wonder, then, that when he wakened he thought of Marianne Jordan with mixed emotions? Perhaps the really important point was that he thought of her so much, whether for good or evil.

He went in with the other men to breakfast in the long dining-room of the ranch house, and there was Marianne Jordan again presiding at the head of the table. But half of the glamour of the evening before was gone from her and she kept her eyes seriously lowered, frowning. In fact, she had much to think about, for late the preceding evening Lew Hervey had come to her and showed her the first note that her father had written. She was not alarmed by this sudden trip over the mountains. There had been so many vagaries in the actions of Oliver Jordan in the past few months that this unannounced drive to an undetermined destination was not particularly surprising. It was only the delegation of such authority to Hervey that astonished her.

She forgot even Red Jim Perris and the lost Coles horses in her abstraction, for whenever she looked down the table she saw nothing saving the erect, burly form of the foreman, swelling, so it seemed to her, with a newly acquired and aggressive importance. However, he had the written word of her father, and she had to set her teeth over her irritation and digest it as well as she could.

Hervey had presented reasonable excuses, to be sure. There was certain work of fence-repairing, certain construction of sheds which he had called to the attention of Oliver Jordan and which Jordan had commissioned him to overlook during his absence.

"I told him they wasn't any use in writing out a note like this one," Hervey had assured her, "but you know how the chief is, these days. Sort of set in his ways when he makes up his mind about anything."

And this was so entirely true that she was half-inclined to dismiss the whole matter from her mind. Oliver Jordan paid so little heed to the running of the ranch and when he did make a suggestion he was so peremptory about it, that this commission to Hervey was not altogether astonishing. Nevertheless, it kept her absent-minded throughout breakfast.

Red Perris was naturally somewhat offended by the blankness of her eye as she passed him over. She had been so extremely intimate and cordial the night before that this neglect was almost an insult. Perhaps she had only been playing a game—trying to amuse herself during a dull hour instead of truly wishing to please him. He grew childishly sulky at the thought. After all, there was a good deal of the spoiled child about Red Jim. He had had his way in the world so much that opposition or neglect threw him into a temper.

And he stamped out of the dining-room ahead of the rest of the men, his head down, his brows black. Lew Hervey, following with the other men, had noted everything. It behooved him to be on the watch during the time of trial and triumph and at breakfast he had observed Red Perris looking at the girl a dozen times with an anticipatory smile which changed straightway to glumness when her glance passed him carelessly by. And now Hervey communicated his opinions to the others on the way to the bunkhouse to get their things for the day's riding.

"Our new friend, the gun-fighter," he said, pointedly emphasizing the last phrase, "ain't none too happy this morning. Marianne give him a smile last night and he was waiting for another this morning. He sure looks cut up, eh?"

The bowed head and rounded shoulders of Red Perris brought a chuckle from the cowpunchers. They were not at all kindly disposed towards him. Too much reputation is a bad thing for a man to have on his hands in the West. He is apt to be expected to live up to it every moment of his waking hours. Not a man in the Valley of the Eagles outfit but was waiting to see the newcomer make the first move towards bullying one of them. And such a move they were prepared to resent en masse. That Marianne might have made a good deal of a fool out of Perris, as Hervey suggested, pleased them immensely.

"Maybe the ranch suits him pretty well," suggested Slim, ironically. "Maybe he figures it might be worth his while to pick it up by marrying the old man's girl. Eh, Lew?"

Lew Hervey shrugged his shoulders. He did not wish to directly accuse the gun-fighter of anything, for talk is easily traced to its source and the account of Shorty had filled the foreman with immense respect for the fighting qualities of Red Perris. However, he was equally determined to rouse a hostile sentiment towards him among the cowhands.

"Well," said Lew, "you can't blame a gent for playing for high stakes if he's going to gamble at all. I guess Red Perris is all right. A kid like him can't help being a little proud of himself."

"Damn fat-head," growled Slim, less merciful, "sat right next to me and didn't say two words all through breakfast. Ain't going to waste no words on common cowpunchers, maybe."

So the first impression of Red Jim was created on the ranch, an impression which might be dispelled by the first real test of the man, or which in the absence of such a test might cling to him forever: Perris was a conceited gun-fighter, heart-breaker, and bully. The men who trooped into the bunkhouse behind him already hated him with a religious intensity; in ten minutes, they might have accepted him as a bunkie! For your true Western cowpuncher, when all is said and done, unites with Spartan stoicism a Spartan keenness of suspicion.

It was not hard for the foreman to see the trend of events. Something had roused an ugly mood in Perris. It might be, as he surmised, the girl. No matter what, he was obviously not in a mood to bear tampering with. Hervey determined to force the issue at once, knowing that his other men would be a solid unit behind him.

"Hey there, Red!" he called, cheerily enough, but brusquely, and then, bending over to fuss at a spur, he winked broadly at the other men. They were instantly keen for the baiting of Perris, whatever form it might take.

"Well?" said Red Perris.

"Trot over to the corral and rope that Roman-nosed buckskin with the white stockings on her forelegs, will you? I got a few things to tend to in here."

