He turned from the telephone with a wry smile. "John's coming down."

"He's been worse than a wolverine since Doug left," said Judith.

"How do you and he get along?" asked Peter, sitting down to his belated supper.

"O, I patch along for Mother's sake. But it's no way to live! I don't see what Dad gets out of his own ugliness."

"You'd probably find out, if he'd tell you the truth, that John doesn't consider himself ugly-tempered. He'd admit he was firm and misunderstood and unappreciated." Peter smiled grimly.

Judith laughed. "Well, thank heaven John doesn't belong to me, and I don't belong to him!" She sipped a cup of coffee slowly, her eyes on Douglas in his uneasy sleep.

He was still asleep when John came in. He nodded to Peter then strode over to the bed, where he stood for a moment scowling down at his son, his lower lip caught between his teeth. Douglas opened his eyes.

"Douglas," said John hoarsely, "before I go out after Scott, tell me all is straight between you and me. Judith made up, long ago."

"That's a whopper!" exclaimed Judith. "I'll never forgive you as long as I live! I'm just sticking round for Mother's sake. My mother that once could ride an unbroken mule. When I think of that—" She paused as Peter laid a hand on her arm.

"It's not a matter of making up," said Douglas. "It wasn't a thing you could make up. It was just one more fact to knock a fellow's faith in life's being a straight deal."

John did not answer for a moment, but something very like a blush rolled over his tanned face. For the first time in his life, perhaps, he felt that he had done something shameful. But he made no admission.

"You'll come home and let us nurse you, Doug?" he asked when the blush had gone.

"I guess I'd better stay with Peter. I never want to come home while Judith believes I squealed to Charleton."

"Jude doesn't believe anything of the kind. She's just a flighty, fool girl."

"Thanks, dear Father!" sniffed Judith.

John did not glance at the girl. He was watching Douglas eagerly. "I thought it was me that kept you away from home. I can make Jude apologize as soon as I get Scott back here. If I clear that up, then will you come home, old boy?"

"Yes, I guess so. But that won't keep me from settling with Scott for to-night."

"Sure! But you get well, Dougie!" John turned from the bed with the look of sullenness wiped as by magic from his face.

Douglas stared at Judith. His mind was confused but he realized that the loneliness and despondency of the day was gone. He was blindly angry with Scott yet grateful to the event which had brought Judith to his aid.

John held a low-voiced colloquy with Peter as to the nature of Douglas' wound; then with a cheerful goodnight, he went out. Douglas closed his eyes.

"You fix yourself up a bed on the floor, Judith," said Peter. "I'll keep the fire going and an eye on Douglas. To-morrow you can take your turn."

Judith answered pleadingly, "I'm not tired or sleepy, Peter. And I almost never get a chance to talk alone with you. Let me sit up with you!"

Peter's long, harsh face softened. "All right, Jude! We'll keep the old coffee-pot going and make a night of it. Then—"

He was interrupted by the sound of wordy altercation among the dogs outside. Judith cocked a knowing ear. "Wolf Cub's in trouble! I'd better let him in, Peter. He and Sister will snarl and quarrel all night. They get along about like Dad and I do."

"It'll break Sister's heart, but go ahead. I always tell her, guests first," said Peter.

Judith opened the door a crack and whistled. There was a rush outside of many paws, and Wolf Cub's long gray muzzle appeared in the narrow orifice. There was a scramble, a yip from Wolf Cub, and he was inside, licking Judith's hand and trying to climb into Peter's lap at the same time. He was two-thirds grown now and as big as a day-old calf. Judith gazed at him with utter pride. "Isn't he a lamb, Peter? Now, you get over in the corner, Wolf, and don't let me hear a sound from you to-night!"

The great puppy looked up into her face with ears cocked, then turned slowly and crept into the corner indicated and with a groan lay down. Peter jerked his head in admiration.

"You are some person, Jude! Keep boiling water going. I'm going to wash that wound of Doug's every hour. This cattle country is the devil for infection."

"Oughtn't we to take him up to Mountain City?" asked Jude, in sudden anxiety. "We could get Young Jeff's auto."

"At the first sign of trouble, I will," replied Peter. "But I think I've had more experience with gunshot wounds than Doc Winston's had."

There was a renewed sound of scratching and whining at the door. Douglas opened his eyes. "Better let Prince in long enough to see that I'm all right," he said.

Peter groaned. "Another insult to Sister! However, if he and the pup won't fight—"

"I'll answer for Wolf Cub." Judith tossed a warning glance at the corner where gray ears were twitching restlessly.

Peter opened the door carefully. Sister and Prince stormed in. There was a mix-up, during which the pup did not stir from his corner and Sister was shoved out the door, snapping at Prince as she went. Prince wagged his tail at Judith and Peter, then put his forepaws on the bed and gazed anxiously at Douglas. He sniffed at the wounded shoulder, wriggled and gave a short, sharp bark.

Doug opened his eyes. "It's all right, Prince."

Prince licked Doug's cheek.

"So that's understood," said Peter, taking Prince by the collar, "and you can just step out and talk it over with gentle little Sister."

Douglas closed his eyes again. Judith sat down on the floor, her back against the bed. Peter lighted his pipe and put a fresh panful of towels on to boil, before settling himself in his homemade armchair.

"I understand Scott gave you a little blue roan that's a real bucker," he said.

"He didn't give him to me. It was pay for some work I did for him."

"Uhuh! What do you aim to do with him?"

"Keep him unbroke for the Fourth of July rodeo. And, Peter, I'm going to enter my Sioux bull for some stunts."

"Dangerous work, I'd say. What kind of stunts?"

The young girl chuckled. "You wait and see! That Sioux weighs a good two thousand pounds and he thinks he's a bear cub!"

"Bear cub! I don't know what John Spencer's thinking of!" grunted Peter.

"John doesn't think. He just feels," said Judith. There was a short silence which the girl broke by saying, "Peter, were you ever in love?"

The postmaster took his pipe from his mouth, stared at Judith's earnest eyes, put the pipe back and replied, "Yes."

"How many times?"

"How many times? Can you really be in love more than once, Judith?"

"Now, what's the use of saying that to me, Peter? I'm not a baby!"

"In many ways you are," returned Peter, serenely. "Why this interest in love? What's his name?"

"I'm not sure it's any one. But of course I think a lot about it. You aren't laughing, are you, Peter?"

"God forbid! I feel much more like crying."

Judith smiled up at him, doubtfully.

