The woman made a few strides. Now she was looking shrewdly, close into Sheila's face.

"You're a biscuit-shooter at the hotel?"

"No. I work in the saloon."

"In the saloon? Oh, sure. Barmaid. I've heard of you."

Here she put a square finger-tip under Sheila's chin and looked even closer than before. "Not happy, are you?" she said. She moved away abruptly. "Tired of town life. Been crying. Well, when you want to pull out, come over to my ranch. I need a girl. I'm kind of lonesome winters. It's a pretty place if you aren't looking for street-lamps and talking-machines. You don't hear much more than coyotes and the river and the pines and, if you're looking for high lights, you can sure see the stars ..."

She climbed up to her seat, using the hub of her wheel for a foothold, and springing with surprising agility and strength.

Sheila stepped aside and the horse started instantly. She made a few hurried steps to keep up.

"Thank you," she said, looking up into the ruddy eyes that looked down. "I'll remember that. What is your name?"

"Christina Blake, Miss Blake. I'll make The Hill before morning if I'm lucky. Less dust and heat by night and the horse has loafed since morning.... I mean that about coming to my place. Any time. Good-bye to you."

She smiled a smile as casual in its own way as Sheila's own. Berg, under the wagon, trotted silently. He looked neither to right nor left. His wild, deep-set eyes were fastened on the heels of the small horse. He looked as though he were trotting relentlessly toward some wolfish goal of satisfied hunger. A little cloud of dust rose up from the wheels and stood between Sheila and the wagon. She conquered an impulse to run after it, shut her hand tight, and walked in at the back door of the saloon.

A teamster, with a lean, fatherly face, his mouth veiled by a shaggy blond mustache, his eyes as blue as larkspur, smiled at her across the bar.

"Hullo," said he. "How's your pony?"

Sheila had struck up one of her sudden friendships with this man, who visited the saloon at regular intervals. This question warmed her heart. The little pony of Jim's giving was dear. She thought of his soft eyes and snuggling nose almost as often and as fondly as a lover thinks of the face of his lady.

"Tuck's splendid, Mr. Thatcher," she said, leaning her elbows on the bar and cupping her chin in her hands. Her face was bright with its tender, Puckish look. "He's too cute. He can take sugar out of my apron pocket. And he'll shake hands. I'd just love you to see him. Will you be here to-morrow afternoon?"

"No, ma'am. I'm pullin' out about sunup. Round the time you tumble into bed. Got to make The Hill."

"How's your baby?"

A shining smile rewarded her interest in the recent invalid. "Fine and dandy. You ought to see her walk!"

"Isn't that splendid! And how's the little boy? Is he with you?"

"No, ma'am. I kind o' left him to mind the ranch. He's gettin' to be a real rancher, that boy. He was sure sorry not to make Hidden Creek this trip, though. Say, he was set on seein' you. I told him about you."

Sheila's face flamed and her eyes smarted. Gratitude and shame possessed her. This man, then, did not speak of her as "Hudson's Queen"—not if he told his boy about her. She turned away to hide the flame and smart. When she looked back, Sylvester himself stood at Thatcher's elbow. He very rarely came into the saloon. At sight of him Sheila's heart leaped as though it had been struck.

"Say, Sheila," he murmured, "I'm celebratin' to-night."

She tried to dismiss from her mind its new and ugly consciousness. She tried to smile. The result was an expression strange enough.

Sylvester, however, missed it. He was dressed in one of the brown checked suits, a new one, freshly creased; there was a red wild-rose bud in his buttonhole. The emerald gleamed on his well-kept, sallow hand. He was sipping from his glass and had put a confidential hand on Thatcher's shoulder. He grinned at Carthy.

"Well, sir," he said, "nobody has in-quired as to my celebration. But I'm not proud. I'll tell you. I'm celebratin' to-night the winnin' of a bet."

"That's sure a deservin' cause," said Thatcher.

"Yes, sir. Had a bet with Carthy here. Look at him blush! Carthy sure-ly hates to be wrong. And he's mostly right in his prog-nos-ti-cations. He sure is. You bet yer. That's why I'm so festive."

"What'd he prognosticate?" asked Thatcher obligingly. He had moved his shoulder away from Hudson's hand.

Sylvester wrinkled his upper lip into its smile and looked down into his glass. He turned his emerald.

"Carthy prophesied that about this time a little—er—dream—of mine would go bust," said Hudson. He lifted up his eyes pensively to Sheila, first his eyes and then his glass. "Here's to my dream—you, girl," he said softly.

He drank with his eyes upon her face, drew a deep breath, and looked about the room.

Thatcher glanced from him to Sheila. "Goodnight to you, ma'am," he said with gentleness. "Next time I'll bring the boy."

"Please, please do."

Sheila put her hand in his. He looked down at it as though something had startled him. In fact, her touch was like a flake of snow.

When Thatcher had gone, Sylvester leaned closer to her across the bar. He moved his glass around in his hand and looked up at her humbly.

"The tables kind of turned, eh?" he said.

"What do you mean, Mr. Hudson?" Sheila, by lifting her voice, tried to dissipate the atmosphere of confidence, of secrecy. Carthy had moved away from them, the other occupants of the saloon were very apparently not listening.

"Well, ma'am," Sylvester explained, "six months ago I was kind of layin' claim to gratitude from you, and now it's the other way round."

"Yes," she said. "But I am still grateful." The words came, however, with a certain unwillingness, a certain lack of spontaneity.

"Are you, though?" He put his head on one side so that Sheila was reminded of Dickie. For the first time a sort of shadowy resemblance between father and son was apparent to her. "Well, you've wiped the reckonin' off the slate by what you've done for me. You've given me my Aura. Say, you have been my fairy godmother, all right. Talk about wishes comin' true!"

Again he looked about the room, and that wistfulness of the visionary stole into his face. His eyes came back to her with an expression that was almost beautiful. "If only that Englishman was here," he sighed. "Yes ma'am. I'm sure celebratin' to-night!"

It was soon very apparent that he was celebrating. For an hour he stood every newcomer to a drink, and then he withdrew to a table in a shadowy corner, and sitting there, tilted against the wall, he sipped from his glass, smoked and dreamed. Hour after hour of the slow, noisy night went by and still he sat there, watching Sheila through the smoke, seeing in her, more and more glowingly, the body of his dream.

It was after dawn when Sheila touched Carthy's elbow. The big Irishman looked down at her small, drawn face.

"Mr. Carthy," she whispered, "would it be all right if I went home now? It's earlier than usual, but I'm so—awfully tired?"

There was so urgent an air of secrecy in her manner that Carthy muttered his permission out of the corner of his mouth. Sheila melted from his side.

The alley that had been silvery cool with dusk was now even more silvery cool with morning twilight. Small sunrise clouds were winging over it like golden doves. Sheila did not look at them. She ran breathless to her door, opened it, and found herself face to face with Dickie.



CHAPTER XIV

THE LIGHT OF DAWN

There was a light of dawn in the room and through the open window blew in the keen air of daybreak. Dickie was standing quite still in the middle of the floor. He was more neat and groomed than Sheila had ever seen him. He looked as though he had stepped from a bath; his hair was sleek and wet so that it was dark above the pure pallor of his face; his suit was carefully put on; his cuffs and collar were clean. He did not have the look of a man that has been awake all night, nor did he look as though he had ever been asleep. His face and eyes were alight, his lips firm and delicate with feeling.

Before him Sheila felt old and stained. The smoke and fumes of the bar hung about her. She was shamed by the fresh youthfulness of his slender, eager carriage and of his eyes.

"Dickie," she faltered, and stood against the door, drooping wearily, "what are you doing here at this hour?"

"What does the hour matter?" he asked impatiently. "Come over to the window. I want you to look at this big star. I've been watching it. It's almost gone. It's like a white bird flying straight into the sun."

He was imperative, laid his cool hand upon hers and drew her to the window. They stood facing the sunrise.

"Why did you come here?" again asked Sheila. The beauty of the sky only deepened her misery and shame.

"Because I couldn't wait any longer than one night. It's sure been an awful long night for me, Sheila ... Sheila—" He drew the hand he still held close to him with a trembling touch and laid his other hand over it. Then she felt the terrible beating of his heart, felt that he was shaking. "Sheila, I love you." She had hidden her face against the curtain, had turned from him. She felt nothing but weariness and shame. She was like a leaden weight tied coldly to his throbbing youth. Her hand under his was hot and lifeless like a scorched rose. "I want you to come away with me from Millings. You can't keep on a-working in that saloon. You can't a-bear to have folks saying and thinking the fool things they do. And I can't a-bear it even if you can. I'd go loco, and kill. Sheila, I've been thinking all night, just sitting on the edge of my bed and thinking. Sheila, if you will marry me, I will promise you to take care of you. I won't let you suffer any. I will die"—his voice rocked on the word, spoken with an awful sincerity of young love—"before I let you suffer any. If you could love me a little bit"—he stopped as though that leaping heart had sprung up into his throat—"only a little bit, Sheila," he whispered, "maybe—?"

"I can't," she said. "I can't love you that way even a little bit. I can't marry you, Dickie. I wish I could. I am so tired."

She drew her hand away, or rather it fell from the slackening grasp of his, and hung at her side. She looked up from the curtain to his face. It was still alight and tender and pale.

"You're real sure, Sheila, that you never could?—that you'd rather go on with this—?"

She pressed all the curves and the color out of her lips, still looking at him, and nodded her head.

"I can't stay in Millings," Dickie said, "and work in Poppa's hotel and watch this, Sheila—unless, some way, I can help you."

"Then you'd better go," she said lifelessly, "because I can't see what else there is for me to do. Oh, I shan't go on with it for very long, of course—"

He came an eager half-step nearer. "Then, anyway, you'll let me go away and work, and when I've kind of got a start, you'll let me come back and—and see if—if you feel any sort of—different from what you do now? It wouldn't be so awful long. I'd work like—like Hell!" His thin hand shot into a fist.

Sheila's lassitude was startled by his word into a faint, unwilling smile.

"Don't laugh at me!" he cried out.

"Oh, Dickie, my dear, I'm not laughing. I'm so tired I can hardly stand. And truly you must go now. I'm horrid to you. I always am. And yet I do like you so much. And you are such a dear. And I feel there's something great about you. I should be glad for you to leave Millings. There is a much better chance for you away from Millings. I feel years old to-day. I think I've grown up too old all at once and missed lovely things that I ought to have had. Dickie"—she gave a dry sort of sob—"you are one of the lovely things."