Now there was nothing entirely unheard of in a foreman ordering one of his men to catch a saddle horse for him. But usually such things were done by request rather than demand, and moreover, there was something so breezy in the manner of Hervey, taking the compliance of Red so for granted, that the latter raised his head slowly and turned to the foreman with a gloomy eye. He had come to the ranch to hunt a wild horse, not to play valet to a foreman.

"Partner," drawled Red Perris, and the silken smoothness of his tones was ample proof that he was enraged. "I don't know the ways you folks have up here, but around the parts where I've been, a gent that's big enough to ride is big enough to saddle his own hoss."

The reply of Lew Hervey was just sharp enough to goad the newcomer—just soft enough to stay on the windward side of an insult.

"I'll tell you," he said quietly. "Around the Valley of the Eagles, the boys do what the foreman asks 'em to do, most generally. And the foreman don't play favorites. I'm waiting for that hoss, Perris."

Perris rolled a cigarette, and smiled as he looked at Hervey. It was a sickly smile, his lips being white and stiff. And in another, it might have been considered a sign of fear. In Red Perris everyone there knew it was simply the badge of a rising fury. They knew, by the same token, that he was as dangerous as he had been advertised. Men whom anger reddens are blinded by it; but those who turn pale never stop thinking. Meantime, Red Jim looked at Hervey and looked at the cowpunchers behind Hervey. It was not hard to see that in a pinch they would be solid behind their foreman. They watched him with a wolfish eagerness. Why they should be so instantly hostile he could not guess but he was enough of a traveller to be prepared for strange customs in strange places. There was only one important point: he would not saddle the buckskin. Moreover, at sight of their solid front and their aggressive sneers he grew fighting hot.

"How gents come in these parts," he said with deliberate scorn, "I dunno. And I don't care a damn. If they brush their foreman's boots and saddle his hosses for him, they can go ahead and do it. But I come up here to catch a wild hoss that the gents in the Valley of the Eagles couldn't get. That's my job, and nothing else."

The growl of his cowpunchers was sweetest music to the ear of Lew Hervey. He glanced at them as much as to say: "You see what I got on my hands?" Then he stepped forward and cleared his throat.

"You're young, kid," he declared. "When you grow up you'll know better'n to talk like this. But cowpunchers we ain't going to make no trouble for you. But I'll tell you short, Perris, you'll go out and rope that hoss or else roll your blankets and clear out. Understand? I was joking when I asked you to rope the hoss first. I wanted to see what sort were. Well, I see, and I don't like what I see."

"Hervey," began Perris, trembling with his passion "Hervey—"

"Wait a minute," said the foreman, "I know your kind. You sign your name with bullets. You pay your way with lead. You bully a crowd by fingering a gun-butt. Well, son, that sort of thing don't go in the Valley of the Eagles. Lay a hand on that gun and I'll have the boys tie you in knots and roll you in a barrel of tar we got handy. Perris, get that hoss for me, or get out!"

Red Perris sat down on the edge of his bunk. He made no move towards his revolver. Indeed, it lay almost arm's length away. Almost—everyone noted that. He crossed his legs and his glance wandered slowly up and down the line of grim faces.

"Partner," he said softly to Hervey, "I'm not going to get the hoss and I'm not going to get out. The next move is up to you. Is it tar?"

For a moment Hervey was dazed. No one could have foreseen such daredeviltry as this. At the same time, he was badly cornered. If his men rushed Red Perris, Red Perris would get his gun. And if Red Perris got his gun the first shot would be for Hervey.

"Hold on, boys," he called suddenly, above the angry curses of his men, "I'm not going to risk one of you in getting this fool. Miss Jordan hired him. She can fire him if I can't. Which we'll find out pronto. Slim, go get her, will you?"

Slim jumped through the door. They heard his footsteps fade away at a run. And then, after an interval of steady silence, his voice began in the distance, replying to sharp, hurried inquiries of Marianne. In another moment Marianne was in the bunkhouse. Her glance shot from Hervey to Perris and back again.

"I knew you'd be up to something like this!" she cried. "I knew it, Lew Hervey!"

Hervey made a gesture of surrender.

"Ask the boys," he pleaded. "Ask them if I didn't try to go easy with him. But he's all teeth. He wants to bite. And we ain't going to put up with that sort of a gent here, I guess! I've ordered him off the ranch. Does that go with you?"

"Oh, Jim Perris," cried the girl. "Why have you let this happen!"

"I'm sure sorry," said Perris. He disdained further explanation.

"But," said Marianne, "I've got to have that terrible stallion killed. And who can do it but Jim Perris, Mr. Hervey?"

"Gimme time," said Lew, "and I'll do it."

She stamped her foot in anger.

"How you wheedled the authority out of my father, I don't know," she said. "But you have it and you can discharge him if you want. But he'll hear another side to this when he returns, Mr. Hervey, I promise you that!" She whirled on Red Jim. "Mr. Perris, if Mr. Hervey allows you to stay, will you remain for—a week, say, and try to get rid of Alcatraz for me? Mr. Hervey, will you let me have Mr. Perris for one week?"