"Crying?"

"Yes; you are so young, Jude. I hate to think of your dreams going by you."

"Well, I'm not such a kid as you think I am. I'll bet I know all there is to know about love."

"My God, Judith, you don't even know the real thing when it's offered you. All you know is the rot you've seen all your life. Love!" Peter snorted derisively.

Judith gave a little shiver of excitement. "Well, if you know so much about love, Peter, what is it?"

"I don't know what it is, except that all of it, every aspect of it, understand, is bred right here." He tapped his forehead. "It begins in the brain, not in the body. Love is not lust, Judith."

Judith scowled thoughtfully. Peter let the thought soak in; then he said, "And when real love comes, it takes possession of your mind and turns it into heaven and hell."

"Is that the way it came to you, Peter?"

"Yes!"

"How many times?"

"Twice. And I wouldn't want to endure it again."

"There's a poem like that," said Judith, somewhat blushingly, "Do you mind poetry? I read lots of it."

"One should at sixteen," returned the postmaster. "No, I don't mind poetry. What were you thinking of?"

Judith, still blushing, gave a cautious glance at the bed and began:

"He who for love hath undergone The worst that can befall, Is happier thousandfold than he Who never loved at all.

A grace within his soul hath reigned Which nothing else can bring. Thank God for all that I have gained By that high suffering!"

Peter, watching Judith with something deeply sad in his blue eyes, nodded when she had finished. "Youth!" he muttered. "Youth!"

"Do you believe it, Peter?" demanded Judith.

"Yes, I do. Girl, how much high suffering will you get out of your goings on with Scott?"

"None at all, Peter."

"I wish I were twenty years younger," said Peter.

"If you were twenty years younger you wouldn't be as wise as you are now."

"And what happiness has wisdom brought me?" exclaimed Peter.

"It must be mighty fine to really know things," said Judith.

"What kind of things?"

"O, love and all that kind of thing."

"I'd like a drink of water, please!" Douglas opened his eyes.

"Have you been listening, Douglas?" demanded Judith.

"I don't think I missed any of it," Doug smiled. "You're growing up, Jude."

Judith tossed her head. "I think it was rotten of you to listen to my conversation with another man!" And although she and Peter talked in a desultory way until dawn, the vasty subject of love was not mentioned again.

About ten o'clock the next morning Charleton Falkner came to see Douglas. He hardly had established himself when the thunder of many hoofs sounded without, a wrangling of dogs began, and John Spencer thrust open the door to Peter's living quarters. He was spattered with mud from head to foot. So was Scott Parsons, who followed him, as well as Sheriff Frank Day and Jimmy Day, who brought up the procession.

Judith, who had been washing dishes, hastily dumped the dish-water out of the window. Charleton, with his familiar, sardonic grin, propped Douglas up on a pillow.

"What're you bringing him in here for, John?" demanded Peter harshly. "Doug's in no state for a row."

"I don't know why not!" exclaimed Douglas coolly. "I don't have to talk or listen with my shoulder. Where'd you pick him up, Dad?"

"Never mind that!" replied John impatiently. "He's here. What do you want done with him, Doug?"

All eyes focused on Scott. In mud-spattered chaps and leather coat, his sombrero on the back of his head, a cigarette hanging from his hard, handsome mouth, Scott leaned easily against the table, eying Judith. Douglas looked from Scott to Judith and from Judith out of the window where beyond the yellow green of rabbit bush that carpeted the valley there lay the green shadow of the Forest Reserve. After a moment's thought he said:

"What made you draw on me like that, Scott?"

"I thought you'd pulled your gun."

"I punched you right and left. You knew I hadn't pulled a gun. As far as I'm concerned, you're too free and easy with that six-shooter of yours."

"Me, too," agreed the sheriff, scratching Prince's ear.

"He's the gun pullingest guy in the Rockies," volunteered Jimmy.

"All I want to say," Doug announced, "is that when I get use of my shooting arm again, I'm going to pot Scott on sight."

Peter looked at Douglas' tanned face beneath the tumbled golden hair.

"Let's sit down," said Peter, "and go over this thing carefully. Scott's leading with the wrong foot in this valley, but I don't know as shooting him on sight is the answer."

Scott and Jimmy perched on the table, John and Judith on the foot of the bed. The others found chairs. Doug stared at Peter, at first with resentment, then with an air of curiosity.

"Don't you try any soft stuff, Peter!" protested John. "Scott's worn his welcome out in Lost Chief and that's all there is to it."

"My folks came here a year before yours did, John," retorted Scott. "I've got as good a right in this valley as anybody."

"Nobody that makes a nuisance of himself has got any rights in this valley," asserted Douglas. "I suppose you think because your grandfather killed Indians here you've got a right to shoot white men. Well, sir, I'm going to teach you different."

"Pot-shooting at him isn't going to teach him anything except perhaps what is over the Great Divide, Doug," said Peter dryly.

Scott laughed sardonically.

"The law has got something to say in this case," announced the sheriff, lighting a small black pipe.

"No, it hasn't," exclaimed Douglas; "not if I don't want it to."

"You aren't the whole of Lost Chief, Doug," said Charleton. "I've got a small grudge to settle with Scott, myself."

"And I've got several," added John.

"Enjoy yourself, folks," suggested Scott, winking openly at Judith over the cigarette he was lighting.

This infuriated John. "Jude, you clear out! Scott, you blank-blank—"

Douglas flung up a protesting hand. "O, cut that, Dad! Judith, you stay right where you are. You're at the bottom of this whole trouble and I want you to see and hear it."

"Draw it mild, Douglas!" protested the postmaster.

"Don't bother about me," said Jude. "I sure-gawd can take care of myself."

"What happens next?" inquired Jimmy Day.

Nobody spoke for a moment; then very deliberately, Peter turned to the sheriff.

"You remember Doug's mother, don't you, Frank? I can't help thinking how much he looks like her, to-day, although he's the image of John."

"Remember her! I tried for five years to get her to marry me. But her old dad wouldn't stand for it."

"You mean she couldn't see you because of me, Frank!" exclaimed John, a sudden light in his handsome eyes.

Douglas again favored the postmaster with a contemplative stare.

"Some old wolf, her dad, I've heard," Peter went on.

"He was," agreed the sheriff. "He ran the valley and he ran it right. Every Fourth of July he made a speech about making Lost Chief the Plymouth Rock of the West."

Charleton Falkner roared. "I remember those speeches!"