His arms drew gently round her. "Let me kiss you, Sheila," he pleaded with tremulous lips. "I want just to kiss you once for good-bye. I'll be so careful. If you knowed how I feel, you'd let me."

She lifted up her mouth like an obedient child. Then, back of Dickie, she saw Sylvester's face.

It was more sallow than usual; its upper lip was drawn away from the teeth and deeply wrinkled; the eyes, half-closed, were very soft; they looked as though there was a veil across their pensiveness. He caught Dickie's elbow in his hand, twisted him about, thrusting a knee into his back, and with his other long, bony hand he struck him brutally across the face. The emerald on his finger caught the light of the rising sun and flashed like a little stream of green fire.

Dickie, caught unawares by superior strength, was utterly defenseless. He writhed and struggled vainly, gasping under the blows. Sylvester forced him across the room, still inflicting punishment. His hand made a great cracking sound at every slap.

Sheila hid her face from the dreadful sight. "Oh, don't, don't, don't!" she wailed again and again.

Then it was over. Dickie was flung out; the door was locked against him and Sylvester came back across the floor.

His collar stood up in a half-moon back of his ears, his hair fell across his forehead, his face was flushed, his lip bled. He had either bitten it himself or Dickie had struck it. But he seemed quite calm, only a little breathless. He was neither snarling nor smiling now. He took Sheila very gently by the wrists, drawing her hands down from her face, and he put her arms at their full length behind her, holding them there.

"You meet Dickie here when you're through work, dream-girl," he said gently. "You kiss Dickie when you leave my Aura, you little beacon light. I've kept my hands off you and my lips off you and my mind off you, because I thought you were too fine and good for anything but my ideal. And all this while you've been sneaking up here to Dickie and Jim and Lord knows who else besides. Now, I am agoin' to kiss you and then you gotta get out of Millings. Do you hear? After I've kissed you, you ain't good enough for my purpose—not for mine."

Gathering both her hands in one of his, he put the hard, long fingers of his free hand back of her head, holding it from wincing or turning and his mouth dropped upon hers and seemed to smother out her life. She tasted whiskey and the blood from his cut lips.

"You won't tell me, anyway, that lie again," he panted, keeping his face close, staring into her wide eyes of a horrified childishness—"that you've never been kissed."

Again his lips fastened on her mouth. He let her go, strode to the door, unlocked it, and went out.

She had fallen to the floor, her head against the chair. She beat the chair with her hands, calling softly for her father and for her God. She reproached them both. "You told me it was a good old world," she sobbed. "You told me it was a good old world."



CHAPTER XV

FLAMES

A hot, dry day followed on the cool dawn. In his room Dickie lay across his bed. The sun blazed in at his single long window; the big flies that had risen from the dirty yard buzzed and bumped against the upper pane and made aimless, endless, mazy circles above and below one another in the stifling, odorous atmosphere. Dickie lay there like an image of Icarus, an eternal symbol of defeated youth; one could almost see about his slenderness the trailing, shattered wings. He had wept out the first shock of his anger and his shame; now he lay in a despairing stupor. His bruised face burned and ached; his chest felt tight with the aching and burning of his heart. Any suspicion of his father's interpretation of his presence in Sheila's room was mercifully spared him, but the knowledge that he had been brutally jerked back from her pure and patient lips, had been ignominiously punished before her eyes and turned out like a whipped boy—this knowledge was a dreadful torture to his pride. Sheila, to be sure, did not love him even a little bit; she had said so. All the longing and the tumult of his heart during these months had made no more impression upon her than a frantic sea makes upon the little bird at the top of the cliff. She had, he must think, hardly been aware of it. And it was such a terrible and frantic actuality. He had fancied that it must have beaten forever, day by day, night by night, at her consciousness. Can a woman live near so turbulent a thing and not even guess at its existence? Her hand against his heart had lain so limp and dead. He hadn't hoped, of course, that she loved him the way he loved. Probably no one else could feel what he felt and live—so Dickie in young love's eternal fashion believed in his own miracle; but she might have loved him a little, a very little, in time—if she hadn't seen him beaten and shamed and cuffed out of her presence like a dog. Now there was no hope. No hope at all. No hope. Dickie rocked his head against his arm. He had told Sheila that he would take care of her, but he could not even defend himself. He had told her that he would die to save her any suffering, but, before her, he had writhed and gasped helplessly under the weight of another man's hand, his open hand, not even a fist.... No after act of his could efface from Sheila's memory that picture of his ignominy. She had seen him twisted and bent and beaten and thrown away. His father had triumphantly returned to reassure and comfort her for the insult of a boy's impertinence. Would Sheila defend him? Would she understand? Or would she not be justified in contemptuous laughter at his pretensions?

Such thoughts—less like thoughts, however, than like fiery fever fits—twisted and scorched Dickie's mind as he lay there. They burnt into him wounds that for years throbbed slowly into scars.

At noon the heat of his room became even more intolerable than his thoughts. His head beat with pain. He was bathed in sweat, weak and trembling. He dragged himself up, went to his washstand, and dipped his wincing face into the warmish, stale water. His lips felt cracked and dry and swollen. In the wavy mirror he saw a distorted image of his face, with its heavy eyes, scattered hair, and the darkening marks of his father's blows, punctuated by the scarlet scratches of the emerald. He dried his face, loosened his collar, and, gasping for air, came out into the narrow hall.

The hotel was very still. He hurried through it, his face bent, and went by the back way to the saloon. At this hour Sheila was asleep. Carthy would be alone in The Aura and there would be few, if any, customers. Dickie found the place cool and quiet and empty, shuttered from the sun, the air stirred by electric fans. Carthy dozed in his chair behind the bar. He gave Dickie his order, somnambulantly. Dickie took it off to a dim corner and drank with the thirst of a wounded beast.

Three or four hours later he staggered back to his room. A thunderstorm was rumbling and flashing down from the mountains to the north. The window was purple-black, and a storm wind blew the dirty curtains, straight and steady, into the room. The cool wind tasted and smelt of hot dust. Dickie felt his dazed way to the bed and steadied himself into a sitting posture. With infinite difficulty he rolled and lighted a cigarette, drew at it, took it out, tried to put it again between his lips, and fell over on his back, his arm trailing over the edge of the bed. The lighted cigarette slipped from his fingers to the ragged strip of matting. Dickie lay there, breathing heavily and regularly in a drunken and exhausted sleep.

A vivid, flickering pain in his arm woke him. He thought for an instant that he must have died and dropped straight into Hell. The wind still blew in upon him, but it blew fire against him. Above him there was a heavy panoply of smoke. His bedclothes were burning, his sleeve was on fire. The boards of his floor cracked and snapped in regiments of flame. He got up, still in a half stupor, plunged his arm into the water pitcher, saw, with a startled oath, that the woodwork about his door was blazing in long tongues of fire which leaped up into the rafters of the roof. His brain began to telegraph its messages ... the hotel was on fire. He could not imagine what had started it. He remembered Sheila.

He ran along the passage, the roar of that wind-driven fire following him as the draft from his window through his opened door gave a sudden impulse to the flames, and he came to Sheila's sitting-room. He knocked, had no answer, and burst in. He saw instantly that she had gone. Her father's picture had been taken, her little books, her sketches, her work-basket, her small yellow vase. Things were scattered about. As he stood staring, a billow of black smoke rolled into the room. He went quickly through the bedroom and the bath, calling "Sheila" in a low, uncertain voice, returned to the sitting-room to find the air already pungent and hot. There was a paper pinned up on the mantel. Sheila's writing marched across it. Dickie rubbed the smoke from his eyes and read:

"I am going away from Millings. And I am not coming back. Amelia may have the things I have left. I don't want them."

This statement was addressed to no one.

"She has gone to New York," thought Dickie. His confused mind became possessed with the immediate purpose of following her. There was an Eastern train in the late afternoon. Only he must have money and it was—most of it—in his room. He dashed back. The passage was ablaze; his room roared like the very heart of a furnace. It was no use to think of getting in there. Well, he had something in his pocket, enough to start him. He plunged, choking, into Sheila's sitting-room again. For some reason this flight of hers had brought back his hope. There was to be a beginning, a fresh start, a chance.

He went over to the chair where Sheila had sat in the comfort, of his arms and he touched the piece of tapestry on its back. That was his good-bye to Millings. Then he fastened his collar, smoothed his hair, standing close before Sheila's mirror, peering and blinking through the smoke, and buttoned his coat painstakingly. There would be a hat downstairs. As he turned to go he saw a little brown leather book lying on the floor below the mantel. He picked it up. Here was something he could take to Sheila. With an impulse of tenderness he opened it. His eyes were caught by a stanza—

"The blessed damozel leaned out From the gold bar of Heaven; Her eyes were deeper than the depth Of waters stilled at even; She had three lilies in her hand, And the stars in her hair were seven—"

There are people, no doubt, who will not be able to believe this truthful bit of Dickie's history. The smoke was drifting across him, the roar of the nearing fire was in his ears, he was at a great crisis in his affairs, his heart was hot with wounded love, and his brain hot with whiskey and with hope. Nevertheless, he did now, under the spell of those printed words, which did not even remotely resemble any words that he had ever read or heard before, forget the smoke, the roar, the love, the hope, and, standing below Sheila's mirror, he did read "The Blessed Damozel" from end to end. And the love of those lovers, divided by all the space between the shaken worlds, and the beauty of her tears made a great and mystic silence of rapture about him. "O God!" Dickie said twice as he read. He brushed away the smoke to see the last lines,—"And wept—I heard her tears." The ecstatic pain of beauty gripped him to the forgetfulness of all other pain or ecstasy. "O God!"

He came to with a start, shut the book, stuck it into his pocket, and, crooking his arm over his smarting eyes, he plunged out of the room. Millings had become aware of its disaster. Dickie, fleeing by the back way, leaping dangers and beating through fire, knew by the distant commotion that the Fire Brigade, of which he was a member, was gathering its men for the glory of their name. He saw, too, that with a wind like this to aid the fire, there wasn't a chance for The Aura, and a queer pang of sympathy for his father stabbed him. "It will kill Pap," thought Dickie. Save for this pang, he ran along the road toward the station with a light, adventurous heart. He did not know that he had started the fire himself. The stupor of his sleep had smothered out all memory of the cigarette he had lighted and let fall. Unwittingly Dickie had killed the beauty of his father's dream, and now, just as unwittingly, he was about to kill the object of his father's passion. When he looked back from the station platform, the roof of The Aura was already in a blaze.



