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“Did it?” said Selwood. “It was.”

The trader was as good as his word.

With the last syllable his fist shot out and took the speaker in the jaw, a clean stroke, timed a half-second sooner than the other had expected, though he had expected it. It snapped his head back on his shoulders, but did not make him stagger, and the next moment he had met McKane half-way with all the force of his two hundred pounds of bone and muscle.

In the midst of the whirlwind fight that followed, Kate Cathrew, having pulled on her gloves and coolly tied her sack in place on her saddle, mounted Bluefire and rode away without a backward look.

Twenty minutes later the Sheriff picked up the trader and rolled him up on the porch. He stood panting himself, one hand on the worn planking, the other wiping the blood and dirt from his face.

“Get some water, boys,” he said quietly, “and when he comes around tell him I’ll be back tomorrow for my coffee and tobacco—five pounds of each—and anything more he wants to give me.”