Peter was grinning. "But in spite of them, from what I've heard I believe he came mighty near being a great man, old Bill Douglas."

"What did he lack?" demanded Douglas suddenly.

"Religion!" answered Peter, promptly.

"Religion? What's that?" asked John with a guffaw. "You never had any, Peter."

"Right!" agreed Peter. "Worse luck for me that I didn't have that kind of a mind. But I know any kind of a social idea fails without it. And I know if old Bill Douglas had built a church up there beside the schoolhouse, the chances are that Scott wouldn't have plugged Douglas last night. And mind, I don't believe in God, or the hereafter, or any of the dope they drug you with."

"What the hell are you driving at, Peter?" demanded Charleton.

"Say," shouted John, "is this a trial or a sermon?"

"It's neither," replied Peter. "We're just talking things over. My idea is that Doug shall sort of sit in judgment on Scott and the rest of us abide by his decision."

"Now, listen here!" exclaimed Scott. "This may be a funny joke, but I don't see it!"

Charleton laughed. "I'm with you, Peter. Only that won't pay my grudge."

John laughed too, with a little glance of pride toward his son's set, white face. "I'm on! Make it include his leaving Jude alone."

"Aw, you folks act plumb loco!" snarled Scott.

"Wait and see! Wait and see!" protested Peter. "And while Doug thinks it over, let me add something to what we were saying about old Bill Douglas. He used to act as a kind of unofficial judge in the valley?"

The others nodded.

"Did he ever," Peter went on, "make an important decision that he didn't try to look to the good and the future of Lost Chief? At least, I gathered that from the things Doug's mother used to tell me about the old man's pipe dreams."

John spoke soberly. "He was a just man. They don't make 'em that way any more."

"He was more than just," insisted Peter. "He was forward looking. But he led with the wrong foot. He laughed at the church."

"Sure he did," agreed Charleton. "Why not? Remember old Fowler? A fine sample of the church!"

Peter rose and paced the floor a minute. "Let me tell you folks something. I laugh at the cant they've wrapped the church up in. But I don't laugh at the system of ethics Christ taught. I'm here to tell you folks, He put out the finest, most workable system of ethics the world has ever known. And folks can't live together without a system of ethics."

"It's a wonder you don't subscribe to 'em, Peter," jibed Charleton.

"It's too late. But that don't say that I don't realize clearly that I've failed in life because of it. What do you say to that, Charleton?"

Charleton's lips twisted.

"Why all the Saints and Sages who discuss'd Of the two Worlds so wisely—they are thrust Like foolish Prophets forth: their Words to Scorn Are scattered and their mouths are stopt with Dust."

John laughed. Peter shrugged his shoulders and said, "Suit yourselves. As for me I believe everybody is destined sooner or later to deal squarely with right and wrong. Sooner or later every community has to wrestle with the question of social ethics, or fail. Fate has written it of Lost Chief. You'll see."

"I'm with you there." Frank Day spoke soberly. "I believe in fate. You can't ride these hills and not. It's all written beforehand."

Douglas cleared his throat. "I've got an idea," hesitatingly. "I've been thinking for a long time that somebody in Lost Chief that has a homestead right ought to homestead that shoulder of Lost Chief mountain that cuts off Elijah Nelson from our valley. If we don't, he will. I can't do it because I'm not of age. But Scott can, and he can find plenty of work for that six-shooter of his, worrying the Mormons and keeping 'em out of Lost Trail. I'll agree to let Scott alone if he'll let me alone and undertake that job."

There was silence, Scott staring at Douglas with a mixture of contempt, belligerency and surprise in his face.

"But," protested John, "that's no punishment, and it don't say a thing about Judith!"

Douglas shifted his feet impatiently. "I'm not going to punish any guy for running after Jude. That's a fair fight. What I'm sore about is his lying about me and shooting at me when I wasn't armed."

"I'd planned," said Scott gruffly, "to try to buy back our old place from the Browns. They've got more than they can carry and I'm sure getting nowhere renting that piece from Charleton."

"And," suggested Charleton with a grin, "if you encourage those broncos of yours, they each might have three or four slicks every spring, and if you keep up practice with the blacksnake on the old milch cow—"

"Dry up, Charleton!" exclaimed Peter. "What do you think of the idea, Frank?"

"It ain't bad," answered the sheriff slowly, "though I ain't afraid of the Mormons coming in."

"That's where you are wrong," said Charleton. "They are going to get Lost Chief Valley by any straight or crooked method they can think up. With an ornery devil like Scott to climb over, they won't try to come in that entrance, that's sure."

"How about it, Scott?" asked the sheriff.

"I'd just as soon, and I'd just as soon say that I sure went crazy when Doug gave me those two good ones and I did what I wouldn't have done if I'd taken time to think."

"Well," grinned Douglas, "nobody is going to kick if you don't take time to think over in the Mormon valley."

Sheriff Day rose with a laugh. "I've got to get to the alfalfa field I'm plowing. Come on, Jimmy."

Jimmy rose to his good six feet of height and pulled on his gloves. "I feel like I'd been praying," he said. "That is, if I'd ever heard a prayer, I'd say so." He made a face at Judith and followed his father.

John Spencer looked from Douglas to Peter and from Peter to Charleton with a little lift of his chin. Then he said, "When are you coming home, Doug?"

"Not till Jude believes I didn't tell on her last summer."

"I'll get the truth out of Scott!" exclaimed John, drawing his six-shooter.

"Aw, put it up, John, you feather-brain you," drawled Scott. "I told Charleton, Jude. He paid me for the information. I never supposed he'd hold it against a girl."

Judith turned very red. "Scott Parsons, I hope you go up that Mormon valley and that they get you, you blank-blank double-crosser you!"

Scott shrugged his shoulders. Judith glared at each of the men in turn. "I hate you all, every one of you!" she cried. "What chance has a girl among you? You're just like a lot of coyotes after a rabbit!"

"Rabbit! Say lynx-cat, Jude!" laughed John.

Judith tossed her head and rushed out of the room. The men laughed hugely as she banged the door. Only Douglas remained sober.

"Well," said John, "I suppose you'll be home in a day or two, Doug."

"If Charleton can find some one I will be."

"I'll give him half time," volunteered Scott.

"Nothing doing!" replied Charleton. "Nobody gets a second chance to double-cross me!"

Scott flushed angrily but shrugged his shoulders. Charleton went on, "Of course, Charleton, Jr. won't be able to ride for a month or so but Jimmy Day will help me out in the meantime."