PART TWO

THE STARS



CHAPTER I

THE HILL

Thatcher spoke to his horses, now fatherly, now masterly, now with a professorial sarcasm: "Come on, Monkey, there's a good girl! Get out of that, you Fox! Dern you! You call that pulling? It's my notion of layin' off for the day." Even at its most urgent, his voice was soft, hushed by the great loneliness of this canon up which he slowly crept. Monkey and Fox had been plodding, foot by foot, the creaking wagon at their heels, since dawn. It was now ten o'clock and they were just beginning to climb. The Hill, that looked so near to the mesa above Hudson's yard, still stood aloof. It had towered there ahead of them as they jerked and toiled across the interminable flat in their accompanying cloud of dust. The great circle of the world had dwarfed them to a bitter insignificance: a team of crickets, they seemed, driven by a gnome. The hushed tone of Thatcher's voice made unconscious tribute to this immensity.

As they came to the opening of the canon, the high mountain-top disappeared; the immediate foothills closed down and shut it out. The air grew headily light. Even under the blazing July sun, it came cool to the lungs, cool and intensely sweet. Thousands of wild flowers perfumed it and the sun-drawn resin of a thousand firs. All the while the rushing of water accompanied the creaking of Thatcher's progress. Not far from the road, down there below in a tangle of pine branches, willows, and ferns, the frost-white stream fled toward the valley with all the seeming terror of escape. Here the team began their tugging and their panting and their long pauses to get breath. Thatcher would push forward the wooden handle that moved his brake, and at the sound and the grating of the wheel the horses would stop automatically and stand with heaving sides. The wagon shook slightly with their breathing. At such times the stream seemed to shout in the stillness. Below, there began to be an extraordinary view of the golden country with its orange mesas and its dark, purple rim of mountains. Millings was a tiny circle of square pebbles, something built up by children in their play. The awful impersonalities of sky and earth swept away its small human importance. Thatcher's larkspur-colored eyes absorbed serenity. They had drawn their color and their far-sighted clearness from such long contemplations of distant horizon lines.

Now and again, however, Thatcher would glance back and down from his high seat at his load. It consisted, for the most part, of boxes of canned goods, but near the front there was a sort of nest, made from bags of Indian meal. In the middle of the nest lay another bundle of slim, irregular outline. It was covered with a thin blanket and a piece of sacking protected it from the sun. A large, clumsy parcel lay beside it. Each time Thatcher looked at this portion of his load he pulled more anxiously at his mustache. At last, when the noon sun stood straight above the pass and he stopped to water his horses at a trough which caught a trickle of spring water, he bent down and softly raised the piece of sacking, suspended like a tent from one fat sack to another above the object of his uneasiness. There, in the complete relaxation of exhausted sleep, lay Sheila, no child more limp and innocent of aspect; her hair damp and ringed on her smooth forehead, her lips mournful and sweet, sedately closed, her expression at once proud and innocent and wistful, as is the sleeping face of a little, little girl. There was that look of a broken flower, that look of lovely death, that stops the heart of a mother sometimes when she bends over a crib and sees damp curls in a halo about a strange, familiar face.

Thatcher, looking at Sheila, had some of these thoughts. A teamster is either philosopher or clown. One cannot move, day after day, all day for a thousand days, under a changeless, changeful sky, inch by inch, across the surface of a changeless, changeful earth and not come very near to some of the locked doors of the temple where clowns sleep and wise men meditate. And Thatcher was a father, one of the wise and reasonable fathers of the West, whose seven-year-old sons are friends and helpmates and toward whom six-year-old daughters are moved to little acts of motherliness.

The sun blazed for a minute on Sheila's face. She opened her eyes, looked vaguely from some immense distance at Thatcher, and then sat up.

"Oh, gracious!" said Sheila, woman and sprite and adventurer again. "Where the dickens is my hat? Did it fall out?"

"No, ma'am," Thatcher smiled in a relieved fashion. "I put it under the seat."

Sheila scrambled to a perch on one of the sacks and faced the surface of half a world.

"Oh, Mr. Thatcher, isn't it too wonderful! How high are we? Is this the other side? Oh, no, I can see Millings. Poor tiny, tiny Millings! It is small, isn't it? How very small it is! What air!" She shut her eyes, drawing in the perfumed tonic. The altitude had intoxicated her. Her heart was beating fast, her blood tingling, her brain electrified. Every sense seemed to be sharpened. She saw and smelt and heard with abnormal vividness.

"The flowers are awfully bright up here, aren't they?" she said. "What's that coral-colored bushy one?"

"Indian paint-brush."

"And that blue one? It is blue! I don't believe I ever knew what blueness meant before."

"Lupine. And over yonder's monkshead. That other's larkspur, that poisons cattle in the spring. On the other side you'll see a whole lot more—wild hollyhock and fireweed and columbine—well, say, I learned all them names from a dude I drove over one summer."

"And such a sky!" said Sheila, lifting her head, "and such big pines!" She lost herself for a minute in the azure immensity above. A vast mosque of cloud, dome bubbles great and small, stood ahead of them, dwarfing every human experience of height. "Mr. Thatcher, there isn't any air up here. What is it we're trying to breathe, anyway?"

He smiled patiently, sympathetically, and handed her a tin mug of icy water from the little trickling spring. The bruise of Hudson's kiss ached at the cold touch of the water and a shadow fell over her excitement. She thanked the driver gravely.

"What time is it now?" she asked.

"Past noon. Better eat your sandwich."

She took one from its wrapping pensively, but ate it with absent-minded eagerness. Thatcher's blue eyes twinkled.

"Seems like I recollect a lady that didn't want no food to be put in for her."

"I remember her, too," said Sheila, between bites, "but very, very vaguely."

She stood up after a third sandwich, shook crumbs from her skirt, and stretched her arms. "What a great sleep I've had! Since six o'clock!" She stared down at the lower world. "I've left somebody at Millings."

"Who's that?" asked Thatcher, drawling the words a trifle as a Westerner does when he is conscious of a double meaning.

"Me."

Thatcher laughed. "You're a real funny girl, Miss Arundel," he said.

"Yes, I left one Me when I decided to go into the saloon, and now I've left another Me. I believe people shed their skins like snakes."

"Yes'm, I've had that notion myself. But as you get older, your skin kind of peels off easy and gradual—you don't get them shocks when you sort of come out all new and shiny and admirin' of yourself."

Sheila blushed faintly and looked at him. His face was serene and empty of intention. But she felt that she had been guilty of egotism, as indeed she had. She asked rather meekly for her hat, and having put it on like a shadow above her fairness, she climbed up to Thatcher's side on the driver's seat. The hat was her felt Stetson, and, for the rest, she was clad in her riding-clothes, the boy's shirt, the short corduroy skirt, the high-laced boots. Her youthfulness, rather than her strange beauty, was accentuated by this dress. She had the look of a super-delicate boy, a sort of rose-leaf fairy prince.

"Are we on the road?" asked Sheila presently.

Thatcher gave way to mirth. "Don't it seem like a road to you?"

She lurched against him, then saved herself from falling out at the other side by a frantic clutch.

"Is it a road?" She looked down a dizzy slope of which the horse's foothold seemed to her the most precarious part.

"Yes'm—all the road there is. We call it that. We're kind of po-lite to these little efforts of the Government—kind of want to encourage 'em. Congressmen kind of needs coaxin' and flat'ry. They're right ornery critters. I heard an argyment atween a feller with a hoss and a feller with a mule onct. The mule feller was kind of uppish about hosses; said he didn't see the advantage of the critter. A mule now was steady and easy fed and strong. Well, ma'am, the hoss feller got kind of hot after some of this, so he says, 'Well, sir,' he says, 'there's this about it. When you got a hoss, you got a hoss. You know what you got. He's goin' to act like a hoss. But when you got a mule, why, you can't never tell. All of a sudden one of these days, he's like as not to turn into a Congressman.' Well, ma'am, that's the way we feel about Congressmen.—Ho, there, Monkey! Keep up! I'll just get out an' hang on the wheel while we make this corner. That'll keep us from turnin' over, I reckon."

Sheila sat and held on with both hands. Her eyes were wide and very bright. She held her breath till Thatcher got in again, the corner safely made. For the next creeping, lurching mile, Sheila found that every muscle in her body had its use in keeping her on that seat. Then they reached the snow and matters grew definitely worse. Here, half the road was four feet of dirty, icy drift and half of abysmal mud. They slipped from drift to mire with awful perils and rackings of the wagon and painful struggles of the team. Sometimes the snow softened and let the horses in up to their necks when Thatcher plied whip and tongue with necessary cruelty. At last there came disaster. They were making one of those heart-stopping turns. Sheila had got out and was adding her mosquito weight to Thatcher's on the upper side, half-walking, half-hanging to the wagon. The outer wheels were deep in mud, the inner wheels hung clear. The horses strained—and slipped.

"Let go!" shouted Thatcher.

Sheila fell back into the snow, and the wagon turned quietly over and began to slide down the slope. Thatcher sprang to his horses' heads. For an instant it seemed that they would be dragged over the edge. Then the wagon stopped, and Thatcher, grim and pale, unhitched his team. He swore fluently under his breath during this entire operation. Afterwards, he turned to the scarlet and astounded passenger and gave her one of his shining smiles.

"Well, ma'am," he said, beginning to roll a cigarette, "what do you think of that?"

"Whatever shall we do now?" asked Sheila. She had identified herself utterly with this team, this load, this driver. She brushed the snow from her skirt, climbed down from the drift to the edge of the mire by Thatcher's elbow. The team stood with hanging heads, panting and steaming, glad of the rest and the release.

"Well, ma'am," said Thatcher, looking down at the loyal, anxious face with a certain tenderness, "I'm agoin' to do one of two things. I'm agoin' to lead my team over The Hill and come back with two more horses and a hand to help me or I'm agoin' to set here and wait for the stage."

"How long will it be before the stage comes?"

"Matter of four or five hours."

"Oh, dear! Then I can't possibly overtake my—my friend, Miss Blake!"

"No, ma'am. But you can walk on a quarter-mile; take a rest at Duff's place top of The Hill. I can pick you up when I come by; like as not I'll spend the night at Duff's. By the time I get my load together it'll be along dark—Hullo!" He interrupted himself, lifting his chin. "I hear hosses now."

They both listened. "No wagon," said Thatcher.

Five minutes later, a slouching horseman, cigarette in mouth, shaggy chaps on long legs, spurred and booted and decorated with a red neck-scarf came picturesquely into view. His pony dug sturdy feet into the steep roadside, avoiding the mud of the road itself. The man led two other horses, saddled, but empty of riders. He stopped and between him and Thatcher took place one of the immensely tranquil, meditative, and deliberate conversations of the Far West.

Sheila's quick, Celtic nerves tormented her. At last she broke in with an inspiration. "Couldn't I hire one of your horses?" she asked, rising from an overturned sack of which she had made a resting-place.

The man looked down at her with grave, considerate eyes.

"Why, yes, ma'am. I reckon you could," he said gently. "They're right gentle ponies," he added.

"Are they yours?"

"One of 'em is. The other belongs to Kearney, dude-wrangler up the valley. But, say, if you're goin' to Rusty you c'd leave my hoss at Lander's and I c'd get him when I come along. I am stoppin' here to help with the load. It would cost you nothin', lady. The hoss has got to go over to Rusty and I'd be pleased to let you ride him. You're no weight."

"How good of you!" said Sheila. "I'll take the best care of him I know how to take. Could I find my way? How far is it?"

"All downhill after a half-mile, lady. You c'd make Rusty afore dark. It's a whole lot easier on hoofs than it is on wheels. You can't miss the road on account of it bein' the only road there is. And Lander's is the only one hotel in Rusty. You'd best stop the night there."

He evidently wanted to ask her her destination, but his courtesy forbade.

Sheila volunteered, "I am going to Miss Blake's ranch up Hidden Creek."

A sort of flash of surprise passed across the reserved, brown, young face. "Yes, ma'am," he said with no expression. "Well, you better leave the rest of your trip until to-morrow."

He slipped from his horse with an effortless ripple, untied a tawny little pony with a thick neck, a round body, and a mild, intelligent face, and led him to Sheila who mounted from her sack. Thatcher carefully adjusted the stirrups, a primitive process that involved the wearisome lacing and unlacing of leather thongs. Sheila bade him a bright and adventurous "Good-bye." thanked the unknown owner of the horse, and started. The pony showed some unwillingness to leave his companions, fretted and tossed his head, and made a few attempts at a right-about face, but Sheila dug in her small spurred heels and spoke beguilingly. At last he settled down to sober climbing. Sheila looked back and waved her hand. The two tall, lean men were gazing after her. They took off their hats and waved. She felt a warmth that was almost loving for their gracefulness and gravity and kindness. Here was another breed of man than that produced by Millings. A few minutes later she came to the top of The Pass and looked down into Hidden Creek.



CHAPTER II

ADVENTURE

Sheila stood and drew breath. The shadow of the high peak, in the lap of which she stood, poured itself eastward across the warm, lush, narrow land. This was different from the hard, dull gold and alkali dust of the Millings country: here were silvery-green miles of range, and purple-green miles of pine forest, and lovely lighter fringes and groves of cottonwood and aspen trees. Here and there were little dots of ranches, visible more by their vivid oat and alfalfa fields than by their small log cabins. Down the valley the river flickered, lifted by its brightness above the hollow that held it, till it seemed just hung there like a string of jewels. Beyond it the land rose slowly in noble sweeps to the opposite ranges, two chains that sloped across each other in a glorious confusion of heads, round and soft as velvet against the blue sky or blunt and broken with a thundery look of extinct craters. To the north Sheila saw a further serenity of mountains, lying low and soft on the horizon, of another and more wistful blue. Over it all was a sort of magical haze, soft and brilliant as though the air were a melted sapphire. There was still blessedness such as Sheila had never felt. She was filled with a longing to ride on and on until her spirit should pass into the wide, tranquil, glowing spirit of the lonely land. It seemed to her that some forgotten medicine man sat cross-legged in a hollow of the hills, blowing, from a great peace pipe, the blue smoke of peace down and along the hollows and the canons and the level lengths of range. In the mighty breast of the blower there was not even a memory of trouble, only a noble savage serenity too deep for prayer.

She rode for a long while—no sound but her pony's hoofs—her eyes lifted across the valley until a sudden fragrance drew her attention earthwards. She was going through an open glade of aspens and the ground was white with columbine, enormous flowers snowy and crisp as though freshly starched by fairy laundresses. With a cry of delight Sheila jumped off her horse, tied him by his reins to a tree, and began gathering flowers with all the eager concentration of a six-year-old. And, like all the flower-gatherers of fable from Proserpina down, she found herself the victim of disaster. When she came back to the road with a useless, already perishing mass of white, the pony had disappeared. Her knot had been unfaithful. Quietly that mild-nosed, pensive-eyed, round-bodied animal had pulled himself free and tiptoed back to join his friends.

Sheila hurried up the road toward the summit she had so recently crossed, till the altitude forced her to stop with no breath in her body and a pounding redness before her eyes. She stamped her feet with vexation. She longed to cry. She remembered confusedly, but with a certain satisfaction, some of the things Thatcher had said to his team. An entire and sudden lenience toward the gentle art of swearing was born in her. She threw her columbine angrily away. She had come so far on her journey that she could never be able to get back to Thatcher nor even to Duff's shanty before dark. And how far down still the valley lay with that shadow widening and lengthening across it!

Her sudden loneliness descended upon her with an almost audible rush. Dusk at this height—dusk with a keen smell of glaciers and wind-stung pines—dusk with the world nine thousand feet below; and about her this falling-away of mountain-side, where the trees seemed to slant and the very flowers to be outrun by a mysterious sort of flight of rebel earth toward space! The great and heady height was informed with a presence which if not hostile was terrifyingly ignorant of man. There was some one not far away, she felt, just above there behind the rocky ridge, just back there in the confusion of purplish darkness streaked by pine-tree columns, just below in the thicket of the stream—some one to meet whose look meant death.

Her first instinct was to keep to the road. She walked on down toward the valley very rapidly. But going down meant meeting darkness. She began to be unreasonably afraid of the night. She was afflicted by an old, old childish, immemorial dread of bears. In spite of the chill, she was very warm, her tongue dry with rapid breathing of the thin air. She was intolerably thirsty. The sound of water called to her in a lisping, inhuman voice. She resisted till she was ashamed of her cowardice, stepped furtively off the track, scrambled down a slope, parted some branches, and found herself on a rock above a little swirling pool. On the other side a man kneeling over the water lifted a white and startled face.

Through the eerie green twilight up into which the pool threw a shifty leaden brightness, the two stared at each other for a moment. Then the man rose to his feet and smiled. Sheila noticed that he had been bathing a bloody wrist round which he was now wrapping clumsily a handkerchief.

"Don't be frightened," he said in a rather uncertain voice; "I'm not near so desperate as I look. Do you want a drink? Hand me down your cup if you have one and I'll fill it for you."

"I'm not afraid now," Sheila quavered, and drew a big breath. "But I was startled for a minute. I haven't any cup. I—I suppose, in a way—I 'm lost."

He was peering at her now, and when she took off her hat and rubbed her damp forehead with a weary, worried gesture, he gave a little exclamation and swung himself across the stream by a branch, and up to her side on the rock.

"The barmaid!" he said. "And I was coming to see you!"

Sheila laughed in the relieved surprise of recognition. "Why, you are the cowboy—the one that fought so—so terribly. Have you been fighting again? Your wrist is hurt. May I tie it up for you?"

He held out his arm silently and she tied the handkerchief—a large, clean, coarse one—neatly about it. What with weariness and the shock of her fright, her fingers were not very steady. He looked down at her during the operation with a contented expression. It seemed that the moment was filled for him with satisfaction to a complete forgetfulness of past or present annoyances.

"This is a big piece of luck for me," he said. "But"—with a sudden thundery change of countenance—"you're not going over to Hidden Creek, are you?"

"I'm trying to go there," said Sheila; "I've been trying ever since five o'clock this morning. But I don't seem to be getting there very fast. I wanted to make Rusty before dark. And my pony got away from me and went back. I know he went back because I saw the marks of his feet and he would have gone back. Wouldn't he? Do you think I could get to Rusty on foot to-night?"

"No, ma'am. I know you couldn't. You could make it easy on horseback, though." He stared meditatively above her head and then said in a tone of resignation: "I believe I better go back myself. I'll take you."

She had finished her bandage. She looked up at him. "Go back? But you must have just started from there a few hours ago."

"Well, ma'am, I didn't come very direct. I kind of shifted round. But I can go back straight. And I'd really rather. I think I'd better. It was all foolishness my coming over. I can put you up back of me on my horse, if you don't mind, and we'll get to Rusty before it's lit up. I'd rather. You don't mind riding that way, do you? You see, if I put you up and walked, it'd take lots more time."

"I don't mind," said Sheila, but she said it rather proudly so that Hilliard smiled.

"Well, ma'am, we can try it, anyway. If you go back to the road, I'll get my horse."

He seemed to have hidden his horse in a density of trees a mile from the road. Sheila waited till she thought she must have dreamed her meeting with him. He came back, looking a trifle sheepish.

"You see," he said, "I didn't come by the road, ma'am."

The horse was a large, bony animal with a mean eye.

"That isn't the pony you rode when you came to Millings," said Sheila.

He bent to examine his saddle-girth. "No, ma'am," he said gently. "I've been riding quite a variety of horse-flesh lately. I'll get on first if you don't mind and give you a hand up. You put your foot on mine. The horse will stand."

Sheila obeyed, pressing her lips tight, for she was afraid. However, his long, supple fingers closed over her wrist like steel and she got quickly and easily to her perch and clung nervously to him.

"That's right. Put your arms round tight. Are you all fixed?"

"Y—yes."

"And comfortable?"

"Y—yes, I think so."

"We're off, then."

They started on a quick, steady walk down the road. Once, Cosme loosened the six-shooter on his hip. He whistled incessantly through his teeth. Except for this, they were both silent.