"Son smoke yet?" asked Peter.

"No; I have to spend so much time doing jury duty on my neighbors, I haven't got round to teaching him. He weighs a big ten pounds, the little devil."

"Come on, let's get out," said Scott.

They clanked out, leaving Douglas alone with Peter, and he fell into a long sleep.



CHAPTER VIII

JUDITH AT THE RODEO

"If you break the heart of a thoroughbred, she doesn't even make a good cart horse."

—Mary Spencer.

Late in the afternoon, when Douglas awoke, Judith was sitting beside the bed, chin in palm. Peter was not to be seen. Douglas stared at the young girl until her gaze lifted from the floor and she smiled at him.

"Judith," he said, "it's been a long time, hasn't it?"

Judith nodded. "I've been sitting here thinking how much you've changed. You were just a boy, last summer. Now you look like a man, lying there."

"You've changed yourself. Jude, you're going to be very beautiful."

Judith chuckled. "You and Scott agree on one point, then!"

"Jude! Honestly, I don't see how you can stand that crook!"

"He's a woman's man," said Judith shortly.

"I can't see it!"

"Don't let's quarrel the first thing, Douglas. How is Little Marion?"

"Same as usual. Did you know that she is engaged to Jimmy Day?"

"I knew she ought to be," said Judith bluntly. "They sure make a good-looking pair! When will they be married?"

"When Jimmy has got a good start with his herd. Judith, Charleton isn't a bit like I thought he was."

"He's an ornery mean devil, if you ask me," said Judith succinctly. "He's the worst influence that ever came into your life."

"Did Peter say that?"

"No; I said it. You are too good to waste on Charleton. What has finally waked you up about him?"

"He's always talked to me against marriage and women and children and everything like that. Said awful hard things about 'em, Jude. He really got me to the point this winter where I felt as if marriage was wrong. But do you know, when the boy was born, yesterday morning, he just went plumb loco. He cried and was sentimental like these young fathers you read about in books."

Judith's great eyes widened incredulously. "He was!" She turned this over in her mind for some time, then shook her head. "I give it up. I can't understand men at all. I thought I had Charleton's number. I always did agree with him about marriage."

Douglas drew a quick breath. If men were difficult to understand, how much more so were women, particularly of Judith's type! One never got to the end of them.

"How do you mean that, Judith?" he asked.

"I mean I'd rather be dead than married. Just look at the couples we know, Doug! Just look at 'em!"

"I'm looking at 'em! What's the trouble?" demanded Doug.

"They don't love each other any more. That's all!" Judith tossed her head knowingly.

"Pshaw! How do you know?"

"Because I've watched them for years and studied about it. There is nothing in marriage, Doug. No, sir!"

"Pshaw! And you were sitting and quoting love poetry to Peter last night!"

"Yes, I was! Certainly! I'm not idiot enough to say there's no such thing as love. But I do know that a few years of marriage kills it. Yes, sir!"

Douglas eyed her wistfully. She was so vivid. Yes, vivid, that was the word. Her eyes glowed as if her brain glowed too, and her lips were so full of meanings, too changing and too subtle for him to read. If only they could work out this strange enigma of life together!

"They can't hold out against the years," Judith repeated dreamily. "It's as if love was too delicate for every-day use. They get over caring."

"I wonder why?" said Douglas.

"I think people get sick of each other, Doug! Why, I think a lot more of you, since you've been away for a few months. And I get tired of my own mother, bless her dear old heart, and I love her to death. But she's my mother and I can't stop loving her. But I certainly couldn't stand a man around the house, year after year. No marriage for me! No, sir!"

"But what will you do about love?" asked Douglas.

Judith's burning eyes grew soft. "Cherish it," she answered in a low voice. "Keep it forever. Never murder it by marriage. It's the most wonderful thing that comes into human life."

Douglas smiled sadly. "You talk as if you were a thousand years old, Judith, on the one hand and like a baby on the other. What will you do, marry without love? Somehow the children have got to be cared for by responsible parties."

"Responsible parties!" Jude was derisive. "Do you call Dad a responsible party?"

"He's fed and clothed us."

"What does that amount to?" said Judith largely. "An orphan asylum would do that. The kind of parents kids need are the ones that will answer your questions. I mean the real questions. The ones we don't dare to ask."

"About life and sex and all those things!" Doug nodded understandingly. There was silence, then Doug shook his head. "I don't know how things would go along without marriage. Just you wait until you fall in love and see how you feel. You'll want to marry just like all the rest of us."

"Never! I'm with Inez on that!"

"Inez!"

"Yes, Inez! She's got more sense about living than all the women in this valley put together. And she knows life."

Douglas sighed. "What are some of Inez' ideas about marriage?"

"Well, she just says it won't do! She says that the children have got to be taken care of but that it isn't fair to put the curse of marriage on parents. And she says her way isn't the answer, either, but that anyhow it's honest, which is a darn sight more than a lot of marriages in Lost Chief."

Judith paused to take breath and Douglas asked, "Say, now listen, Jude, was Inez ever in love?"

"She says she's in love right now but she won't say who he is."

"I don't believe she knows what love is! Her ideas aren't worth anything. I've lost faith in these folks that tell you they know life. They're exactly like the rest of us under their skins. I'm getting to believe that we all get happiness in the same way and over mighty few things. Loving and having children, that's about all."

"Inez says it's nothing of the kind; that the only way to be happy is to know what is beautiful when you see it."

"I suppose that's smart," said Douglas crossly, "but I haven't any idea what it means."

"I know what it means; but you never will until you can ride across Fire Mesa with your heart aching because it's so beautiful."

"I don't see where in the world you get the idea that I don't see the beauty in things!" protested Douglas. "I can't gush like a girl and quote poetry, but this sure is a lovely country to me. And I want my children's children to have this valley and hold it till the very bones of their bodies are made out of the dust of Lost Chief. That's how I feel about these old hills. More than that, I can see how a marriage here in Lost Chief might be a life-long dream of beauty."

Judith looked at Douglas with astonishment not unmixed with admiration. But she returned sturdily to her own line of defense.

"Doug, do you see any beautiful marriage around here?"

Douglas stared at her tragically, then answered with a groan: "No, I don't! But," with new firmness, "that's not saying I don't firmly believe I couldn't make marriage a lovely thing."

"Why, do you think you are cleverer than anybody else?"