"Were you coming to Millings?" asked Sheila at last. She was of the world where silence has a certain oppressive significance. She was getting used to her peculiar physical position and found she did not have to cling so desperately. But in a social sense she was embarrassed. He was quite impersonal about the situation, which made matters easier for her. Now and then she suppressed a frantic impulse to giggle.

"Yes, ma'am. To see you," he answered. "I never rightly thanked you." She saw the back of his neck flush and she blushed too, remembering his quickly diverted kiss which had left a smear of blood across her fingers. That had happened only a few days before, but they were long days. He too must have been well occupied. There was still a bruise on his temple. "I—I wasn't quite right in the head after those fellows had beat me up, and I kind of wanted to show you that I am something like a gentleman."

"Have you been in Hidden Creek?"

"Yes, ma'am. I was thinking of prospecting around. I meant to homestead over there. I like the country. But when it comes to settling down I get kind of restless. And usually I get into a mix-up that changes my intentions. So I'd about decided to go back down Arizona way and work.—Where are you going to stay in Hidden Creek?" he asked. "Where's your stuff?"

"Mr. Thatcher has it in his wagon. I'm going to Miss Blake's ranch. She invited me."

"Miss Blake? You mean the lady that wears pants? You don't mean it! Well, that's right amusing." He laughed.

Sheila stirred angrily. "I can't see why it's amusing."

He sobered at once. "Well, ma'am, maybe it isn't. No, I reckon it isn't. How long will you stay?"

Sheila gave a big, sobbing sigh. "I don't know. If she likes me and if I'm happy, I'll stay there always." She added with a queer, dazed realization of the truth: "I've nowhere else to go."

"Haven't you any—folks?" he asked.

"No."

"Got tired of Millings?"

"Yes—very."

"I don't blame you! It's not much of a town. You'll like Hidden Creek. And Miss Blake's ranch is a mighty pretty place, lonesome but wonderfully pretty. Right on a bend of the creek, 'way up the valley, close under the mountains. But can you stand loneliness, Miss—What is your name?"

There were curious breaks in his manner of a Western cowboy, breaks that startled Sheila like little echoes from her life abroad and in the East. There was a quickness of voice and manner, an impatience, a hot and nervous something, and his voice and accent suggested training. The abrupt question, for instance, was not in the least characteristic of a Westerner.

"My name is Sheila Arundel. I don't know yours either."

"Do you come from the East?"

"Yes. From New York." He gave an infinitesimal jerk. "But I've lived abroad nearly all my life. I think it would be politer if you would answer my question now."

She felt that he controlled an anxious breath. "My name is Hilliard," he said, and he pronounced the name with a queer bitter accent as though the taste of it was unpleasant to his tongue. "Cosme Hilliard. Don't you think it's a—nice name?"

For half a second she was silent; then she spoke with careful unconsciousness. "Yes. Very nice and very unusual. Hilliard is an English name, isn't it? Where did the Cosme come from?"

It was well done, so well that she felt a certain tightening of his body relax and his voice sounded fuller. "That's Spanish. I've some Spanish blood. Here's Buffin's ranch. We're getting down."

Sheila was remembering vividly; Sylvester had come into her compartment. She could see the rolling Nebraskan country slipping by the window of the train. She could see his sallow fingers folding the paper so that she could conveniently read a paragraph. She remembered his gentle, pensive speech. "Ain't it funny, though, those things happen in the slums and they happen in the smart set, but they don't happen near so often to just middling folks like you and me! Don't it sound like a Tenderloin tale, though, South American wife and American husband and her getting jealous and up and shooting him? Money sure makes love popular. Now, if it had been poor folks, why, they'd have hardly missed a day's work, but just because these Hilliards have got spondulix they'll run a paragraph about 'em in the papers for a month."—Sheila began to make comparisons: a South American wife and an American husband, and here, this young man with the Spanish-American name and the Spanish-Saxon physique, and a voice that showed training and faltered over the pronouncing of the "Hilliard" as though he expected it to be too well remembered. Had there been some mention in the paper of a son?—a son in the West?—a son under a cloud of some sort? But—she checked her spinning of romance—this youth was too genuine a cowboy, the way he rode, the way he moved, held himself, his phrases, his turn of speech! With all that wealth behind him how had he been allowed to grow up like this? No, her notion was unreasonable, almost impossible. Although dismissed, it hung about her mental presentment of him, however, like a rather baleful aura, not without fascination to a seventeen-year-old imagination. So busy was she with her fabrications that several miles of road slipped by unnoticed. There came a strange confusion in her thoughts. It seemed to her that she was arguing the Hilliard case with some one. Then with a horrible start she saw that the face of her opponent was Sylvester's and she pushed it violently away....

"Don't you go to sleep," said Hilliard softly, laughing a little. "You might fall off."

"I—I was asleep," Sheila confessed, in confusion at discovering that her head had dropped against him. "How dark it's getting! We're in the valley, aren't we?"

"Yes, ma'am, we're most there." He hesitated. "Miss Arundel, I think I'd best let you get down just before we get to Rusty."

"Get down? Why?"

He cleared his throat, half-turning to her. In the dusky twilight, that was now very nearly darkness, his face was troubled and ashamed, like the face of a boy who tries to make little of a scrape. "Well, ma'am, yesterday, the folks in Rusty kind of lost their heads. They had a bad case of Sherlock Holmes. I bought a horse up the valley from a chap who was all-fired anxious to sell him, and before I knew it I was playing the title part in a man-hunt. It seems that I was riding one of a string this chap had rustled from several of the natives. They knew the horse and that was enough for their nervous system. They had never set eyes on me before and they wouldn't take my word for my blameless past. They told me to keep my story for trial when they took me over to the court. Meanwhile they gave me a free lodging in their pen. Miss Arundel—" Hilliard dropped his ironic tone and spoke in a low, tense voice of child-like horror. His face stiffened and paled. "That was awful. To be locked in. Not to be able to get fresh breath in your lungs. Not to be able to go where you please, when you please. I can't tell you what it's like ... I can't stand it! I can't stand a minute of it! I was in that pen six hours. I felt I'd go loco if I was there all night. I guess I am a kind of fool. I broke jail early in the morning and caught up the sheriff's horse. They got a shot or two at me, hit my wrist, but I made my getaway. This horse is not much on looks, but he sure can get over the sagebrush. I was coming over to see you."

There was that in his voice when he said this that touched Sheila's heart, profoundly. This restless, violent young adventurer, homeless, foot-loose, without discipline or duty, had turned to her in his trouble as instinctively as though she had been his mother. This, because she had once served him. Something stirred in Sheila's heart.

"And then," Hilliard went on, "I was going to get down to Arizona. But when I heard you were coming over into Hidden Creek, it seemed like foolishness to cut myself off from the country by running away from nothing. Of course there are ways to prove my identity with those fellows. It only means putting up with a few days of pen." He gave a sigh. "But you can understand, ma'am, that this isn't just the horse that will give you quietest entrance into Rusty and that I'm not just one of the First Citizens."

"But," said Sheila, "if they see you riding in with me, they certainly won't shoot."

He laughed admiringly. "You're game!" he said. "But, Miss Arundel, they're not likely to do any more shooting. It's not a man riding into Rusty that they're after. It's a man riding out of Rusty. They'll know I'm coming to give myself up."

"I'll just stay here," said Sheila firmly.

"I can't let you."

"I'm too tired to walk. I'm too sleepy. It'll be all right."

"Then I'll walk." He pulled in his horse, but at the instant stiffened in his saddle and wheeled about on the road. A rattle of galloping hoofs struck the ground behind them; two riders wheeled and stopped. One drew close and held out his hand.

"Say, stranger, shake," he said. "We've been kickin' up the dust to beg your pardon. We got the real rustler this mornin' shortly after you left. I'm plumb disgusted and disheartened with young Tommins for losin' his head an' shootin' off his gun. He's a dern fool, that kid, a regular tenderfoot. Nothin' won't ever cure him short of growin' up. Come from Chicago, anyway. One of them Eastern towns. I see he got you, too."

"Winged me," smiled Hilliard. "Well, I'm right pleased I won't have to spend another night in your pen."

"You're entered for drinks. The sheriff stands 'em." Here he bowed to Sheila, removing his hat.

"This lady"—Hilliard performed the introduction—"lost her horse on The Hill. She's aiming to stop at Rusty for to-night."

The man who had spoken turned to his silent companion. "Ride ahead, Shorty, why don't you?" he said indignantly, "and tell Mrs. Lander there's a lady that'll want to sleep in Number Five."

The other horseman, after a swift, searching look at Sheila, said "Sure," in a very mild, almost cooing, voice and was off. It looked to Sheila like a runaway. But the men showed no concern.

They jogged companionably on their way. Fifteen minutes later they crossed a bridge and pulled up before a picket fence and a gate.

They were in Rusty.



CHAPTER III

JOURNEY'S END

The social life of Rusty, already complicated by the necessity it was under to atone for a mistake, was almost unbearably discomposed by the arrival of a strange lady. This was no light matter, be it understood. Hidden Creek was not a resort for ladies: and so signal an event as the appearance of a lady, a young lady, a pretty young lady, demanded considerable effort. But Rusty had five minutes for preparation. By the time Hilliard rode up to Lander's gate a representative group of citizens had gathered there. One contingent took charge of Hilliard—married men, a little unwilling, and a few even more reluctant elders, and led him to the bowl of reparation which was to wash away all memory of his wrongs. The others, far the larger group, escorted Sheila up the twelve feet of board walk to the porch of hospitality filled by the massive person of Mrs. Lander. On that brief walk Sheila was fathered, brothered, grandfathered, husbanded, and befriended and on the porch, all in the person of Mrs. Lander, she was mothered, sistered, and grandmothered. Up the stairs to Number Five she was "eased"—there is no other word to express the process—and down again she was eased to supper, where in a daze of fatigue she ate with surprising relish tough fried meat and large wet potatoes, a bowl of raw canned tomatoes and a huge piece of heavy-crusted preserved-peach pie. She also drank, with no effect upon her drowsiness, an enormous thick cupful of strong coffee, slightly tempered by canned milk. She sat at the foot of the long table, opposite Mr. Lander, a fat, sly-looking man whose eyes twinkled with a look of mysterious inner amusement, caused, probably, by astonishment at his own respectability. He had behind him a career of unprecedented villainy, and that he should end here at Rusty as the solid and well-considered keeper of the roadhouse was, no doubt, a perpetual tickle to his consciousness. Down either side of the table were silent and impressive figures busy with their food. Courteous and quiet they were and beautifully uninquiring, except in the matter of her supplies. The yellow lamplight shone on brown bearded and brown clean-shaven faces, rugged and strong and clean-cut. These bared throats and thickly thatched heads, these faces, lighted by extraordinary, far-seeing brilliant, brooding eyes, reminded Sheila of a master's painting of The Last Supper—so did their coarse clothing melt into the gold-brown shadows of the room and so did their hands and throats and faces pick themselves out in mellow lights and darknesses.

After the meal she dragged herself upstairs to Number Five, made scant use of nicked basin, spoutless pitcher, and rough clean towel, blew out her little shadeless lamp, and crept in under an immense, elephantine, grateful weight of blankets and patchwork quilts, none too fresh, probably, though the sheet blankets were evidently newly washed. Of muslin sheeting there was none. The pillow was flat and musty. Sheila cuddled into it as though it had been a mother's shoulder. That instant she was asleep. Once in the night she woke. A dream waked her. It seemed to her that a great white flower had blossomed in the window of her room and that in the heart of it was Dickie's face, tender and as pale as a petal. It drew near to her and bent over her wistfully. She held out her arms with a piteous longing to comfort his wistfulness and woke. Her face was wet with the mystery of dream tears. The flower dwindled to a small white moon standing high in the upper pane of one of the uncurtained windows. The room was full of eager mountain air. She could hear a water-wheel turning with a soft splash in the stream below. There was no other sound. The room smelt of snowy heights and brilliant stars. She breathed deep and, quite as though she had breathed a narcotic, slept suddenly again. This, before any memory of Hudson burned her consciousness.

The next morning she found that her journey had been carefully arranged. Thatcher had come and gone. The responsibility for her further progress had been shifted to the shoulders of a teamster, whose bearded face, except for the immense humor and gallantry of his gray eyes, was startlingly like one of Albrecht Duerer's apostles. Her bundle was in his wagon, half of his front seat was cushioned for her. After breakfast she was again escorted down the board walk to the gate. Mrs. Lander fastened a huge bunch of sweet peas to her coat and kissed her cheek. Sheila bade innumerable good-byes, expressed innumerable thanks. For Hilliard's absence Rusty offered its apologies. They said that he had been much entertained and, after the hurt he had suffered to his wrist, late sleep was a necessity. Sheila understood. The bowl of reparation had been emptied to its last atoning dregs. She mounted to the side of "Saint Mark," she bowed and smiled, made promises, gave thanks again, and waved herself out of Rusty at last. She had never felt so flattered and so warmed at heart.

"I'm agoin'," quoth Saint Mark, "right clost to Miss Blake's. If we don't overtake her—and that hoss of hers sure travels wonderful fast, somethin' wonderful, yes, ma'am, by God—excuse me, lady—it's sure surprisin' the way that skinny little hoss of hers will travel—why, I c'n take you acrost the ford. There ain't no way of gettin' into Miss Blake's exceptin' by the ford. And then I c'n take my team back to the road. From the ford it's a quarter-mile walk to Miss Blake's house. You c'n cache your bundle and she'll likely get it for you in the mornin'. We had ought to be there by sundown. Her trail from the ford's clear enough. I'm a-takin' this lumber to the Gover'ment bridge forty mile up. Yes, by God—excuse me, lady—it's agoin' to be jest a dandy bridge until the river takes it out next spring, by God—you'll have to excuse me again, lady."

He seemed rather mournfully surprised by the frequent need for these apologies. "It was my raisin', lady," he explained. "My father was a Methody preacher. Yes'm, he sure was, by God, yes—excuse me again, lady. He was always a-prayin'. It kinder got me into bad habits. Yes, ma'am. Those words you learn when you're a kid they do stick in your mind. By God, yes, they do—excuse me, lady. That's why I run away. I couldn't stand so much prayin' all the time. And bein' licked when I wasn't bein' prayed at. He sure licked me, that dern son of a—Oh, by God, lady, you'll just hev to excuse me, please." He wiped his forehead. "I reckon I better keep still."

Sheila struggled, then gave way to mirth. Her companion, after a doubtful look, relaxed into his wide, bearded smile. After that matters were on an easy footing between them and the "excuse me, lady," was, for the most part, left to her understanding.

They drifted like a lurching vessel through the long crystal day. Never before this journey into Hidden Creek had time meant anything to Sheila but a series of incidents, occupations, or emotions; now first she understood the Greek impersonation of the dancing hours. She had watched the varying faces the day turns to those who fold their hands and still their minds to watch its progress. She had seen the gradual heightening of brilliance from dawn to noon, and then the fading-out from that high, white-hot glare, through gold and rose and salmon and purple, to the ashy lavenders of twilight and so into gray and the metallic, glittering coldness of the mountain night. It was the purple hour when she said good-bye to Saint Mark on the far side of a swift and perilous ford. She was left standing in the shadow of a near-by mountain-side while he rode away into the still golden expanse of valley beyond the leafy course of the stream. Hidden Creek had narrowed and deepened. It ran past Sheila now with a loud clapping and knocking at its cobbled bed and with an over-current of noisy murmurs. The hurrying water was purple, with flecks of lavender and gold. The trees on its banks were topped with emerald fire where they caught the light of the sun. The trail to Miss Blake's ranch ran along the river on the edge of a forest of pines. At this hour they looked like a wall into which some magic permitted the wanderer to walk interminably. Sheila was glad that she did not have to make use of this wizard invitation. She "cached" her bundle, as Saint Mark had advised, in a thicket near the stream and walked resolutely forward along the trail. Not even when her pony had left her on The Hill had she felt so desolate or so afraid.

She could not understand why she was here on her way to the ranch of this strange woman. She felt astonished by her loneliness, by her rashness, by the dreadful lack in her life of all the usual protections. Was youth meant so to venture itself? This was what young men had done since the beginning of time. She thought of Hilliard. His life must have been just such a series of disconnected experiments. Danger was in the very pattern of such freedom. But she was a girl, only a girl as the familiar phrase expresses it—a seventeen-year-old girl. She was reminded of a pathetic and familiar line, "A woman naturally born to fears ..." A wholesome reaction to pride followed and, suddenly, an amusing memory of Miss Blake, of her corduroy trousers stuffed into boots, of her broad, strong body, her square face with its firm lips and masterful red-brown eyes; a very heartening memory for such a moment. Here was a woman that had adventured without fear and had quite evidently met with no disaster.

Sheila came to a little tumbling tributary and crossed it on a log. On the farther side the trail broadened, grew more distinct; through an opening in tall, gray, misty cottonwoods she saw the corner of a log house. At the same instant a dreadful tumult broke out. The sound sent Sheila's blood in a slapping wave back upon her heart. All of her body turned cold. She was fastened by stone feet to the ground. It was the laughter of a mob of damned souls, an inhuman, despairing mockery of God. It tore the quiet evening into shreds of fear. This house was a madhouse holding revelry. No—of course, they were wolves, a pack of wolves. Then, with a warmth of returning circulation, Sheila remembered Miss Blake's dogs, the descendants of the wolf-dog that had littered on the body of a dead man. Quarter-wolf, was it? These voices had no hint of the homely barking of a watchdog, the friend of man's loneliness! But Sheila braced her courage. Miss Blake made good use of her pack. They pulled her sled, winters, in Hidden Creek. They must then be partly civilized by service. If only—she smiled a desperate smile at the uncertainty—they didn't tear her to pieces when she came out from the shelter of the trees. There was very great courage in Sheila's short, lonely march through the little grove of cottonwood trees. She was as white as the mountain columbine. She walked slowly and held her head high. She had taken up a stone for comfort.

At the end of the trees she saw a house, a three-sided, one-storied building of logs very pleasantly set in a circle of aspen trees, backed by taller firs, toppling over which stood a great sharp crest of rocky ledges, nine thousand feet high, edged with the fire of sunset. At one side of the house eight big dogs were leaping at the ends of their chains. They were tied to trees or to small kennels at the foot of trees. And, God be thanked! Sheila let fall her stone—they were all tied.

The door at the end of the nearest wing of the house opened and Miss Blake stood on the threshold and held up her hands. At sight of her the dogs stopped their howling instantly and cringed on their bellies or sat yawning on their bushy haunches. Miss Blake's resonant, deep voice seemed to pounce upon Sheila above the chatter of the stream which, running about three sides of the glade, was now, at the silence of the dogs, incessantly audible.

"Well, if it isn't the little barmaid!" cried Miss Blake, and advanced, wiping her hand on a white apron tied absurdly over the corduroy trousers and cowboy boots. "Well, if you aren't as welcome as the flowers in May! So you thought you'd leave the street-lamps and come take a look at the stars?"

They met and Sheila took the strong, square hand. She was afflicted by a sudden dizziness.

"That's it," she faltered; "this time I thought I'd try—the stars."

With that she fell against Miss Blake and felt, just before she dropped into blackness, that she had been saved by firm arms from falling to the ground.



CHAPTER IV

BEASTS

The city rippled into light. It bloomed, blossom on blossom, like some enchanted jungle under the heavy summer sky. Dickie sat on a bench in Washington Square. He sat forward, his hands hanging between his knees, his lips parted, and he watched the night. It seemed to him that it was filled with the clamor of iron-throated beasts running to and fro after their prey. The heat was a humid, solid, breathless weight—a heat unknown to Millings. Dickie wore his threadbare blue serge suit. It felt like a garment of lead.

There were other people on the benches—limp and sodden outlines. Dickie had glanced at them and had glanced away. He did not want to think that he looked like one of these—half-crushed insects,—bruised into immobility. A bus swept round the corner and moved with a sort of topheavy, tipsy dignity under the white arch. It was loaded with humanity, its top black with heads. "It ain't a crowd," thought Dickie; "it's a swarm." His eyes followed the ragged sky-line. "Why is it so horrible?" he asked himself—"horrible and beautiful and sort of poisonous—it plumb scares a fellow—" A diminished moon, battered and dim like a trodden silver coin, stood up above him. By tilting his head he could look directly at it through an opening in the dusty, electric-brightened boughs. The stars were pin-pricks here and there in the dense sky. The city flaunted its easy splendor triumphantly before their pallid insignificance. Tarnished purities, forgotten ecstasies, burned-out inspirations—so the city shouted raucously to its faded firmament.