"Not clever, but—but—" Douglas paused, powerless to tell Judith of that something within him that suddenly told him that his fate was to bring to Lost Chief the thing of the soul it never had had. How or what this was to be, he did not know.

After a time, he said softly, "Judith, were you ever in love?"

Judith returned his look with a curiously impersonal glance. "I'm not sure," she answered slowly. "Not what Inez calls love, that's sure."

"Isn't there any other woman in Lost Chief that could give you ideas except Inez?" asked Douglas impatiently.

"What woman would you suggest?" Judith waggled one foot airily and tossed her head.

"Charleton's wife. She has brain and she's interesting."

"She's too old. I mean she looks at everything from an old-fashioned viewpoint. I wouldn't care what her age was if she could just see things the way they look to a person sixteen or seventeen years old. Now, Inez is awfully modern."

"Modern!" snorted Douglas. "Where'd you read that? It sure is a new word for Inez' kind!"

Judith flushed angrily but was denied a retort, for Peter suddenly appeared in the door.

"What in the world do you children mean by this kind of talk?" he shouted. "I couldn't help hearing while I was sorting mail. What do you mean by thinking such thoughts, Judith? Have you the nerve to admit that you are patterning your ideas on a woman like Inez?"

"I don't care what she is," replied Judith obstinately. "She's the only woman in Lost Chief who can talk about anything but babies and cattle raising. And more than that, and anyhow, I like her."

Peter took a turn or two up and down the room.

"I don't object so much to your liking her," he said, "as I do to your absorbing her cynical ideas."

"Pshaw, Peter! I don't notice you're displaying a wife and a happy home for us to copy after!" sniffed Judith. "What I want you old people to do is to show me by example how practical and true all these fine old precepts are that you are so free about laying down for us kids. Where's your happy marriage, Peter?"

Peter's lips twisted painfully. "My happy marriage is in Limbo, Judith, with the rest of my dreams. As for being old—why, Jude, I'm still in my forties."

"Forty!" gasped Judith.

"Yes, forty; and if I hadn't been a fool I'd still be facing the most useful part of my life. Heaven knows, children, I'm not offering myself or any one else in Lost Chief as an example to you."

"What do you offer?" asked Jude with an impish smile.

Again Peter paced the room before coming to pause by Douglas' pillow.

"You both heard what I said this morning about the lack of a church in Lost Chief. That's what you children need for a pattern. Disagree with his creed as you might, the right kind of a preacher in here could answer your questions as they should be answered. If the church doesn't form ideals for young people like you, loose women and loose men will."

"That might be true, Peter," said Douglas; "but I don't see why you should expect us to believe the stuff you can't believe yourself."

Peter winced, then said gruffly, "I don't know as I do. All I know is that when I was a boy I went to church on Sunday morning with my mother and that there was an old vicar who would have set me straight on the things you are talking about, if I'd have let him."

"Couldn't you believe what he said?" asked Douglas.

"I never went to him. I preferred my own rotten ideas. I—" He drew himself up with a sudden expression of disgust. "Faugh! How like a fool I'm talking!" He stalked out, this time closing the door of the room behind him.

"I wonder who Peter really is?" said Judith in a low voice.

Douglas shook his head. "Dad says he's seen better days. He sure has suffered a lot over something or other."

"I wish I knew all about life that he does!" exclaimed Judith.

"I don't wish either of us did," said Douglas. Then he put out his hand to touch Judith's knee with infinite tenderness. "Couldn't you manage to fall in love with me, Jude dear? I'd stay your lover all my life."

Judith put her hand over Douglas' and her fine eyes were all that was womanly and soft as she answered, "O my dear, you don't know what you are talking about. What you promise is impossible."

"But how do you know, Judith? I am an unchanging sort of a chap. You realize that, don't you?"

Judith shook her head. "You don't know what you are promising. You can't force love to stay, once it has begun to fade."

"Try me, Judith! Try me, dear!"

Judith looked at him, lips parted, eyes sad. "Douglas, I'm afraid!" she whispered.

And again the sense of loneliness flooded Doug's heart. There was a look of remoteness in Judith's expression, a look of honest fear that had no response for the fine assured emotion that had held him captive for so many years.

The two were still staring at each other when Peter returned.

Doug's wound healed quickly and with no complications. He remained with Peter for a week or so, then returned to his home. Scott Parsons began preparations at once for carrying out Doug's sentence and for a time the post-office and the west trail to Inez' place saw him most infrequently. The excitement over the shooting having abated, Lost Chief began preparations for the great event of the year, the Fourth of July rodeo.

All the world knows the story of a rodeo, knows the beauty and the daring of both riders and horses, knows the picturesque patois of the sand corral. But all the world does not know of Judith's performance at this particular rodeo.

Mary, lax and helpless enough on most matters concerning her daughter's conduct, held out on one point. Judith could not enter the Fourth of July rodeo until she was at least sixteen. But now, at sixteen, Judith asked permission of no one. She entered the exhibition with Buster and Sioux and Whoop-la, the bronco Scott had given her.

The rodeo was held on the plains to the east of the post-office. The Browns owned the great corral, strongly fenced, and with a smooth sandy floor bordered by a grandstand weathered and unpainted but still sturdy enough to withstand the swaying and stamping of the crowd. Neither the Browns nor any other of the Lost Chief families made money out of the exhibition. It was a community affair in which was felt an intense pride. All Lost Chief attended, of course, and people came in automobiles and in sheep wagons and in the saddle from the ranches for a radius of a hundred miles.

Burning heat and cloudless heavens, the high west wind and the nameless exhilaration and urge of the Rockies at seven thousand feet, this was the day of the rodeo. The exhibition began at ten in the morning and lasted all day, with an hour at noon for dinner.

There was the usual roping and throwing of steers and the usual riding of bucking broncos by men and women young and old. Douglas rode and rode well, but he had his peer in Jimmy Day and in Charleton. Judith rapidly eliminated all the women contestants and then began to vie with the men in the riding of buckers. By four o'clock as one of the four best riders, bar none, she was ready to enter the last competition on the program. This was listed as an original exhibition to be given by each of the four best riders. Douglas, Jimmy, and Charleton were the other contestants. Judith entered first.

She trotted into the sand corral on Buster, leading the blindfolded Sioux and followed at a short distance by Peter Knight, who was master of ceremonies for the day. A little murmur went through the grandstand. Judith's curls were bundled up under a sombrero. She wore a man's silk shirt with a soft collar. It was of the color of the sky. Her khaki divided skirt came just below the knee, meeting a pair of high-heeled riding-boots. Her gauntleted gloves were deep fringed. She rode slowly, silhouetted against the distant yellow of the plains. Sioux, a russet red, silken flanks gleaming in the sun, moved his head uneasily, but followed like a dog on leash.

Having crossed to the north end of the corral, Judith waited for Peter to come up on Yankee. Douglas, circling outside the fence uneasily, heard him say:

"You are a plumb fool, Judith. Anybody that plays round on foot with a bull isn't a cowman. It's a life and death matter with a brute like Sioux, and you know it."

"You slip his blindfold off when I dismount," she said, and she trotted back to the south end of the enclosure. Here she dismounted, slipped the reins over Buster's head and turned to face the bull. Peter jerked the blindfold from the bull's eyes. The great creature lifted his head and Peter backed away. Judith spread her arms wide and whistled. Sioux snorted, pawed the ground, and started on a thundering gallop toward his mistress.

There was a startled murmur from the grandstand. Buster snorted and turned. Without moving, Judith gave a shrill whistle. Buster wheeled and came back to his first position, where he stood trembling. On came Sioux, his hoofs rocking the echoes, and with every apparent intention of goring his mistress. But ten feet from Judith he pulled up with a jerk and with stiffened fore legs slid to her side, and rubbed his great head against her shoulder. Judith threw her arm about his neck and hugged him, white teeth flashed at the grandstand, which rose to its feet and shouted.

Judith raised her hand for quiet, then leaped to Buster's saddle without touching the stirrups. She put the uneasy horse to a slow trot and gave a peculiar soft whistle to Sioux. Obediently he fell in behind the horse, and Judith gave her audience a unique exhibition of "follow your leader." Buster trotted, galloped, and backed. Sioux imitated him without protest, until Judith brought up before the grandstand with both animals kneeling on their fore legs, noses to the sand. Then Sioux jumped excitedly to his feet as again applause broke out. Judith took his lead rope now and led him to the middle of the corral where she blindfolded him and backed to Peter. Peter strode across the corral carrying a saddle.

"Once more, Judith," he said, "I ask you not to do this."

"Saddle him quick, Peter. Then get on Buster and ride him off when I'm up."

Peter adjusted the saddle as best he could to the bull's great girth while Judith rubbed the brute's forehead, talking to him softly. Sioux stood with head lowered, his red nostrils dilating and contracting rapidly. But he did not move. When Peter nodded, Judith jerked the blindfold free and leaped into the saddle. Sioux brought his mighty fore legs together and leaped into the air. Peter hesitated a fraction of a minute before putting his foot into Buster's stirrup, and the bull's leap brought him against the flank of the uneasy horse. Buster reared and Peter fell, his left foot in the stirrup. The horse started at a gallop, dragging Peter toward the east gate.

Sioux, glimpsing from his wild, bloodshot eyes the prostrated figure of a man, gave a great bellow and charged. Judith brought her quirt down on the bull's flanks, at the same time whistling shrilly. But Sioux was now out on his own. He overtook Buster half-way down the corral and thrust a wicked horn at the wildly kicking Peter. Judith leaped from the saddle and, running before Sioux, seized his horns and threw herself across his face. The bull paused.

At this moment came the full blast of Sister's hunting cry from the west gate. She crossed the corral like a hunted coyote and buried her fangs in Sioux's shoulder just as Douglas on the Moose caught Buster's bridle. Sioux cast Judith off as if she were a rag and gave his full attention to Sister. Judith picked herself up, rushed to the still plunging Buster and jerked Peter's foot from the stirrup. She ran to the blindfold lying in the sand a short distance away, then whistling shrilly above Sioux's bellowing and Sister's yelping, she again caught one of the bull's horns in her slender brown hand. Sioux had rubbed Sister free against the fence and was now charging the dog as she snarled just under his dewlap.

Again and yet again he flung Judith against his shoulders, but she did not fall nor lose her grip. Suddenly, so quickly that the grandstand could not follow the motion, she had wrapped the blindfold over the burning eyes. As the bull stopped confused and trembling she hobbled his fore-legs to his head with the bridle-chain. Then she seized Sister's collar and stood panting, her hair tumbled about her neck. The grandstand shouted its delight.

Peter had risen and was wiping the sand from his face.

"Call Sister, Peter!" cried Judith. "She'll bite me in a minute."

Peter mounted Yankee, whistled to Sister, and with a rueful grin and shake of his head for the audience, he trotted from the corral. Judith loosened the bridle-chain and jumped once more into Sioux's saddle.

"Pull off his blindfold, Doug!" she cried.

"Nothing doing," returned Douglas succinctly. "You get off that bull, Jude, before I take you off."

"I'm going to ride him up to the grandstand," said Judith between set teeth.

She whistled to Sioux and he lunged forward. Doug twisted his lariat. It coiled round one of the bull's hind legs. Doug brought his horse to its haunches.

"You get off that bull, Judith," he said. "You've put up the real show of the day. Be satisfied before you are killed. Sioux is almost crazy."

Frank Day, who was one of the judges, now trotted up. "Doug is right, Jude."

"There's not a bit of danger," cried Jude, "if you men would do what you're told to do! Peter had to stop and look instead of hurrying as I told him."

Her eyes were full of tears. She dismounted slowly and after freeing Sioux from Doug's lariat, she led the uneasy bull before the grandstand and made her bow. Jimmy Day brought her a horse and, mounting, she trotted out of the corral followed by the now half-crazed Sioux.

The three men contestants laughingly refused to put on their exhibitions. There was no hope, they agreed, of competing successfully against Sioux and Judith; so Judith received the prize, a twenty-dollar gold piece.

The day ended with this award. It was some time before Douglas and Judith freed themselves from the crowd. John and Mary, still laughing over Peter's discomfiture, led the postmaster off that Mary might treat his really badly skinned face at the ranch. The ranchers who had come from distant valleys began to scatter toward the Pass. When at last Judith and Douglas, with their string of horses and the still unchastened Sioux, started up the trail toward the post-office, they were held up by a stranger in a smart, high-powered automobile.

"Listen, Miss Spencer," he called, "how about your riding in the rodeo at Mountain City, this fall?"

Doug and Judith both gasped. The rodeo at Mountain City was the ultimate and almost hopeless dream of every young rider.

"How do you know they'd let me in?" asked Judith.

"I'm chairman of the program committee this year," answered the stranger. "If you are interested, I'll write you details when I get back home. I've got to run for it now."