Dickie's fingers slid into his pocket. The moon had reminded him of his one remaining dime. He might have bought a night's lodging with it, but after one experience of such lodgings he preferred his present quarters. In Dickie's mind there was no association of shame or ignominy with a night spent under the sky. But fear and ignominy tainted and clung to his memory of that other night. He had saved his dime deliberately, going hungry rather than admit to himself that he was absolutely at the end of his resources. To-morrow he would not especially need that dime. He had a job. He would begin to draw pay. In his own phrasing he would "buy him a square meal and rent him a room somewhere." Upon these two prospects his brain fastened with a leech-like persistency. And yet above anything he had faced in his life he dreaded the job and the room. The inspiration of his flight, the impulse that had sped him out of Millings like a fire-tipped arrow, that determination to find Sheila, to rehabilitate himself in her esteem, to serve her, to make a fresh start, had fallen from him like a dead flame. The arrow-flight was spent. He had not found Sheila. He had no way of finding her. She was not at her old address. Her father's friend, the Mr. Hazeldean that had brought Sylvester to Marcus's studio, knew nothing of her. Mrs. Halligan, her former landlady, knew nothing of her. Dickie, having summoned Mrs. Halligan to her doorsill, had looked past her up the narrow, steep staircase. "Did she live away up there?" he had asked. "Yes, sorr. And 't was a climb for the poor little crayture, but there was days when she'd come down it like a burrd to meet her Pa." Dickie had faltered, white and empty-hearted, before the kindly Irishwoman who remembered so vividly Sheila's downward, winged rush of welcome. For several hours after his visit to the studio building he had wandered aimlessly about, then his hunger had bitten at him and he had begun to look for work. It was not difficult to find. A small restaurant displayed a need of waiters. Dickie applied. He had often "helped out" in that capacity, as in most others, at The Aura. He cited his experience, referred to Mr. Hazeldean, and was engaged. The pay seemed to him sufficient to maintain life. So much for that! Then he went to his bench and watched the day pant itself into the night. His loneliness was a pitiful thing; his utter lack of hope or inspiration was a terrible thing.

But as the night went slowly by, he faced this desolation with extraordinary fortitude. It was part of that curious detachment, that strange gift of impersonal observation. Dickie bore no grudges against life. His spirit had a fashion of standing away, tiptoe, on wings. It stood so now like a presence above the miserable, half-starved body that occupied the bench and suffered the sultriness of August and the pains of abstinence. Dickie's wide eyes, that watched the city and found it horrible and beautiful and frightening, were entirely empty of bitterness and of self-pity. They had a sort of wistful patience.

There came at last a cool little wind and under its ministration Dickie let fall his head on his arms and slept. He was blessed by a dream: shallow water clapping over a cobbled bed, the sharp rustle of wind-edged aspen leaves, and two stars, tender and misty, that bent close and smiled. He woke up and stared at the city. He got up and walked about. He was faint now and felt chilled, although the asphalt was still soft underfoot and smelled of hot tar. As he moved listlessly along the pavement, a girl brushed against him, looked up, and murmured to him. She was small and slight. His heart seemed to leap away from the contact and then to leap almost irresistibly to meet it. He turned away and went back quickly toward the Square. It seemed to him that he was followed. He looked over his shoulder furtively. But the girl had disappeared and there was no one in sight but a man who walked unsteadily. Dickie suddenly knew why he had saved that dime. The energy of a definite purpose came to him. He remembered a swinging door back there around a corner, but when he reached the saloon, it was closed. Dickie had a humiliating struggle with tears. He went back to his bench and sat there, trembling and swearing softly to himself. He had not the strength to look farther. He was no longer the Dickie of Millings, a creature possessed of loneliness and vacancy and wandering fancies, he was no longer Sheila's lover, he was a prey to strong desires. In truth, thought Dickie, seeking even now with his deprecatory smile for likenesses and words, the city was full of beasts, silent and stealthy and fanged. That spirit, aloof, maintained its sweet detachment. Beneath its observation Dickie fought with a grim, unreasoning panic that was very like the fear of a man pursued by wolves.



CHAPTER V

NEIGHBOR NEIGHBOR

Even in the shadow of after events, those first two months at Miss Blake's ranch swam like a golden galleon through Sheila's memory. Never had she felt such well-being of body, mind, and soul. Never had she known such dawns and days, such dusks, such sapphire nights. Sleep came like a highwayman to hold up an eager traveler, but came irresistibly. It caught her up out of life as it catches up a healthy child. Never before had she worked so heartily: out of doors in the vegetable garden; indoors in the sunny kitchen, its windows and door open to the tonic air; never before had she eaten so heartily. Nothing had tasted like the trout they caught in Hidden Creek, like the juicy, sweet vegetables they picked from their own laborious rows, like the berries they gathered in nervous anticipation of that rival berryer, the brown bear. And Miss Blake's casual treatment of her, half-bluff, half-mocking, her curt, good-humored commands, her cordial bullying, were a rest to nerves more raveled than Sheila knew from her experience in Millings. She grew rosy brown; her hair seemed to sparkle along its crisp ripples; her little throat filled itself out, round and firm; she walked with a spring and a swing; she sang and whistled, no Mrs. Hudson near to scowl at her. Dish-washing was not drudgery, cooking was a positive pleasure. Everything smelt so good. She was always shutting her eyes to enjoy the smell of things, forgetting to listen in order to taste thoroughly, forgetting to look in the delight of listening to such musical silences, and forgetting even to breathe in the rapture of sight ... Miss Blake and she put up preserves, and Sheila had to invent jests to find some pretext for her laughter, so ridiculous was the look of that broad square back, its hair short above the man's flannel collar, and the apron-strings tied pertly above the very wide, slightly worn corduroy breeches and the big boots. Sheila was always thinking of a certain famous Puss of fairy-tale memory, and biting her tongue to keep it from the epithet. After Hilliard gave her the black horse and she began to explore the mountain game trails, her life seemed as full of pleasantness as it could hold. And yet ... with just that gift of Hilliard's, the overshadowing of her joy began. No, really before that, with his first visit.

That was in late September when the nights were frosty and Miss Blake had begun to cut and stack her wood for winter, and to use it for a crackling hearth-fire after supper. They were sitting before such a fire when Hilliard came.

Miss Blake sat man-fashion on the middle of her spine, her legs crossed, a magazine in her hands, and on her blunt nose a pair of large, black-rimmed spectacles. Her feet and hands and her cropped head, though big for a woman's, looked absurdly small in comparison to the breadth of her hips and shoulders. She was reading the "Popular Science Monthly." This and the "Geographic" and "Current Events" were regularly taken by her and most thoroughly digested. She read with keen intelligence; her comments were as shrewd as a knife-edge. The chair she sat in was made from elk-horns and looked like the throne of some Norse chieftain. Behind her on the wall hung the stuffed head of a huge walrus, his tusks gleaming, the gift of that exploring brother who seemed to be her only living relative. There were other tokens of his wanderings, a polar-bear skin, an ivory Eskimo spear. As a more homelike trophy Miss Blake had hung an elk head which she herself had laid low, a very creditable shot, though out of season. She had been short of meat. In the corner was a pianola topped by piles of record-boxes. At her feet lay Berg, the dog, snoring faintly and as cozy as a kitten.

The firelight made Miss Blake's face and hair ruddier than usual; her eyes, when she raised them for a glance at Sheila, looked as though they were full of red sparks which might at any instant break into flame. Sheila was wearing one of her flimsy little black frocks, recovered from the wrinkles of its journey, and she had decorated her square-cut neck with some yellow flowers. On these Miss Blake's eyes rested every now and then with a sardonic gleam.

Outside Hidden Creek told its interminable chattering tale, centuries long, the little skinny horse cropped getting his difficult meal with his few remaining teeth. They could hear the dogs move with a faint rattle of chains. Sometimes there would be a distant rushing sound, a snow-slide thousands of feet above their heads on the mountain. Above these familiar sounds there came, at about eight o'clock that evening, the rattle of horse's hoofs through the little stream and at the instant broke out the hideous clamor of the dogs, a noise that never failed to whiten Sheila's cheeks.

Miss Blake sat up straight and snatched off her spectacles. She looked at Sheila with a hard look.

"Have you been sending out invitations, Sheila?" she asked.

"No, of course not," Sheila had flushed. She could guess whose horse's hoofs were trotting across the little clearing.

A man's voice spoke to the dogs commandingly. Miss Blake's eyebrows came down over her eyes. A man's step struck the porch. A man's knock rapped sharply at the door.

"Come in!" said Miss Blake. She spoke it like a sentry's challenge.

The door opened and there stood Cosme Hilliard, hat in hand, his smiling Latin mouth showing the big white Saxon teeth.

Sheila had not before quite realized his good looks. Now, all his lithe, long gracefulness was painted for her against a square of purple night. The clean white silk shirt fitted his broad shoulders, the wide rider's belt clung to his supple waist, the leather chaps were shaped to his Greek hips and thighs. No civilized man's costume could so have revealed and enhanced his beautiful strength. And above the long body his face glowed with its vivid coloring, the liquid golden eyes that moved easily under their lids, the polished black hair sleekly brushed, the red-brown cheeks, the bright lips, flexible and curved, of his Spanish mother.

"Who in God's name are you?" demanded Miss Blake in her deepest voice.

"This is Mr. Hilliard," Sheila came forward. "He is the man that brought me over The Hill, Miss Blake—after I'd lost my horse, you know." There was some urgency in Sheila's tone, a sort of prod to courtesy. Miss Blake settled back on her spine and recrossed her legs.

"Well, come in," she said, "and shut the door. No use frosting us all, is there?" She resumed her spectacles and her reading of the "Popular Science Monthly."

Hilliard, still smiling, bowed to her, took Sheila's hand for an instant, then moved easily across the room and settled on his heels at one corner of the hearth. He had been riding, it would seem, in the thin silk shirt and had found the night air crisp. He rolled a cigarette with the hands that had first drawn Sheila's notice as they held his glass on the bar; gentleman's hands, clever, sensitive, carefully kept. From his occupation, he looked up at Miss Blake audaciously.

"You'd better make friends with me, ma'am," he said, "because we're going to be neighbors."

"How's that?"