"Interested!" exclaimed Judith. "I guess you know just what it means to be competing in the Mountain City rodeo!"

The stranger nodded. "Then you'll hear from me." He turned his panting car away from the plunging horses and was a receding dot up the trail to the Pass before Judith and Douglas found their tongues.

"Well, you deserve it, Judith," cried Douglas. "You beat anything I've seen. It's not only what you do but the way you do it. You've got to have a good outfit. I'll help you buy it."

"Do you really think I'm good enough for Mountain City?" exclaimed Judith.

"Good enough for the world!" declared Douglas.

Judith laughed and gave her attention to the unhappy Sioux.

Peter was at supper with John and Mary when they reached home. His whole face was covered with boric powder. Judith and Douglas shouted with laughter. Peter buttered another biscuit.

"I never was vain of my looks," he said plaintively. "It was mean of you, Judith, to ruin what I had."

"I was never so surprised in my life, honestly, as when you fell, Peter," cried Judith.

"O yes; you were more surprised an hour ago," contradicted Douglas. He turned to his father. "Judith's been asked to ride at the Mountain City rodeo. The chairman of their program committee stopped us and asked her."

"Bully for the girl!" cried John. "I'm not surprised, myself. Some show, Jude!"

"The Mountain City rodeo is a tough proposition for a young girl to tackle," said Peter.

"O, I'll go with her," John spoke quickly, "and let Mary and Doug run the place for a week. We'll be back in time for the round-up."

"If Judith goes, I go," said Mary with unwonted firmness.

"What do you think I am?" demanded John. "A millionaire or a Mormon?"

Douglas, a little white around the lips, glanced at Judith, who was calmly devouring the lavish piece of steak which she had served herself. Peter was rolling a cigarette.

"If Jude goes," John went on, "she goes with her Dad. And believe me, I am going to buy her the doggondest best outfit I can glom my hands on."

Peter caught Douglas' eye and almost imperceptibly shook his head.

"I'm going too," repeated Mary.

"You are not!" John's voice thickened. "You and Douglas run the place. If there's a rancher in the State deserves a vacation more than I do, I wish you'd name him."

"Give me a match, John," said Peter; "and if there's no objection, let's get out of this hot kitchen."

John tossed a match-box to the postmaster and led the way out to the corral. Peter and Douglas lined up on the fence beside him. Judith remained in the kitchen with her mother.

"Well, it was the best rodeo we ever had," said Peter.

"Jude was the whole show." John's handsome face showed vividly for a moment as he lighted his pipe. "I suppose there are other folks that ride as well, but she does it with an air!"

"It's her love of it gets across to people who are watching her," mused Peter. "And she rides with a sort of ease that belongs to Jude and no one else, to say nothing of her power over animals. There is a lot to Jude. Too bad she lives in Lost Chief. She hasn't a chance in the world."

"Just how do you mean that?" demanded John.

"Exactly as I said it. She hasn't a chance in the world."

"Chance in the world for what?" John's voice was irritated. "Talk so a fool like me can understand you, Peter."

"I guess you understand me, John. Hello, Judith! I should think you'd be tired enough to go to bed."

"Who? Me?" Judith perched beside Peter. "I should say not! I'd like to go to a dance."

"I sure-gawd will try to give you your fill of dancing for once in Mountain City." The anger had disappeared from John's voice.

"Judith's not going unless her mother goes!" said Douglas coolly.

Judith sniffed. "Her master's voice, again! You'd better horn out of this, Douglas."

"I haven't any intention of keeping out," retorted Douglas.

"You'd better," warned Judith. "If you think I'm going to turn down a chance for a real outfit, without hearing the argument, you're mistaken."

"I told you I'd help you," insisted Douglas.

"You! What could you buy!" jibed the girl.

"I was thinking, Jude," said John, "why don't you let me get you one of those regular riding suits like Eastern women wear, pants and one of those long coats."

"Everybody would laugh at me." Judith's voice was doubtful but deeply interested. "What do you think, Peter?"

"Women's clothes are out of my line," replied Peter.

"Aw, don't bribe her, Dad," protested Douglas.

"Bribe her!" snorted John. "For what?"

Peter gave a sardonic laugh that would have done credit to Charleton. "I'm going home, John, before I get hauled in on a family row. Doug, I'm pretty stiff. Will you help me saddle Yankee?"

Douglas rose reluctantly and followed Peter into the shed where Yankee was munching hay.

"Keep your fool mouth shut, Doug," whispered the postmaster. "You've got from now to September first to sidetrack this thing."

"If Jude passes her word to him, she'll go. And you know as well as I do, Peter, that most anybody would sell their soul to ride in that rodeo with a fine outfit."

"Certainly, I know it. But you keep out of it for a while."

"Peter, I can't! When Dad gets to working on Judith, I see red. Listen! Just listen!"

Stillness and starlight and John's voice rich and sweet as Peter never had heard it.

"You're beautiful, Judith! A beautiful woman! Let me dress you as you ought to be dressed, give you the right kind of a horse, and the whole of the rodeo will be yours. I tell you, girl, all you've got to do is to ask me for what you want."

"Do other folks call me beautiful, Dad?" Judith's voice was breathless.

"Why do you call me Dad? I'm not your father, thank God!"

Douglas strode out of the shed and up to the fence, followed by Peter on Yankee.

"I don't want to quarrel with you, Dad—" he began, furiously.

"Then don't start something you can't see the finish of," interrupted Judith. "Let me run my own affairs, Doug."

"That's sound advice." John's voice was cool. "I don't want to quarrel with you either. But I'm still master of my own ranch and, by God, I'll knock you down if you interfere in this."

Peter leaned over and put his hand on Douglas' shoulder.

"Don't be a fool, Doug! Go off and think before you talk."

For a moment there was silence. Douglas stood tense under Peter's kindly hand, his face turned toward the beautiful shadow of Falkner's Peak. The heavens, deep purple and glorious with stars, were very near. Suddenly Douglas turned on his heel and clanked into the house, where he threw himself down on his bed.

The old, futile bitterness was on him again, and he was quite as bitter at Judith as at his father. Of what could the girl be thinking? What did girls think about men like John, or any other men for that matter? If only there were some woman to whom he might go for advice. Grandma Brown? No; he had talked to her once and she had failed him. Charleton's wife had failed with her own daughter. There remained Inez Rodman, who knew Judith better than any one else knew her. Inez! Doug's mind dwelt long on this name. But he felt sure that the woman of the Yellow Canyon had forgotten what she had thought and felt at sixteen. And, after all, he did not want again to see life through Inez' eyes. Long after the rest of the family slept, Douglas pursued his weary and futile self-examination, coming to a blind wall at the end.