"I'm taking up my homestead right down here below you on Hidden Creek a ways. About six miles below your ford."

Miss Blake's face filled with dark blood. She said nothing, put up her magazine.

Sheila, however, exclaimed delightedly, "Taken up a homestead?"

"Yes, ma'am." He turned his floating, glowing look to her and there it stayed almost without deviation during the rest of his visit. "I've built me a log house—a dandy. I had a man up from Rusty to help me. I've bought me a cow. I'm getting my furnishings ready. That's what I've been doing these two months."

"And never rode up to call on us?" Sheila reproached him.

"No, ma'am. I'll tell you the reason for that. I wasn't sure of myself." She opened rather puzzled and astonished eyes at this, but for an instant his look went beyond her and remembered troubling things. "You see, Miss Arundel, I'm not used to settling down. That's something that I've had no practice in. I'm impatient. I get tired quickly. Damn quickly. I change my mind. It's the worst thing in me—a sort of devil-horse always thirsty for new things. It's touch and go with him. He runs with me. You see, I've always given him his head." His look had come back to her face and dwelt there speaking for him a language headier than that of his tongue. "I thought I'd tie the dern fool down to some good tough work and test him out. Well, ma'am, he hasn't quit on me this time. I think he won't. I've got a ball and chain round about that cloven foot." He drew at his cigarette, half-veiling in smoke the ardor of his look. "I'd like to show you my house, Miss Arundel. It's fine. I worked with a builder one season when I was a lad. I've got it peeled inside. The logs shine and I've got a fireplace twice the size of this in my living-room"—he made graceful gestures with the hand that held the cigarette. "Yes, ma'am, a living-room, and a kitchen, and," with a whimsical smile, "a butler's pantry. And, oh, a great big bedroom that gets the morning sun." He paused an instant and flushed from chin to brow, an Anglo-Saxon flush it was, but the bold Latin eyes did not fall. "I've made some furnishings already. And I've sent out an order for kitchen stuff."

Here Miss Blake changed the crossing of her legs. Sheila was angry with herself because she was consumed with the contagion of his blush. She wished that he would not look as if he had seen the blush and was pleased by it. She wished that his clean young strength and beauty and the ardor of his eyes did not speak quite so eloquently.

"I bought a little black horse about so high"—he held his hand an absurd distance from the floor and laughed—"just the size for a little girl and—do you know who I'm going to give him to?"

Here Miss Blake got up, strode to the pianola, adjusted it, and sat down, broad and solid and unabashed by absence of feminine draperies, upon the stool. She played a comic song.

"I don't like your family—"

in some such dreadful way it expressed itself—

"They do not look good to me. I don't think your Uncle John Ever had a collar on ..."

She played it very loud.

Hilliard stood up and came close to Sheila.

"She's mad as a March hare," he whispered, "and she doesn't like me a little bit. Come out while I patch up Dusty, won't you, please? It's moonlight. I'll be going." He repeated this very loud for Miss Blake's benefit with no apparent effect upon her enjoyment of the song. She was rocking to its rhythm.

Hilliard was overwhelmed suddenly by the appearance of her. He put his hand to his mouth and bolted. Sheila, following, found him around the corner of the house rocking and gasping with mirth. He looked at her through tears.

"Puss-in-Boots," he gasped, and Sheila ran to the edge of the clearing to be safe in a mighty self-indulgence.

There they crouched like two children till their laughter spent itself. Hilliard was serious first.

"You're a bad, ungrateful girl," he said weakly, "to laugh at a sweet old lady like that."

"Oh, I am!" Sheila took it almost seriously. "She's been wonderful to me."

"I bet she works you," he said jealously.

"Oh, no. Not a bit too hard. I love it."

"Well," he admitted, "you do look pretty fine, that's a fact. Better than you did at Hudson's. What did you quit for?"

Sheila was sober enough now. The moonlight let some of its silver, uncaught by the twinkling aspen leaves, splash down on her face. It seemed to flicker and quiver like the leaves. She shook her head.

He looked a trifle sullen. "Oh, you won't tell me.... Funny idea, you being a barmaid. Hudson's notion, wasn't it?"

Sheila lifted her clear eyes. "I thought asking questions wasn't good manners in the West."

"Damn!" he said. "Don't you make me angry! I've got a right to ask you questions."

She put her hand up against the smooth white trunk of the tree near which she stood. She seemed to grow a little taller.

"Oh, have you? I don't think I quite understand how you got any such right. And you like to be questioned yourself?"

She had him there, had him rather cruelly, though he was not aware of the weapon of her suspicion. She felt a little ashamed when she saw him wince. He slapped his gloves against his leather chaps, looking at her with hot, sulky eyes.

"Oh, well... I beg your pardon.... Listen—" He flung his ill-humor aside and was sweet and cool again like the night. "Are you going to take the little horse?"

"I don't know."

His face shadowed and fell so expressively, so utterly, that she melted.

"Oh," he stammered, half-turning from her, "I was sure. I brought him up."

This completed the melting process. "Of course I'll take him!" she cried. "Where is he?"

She inspected the beautiful little animal by the moonlight. She even let Hilliard mount her on the shining glossy back and rode slowly about clinging to his mane, ecstatic over the rippling movement under her.

"He's like a rocking-chair," said Cosme. "You can ride him all day and not feel it." He looked about the silver meadow. "Good feed here, isn't there? I bet he'll stay. If not, I'll get him for you."

Sheila slipped down. They left the horse to graze.

"Yes, it's first-rate feed. Do you think Miss Blake will let me keep him?"

His answer was entirely lost by a sudden outbreak from the dogs.

"Good Lord!" said Cosme, making himself heard, "what a breed! Isn't that awful! Why does she keep the brutes? Isn't she scared they'll eat her?"

Sheila shook her head. Presently the tumult quieted down. "They're afraid of her," she said. "She has a dreadful whip. She likes to bully them. I think she's rather cruel. But she does love Berg; she says he's the only real dog in the pack."

"Was Berg the one on the bearskin inside?"

"Yes."

"He's sure a beauty. But I don't like him. He has wolf eyes. See here—you're shivering. I've kept you out here in the cold. I'll go. Good-night. Thank you for keeping the horse. Will you come down to see my house? I built it"—he drawled the words—"for you"—and added after a tingling moment—"to see, ma'am."

This experiment in words sent Sheila to the house, her hand crushed and aching with his good-bye grasp, her heart jumping with a queer fright.

Miss Blake stood astraddle on the hearth, her hands behind her back.

"You better go to bed, Sheila," she said; "it's eleven o'clock and to-morrow's wash-day."

Her voice was pleasant enough, but its bluffness had a new edge. Sheila found it easy to obey. She climbed up the ladder to the little gabled loft which was her bedroom. Halfway up she paused to assert a belated independence of spirit. "Good-night," she said, "how do you like our neighbor?"

Miss Blake stared up. Her lips were set tight. She made no answer. After an instant she sauntered across the room and out of the door. The whip with which she beat the dogs swung in her hand. A moment later a fearful howling and yelping showed that some culprit had been chosen for condign punishment.

Sheila set down her candle, sat on the edge of her cot, and covered her ears with her hands. When it was over she crept into bed. She felt, though she chided herself for the absurdity, like a naughty child who has been forcibly reminded of the consequences of rebellion.



CHAPTER VI

A HISTORY AND A LETTER

The next morning, it seemed Miss Blake's humor had completely changed. It showed something like an apologetic softness. She patted Sheila's shoulder when she passed the girl at work. When Hilliard next appeared, a morning visit this time, he was bidden to share their dinner; he was even smiled upon.

"She's not such a bad old girl, is she?" he admitted when Sheila had been given a half-holiday and was riding on the black horse beside Hilliard on his Dusty across one of the mountain meadows.

"I think she's a dear," said Sheila, pink with gratitude; then, shadowing, "If only she wouldn't beat the dogs and would give up trapping."

"Why in thunder shouldn't she trap?"

"I loathe trapping. Do you remember how you felt in the pen? It's bad enough to shoot down splendid wild things for food, but, to trap them!—small furry things or even big furry things like bears, why, it's cruel! It's hideously cruel! When a woman does it—"

"Come, now, don't call her a woman!"

"Yes, she is. Think of the aprons! And she is so tidy."

"That's not just a woman's virtue."

"Maybe not. I'm not sure. But I've a feeling that it was Eve who first discovered dust."

"Very bad job if she did. Think of all the bother we've been going through ever since."

"There!" Sheila triumphed. "To you it's just bother. You're a man. To me it's a form of sport.... I wonder what Miss Blake's story is."

"You mean—?" He turned in his saddle to stare wonderingly at her. "You don't know?"

"No." Sheila blushed confusedly. "I—I don't know anything about her—"

"Good Lord!" He whistled softly. "Sometimes those ventures turn out all right." He looked dubious. "I'm glad I'm here!"

Sheila's smile slipped sweetly across her mouth and eyes. "So am I. But," she added after a thoughtful moment, "I don't know much about your story either, do I?"

"I might say something about asking questions," began Cosme with grimness, but changed his tone quickly with a light, apologetic touch on her arm, "but—but I won't. I ran away from school when I was fourteen and I've been knocking around the West ever since."

"What school?" asked Sheila.

He did not answer for several minutes. They had come to the end of the meadow and were mounting a slope on a narrow trail where the ponies seemed to nose their way among the trees. Now and then Sheila had to put out her hand to push her knee away from a threatening trunk. Below were the vivid paintbrush flowers and the blue mountain lupine and all about the nymph-white aspens with leaves turning to restless gold against the sky. The horses moved quietly with a slight creaking of saddles. There was a feeling of stealth, of mystery—that tiptoe breathless expectation of Pan pipes.... At last Cosme turned in his saddle, rested his hand on the cantle, and looked at Sheila from a bent face with troubled eyes.

"It was an Eastern school," he said. "No doubt you've heard of it. It was Groton."

The name here in these Wyoming woods brought a picture as foreign as the artificiality of a drawing-room.

"Groton? You ran away?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Sheila's suspicions were returning forcibly. "I'll have to ask questions, Mr. Hilliard, because it seems so strange—what you are now, and your running away and never having been brought back to the East by—by whoever it was that sent you to Groton."

"I want you to ask questions," he said rather wistfully. "You have the right."

This forced her into something of a dilemma. She ignored it and waited, looking away from him. He would not leave her this loophole, however.