The next day John mentioned casually that he and Judith had settled on taking the trip to Mountain City together. Douglas made no comment. Not that he had any intention of allowing Judith to make the trip under such circumstances, but he knew that for the present he could only bide his time.



CHAPTER IX

THE TRIP TO MOUNTAIN CITY

"Don't think. Just whistle. And always keep your poncho on the back of the saddle for when it rains."

—Jimmy Day.

Lost Chief was very proud of Judith's invitation and deeply interested in her preparations for the contest. Every day, now, she put Sioux and Whoop-la through their paces. Late in the afternoon when she was working the animals in the corral, it seldom happened that one of Lost Chief's riders was not perched on the buck fence, watching her and criticizing her and always assuring her, with the cowman's pessimism toward the outer world, that she had no chance of winning a prize.

Douglas watched the preparations with deep interest, but said nothing further against the trip. He usually joined the audience on the buck fence and smoked as he watched the really wonderful work in the corral.

One brilliant afternoon Grandma Brown and old Johnny rode up. Jimmy Day already was perched on the fence.

"Well," called Grandma, "I hear you've finally reached the goal of your ambition, Judith."

Judith, leaving Sioux for the moment, strolled over toward the old lady. "Who told you that, Grandma?"

"Well, ain't you?"

"I don't know what my goal is, but it sure isn't this."

"I'm glad you haven't lost your head entirely," said the old lady. "Jimmy, I wish you'd ask Little Marion to come over and help me out for a day or so. Lulu is coming home for a little visit."

"I'll ask her," said Jimmy. "But she won't come. She isn't so well. You'd better stop by and see her."

Old Johnny suddenly laughed. "He depones like you was a doctor that went out to make visits, Sister."

The old lady grunted as she gave Jimmy a keen look. "What's her mother say about her?"

"Why, you know Mrs. Falkner isn't back from Mountain City yet. She left before Charleton went out after wild horses," replied Jimmy.

"How should I know? I've hardly been off the ranch this summer. I guess I will stop by."

Old Johnny cleared his throat. "I was thinking I'd ask John if he'd let me go along up with him and Judith when they went to Mountain City. I got quite a gregus sum of money saved up and I never did see Frontier Day yet."

"That's right, Johnny! You ask him," said Douglas, with a remote twinkle in his eye.

"Johnny, you are a fool, I swear!" exclaimed Grandma. "Let me catch you lally-gagging off to Mountain City! Come on, let's get started."

"Anyhow, Doug is my friend," said the old man, belligerently, as he followed his sister.

"If I go, I'll take you along, Johnny!" exclaimed Douglas. "See if I don't!"

"You sure are crazy, Doug!" laughed Jimmy.

"I like the old boy," insisted Douglas. "He and I had better go up and see Jude rake in the prizes."

"Right now every prize has been doled out to the regulars," cried Jimmy. "But you should care, Jude! You'll have the grandstand with you, every minute, if the judges aren't."

"It will be the big event of my life whether I win or not," said Judith. "What's the matter with Little Marion, Jimmy? I don't even remember her at the rodeo."

"O, she's busy, you see. I never did know a busier girl than Marion. I'm busy too, with Charleton gone so long. And that fourth-class postmaster of ours sent a lot of unclaimed magazines and mail order catalogs up to the house. We've been reading those. Say, I bet I know everything that's for sale in the United States. I'm the most price-listed rider in the Rockies."

"I'll be getting down to see Marion to-night or to-morrow," said Judith.

"O, you needn't bother," returned Jimmy. "It's a long trip, and she'll be all right."

"So you and Little Marion have been baching it!" mused Douglas. "Hang Charleton, he promised to take me out after wild horses!"

"He generally goes by himself." Jimmy mounted his horse. "He's a lone hunter, Charleton."

"When are you folks going to be married?" asked Douglas.

Jimmy turned his roan homeward. "I don't know," he answered soberly.

"I wish I could have gone with Charleton," remarked Douglas, watching Judith as she rubbed Sioux's head.

"Charleton! I should think you'd hate a long trip with that old coyote. I hate him."

"It isn't to be with Charleton I want to go. I want to get me some wild horses. But there was a time when I sure was crazy about being with him. I thought he knew more about how a fellow could get happiness out of life than any one."

"Nobody in the Valley knows as much as Inez."

"Do you call her happy?"

"No; she's really sad. That's why she knows what real happiness is."

"Judith, how do you suppose Inez will end?"

"Over in the cemetery with a coyote-proof grave like the rest of us. And I ask you, Doug, since that's the end of it, why worry?"

"That's the very reason I worry! Life is so short and if we don't find happiness here, we are clean out of luck, forever."

Judith spurred the nervous Whoop-la into five minutes of active bucking, then she leaped from the saddle and came to perch on the fence beside Douglas. Her gaze wandered from his wistful face to the eternal crimson and orange clouds rolling across Fire Mesa.

"Outside of my riding," she said slowly, "I get most happiness out of my eyes."

Douglas followed her gaze. "Inez likes it too."

Judith nodded. "She got me to using my eyes years ago. She's a funny person. Reads almost nothing but poetry. She's got one she always quotes when she and I are looking at Fire Mesa."

"What is it?" asked Doug.

"I don't know but one verse:

"A fire mist and a planet, A crystal and a cell, A jelly-fish and a saurian, And caves where the cave-men dwell, Then a sense of law and beauty And a face turned from the clod, Some call it Evolution And others call it God."

"Say it again, slow!" ordered Douglas, his eyes still on Fire Mesa.

Judith obeyed.

"I didn't know Inez had got religious," he said, when Judith finished.

"She hasn't. She doesn't believe anything except that beauty is right and ugliness is wrong."

"Then she'd better clean up her door-yard!" exclaimed Douglas.

"O darn it!" sighed Judith. "I can't even discuss poetry with you without your heaving a brick."

"I'm not heaving bricks. O Judith, I'm so devilishly unhappy!"

"You ought to quit thinking so much and have something you are crazy about doing. When I get blue, I put Whoop-la to bucking."

"I'm crazy about something, all right. Judith, don't you think you're ever going to care about me."

"I don't know, Doug. Who does know, at sixteen?"

"I did."

"I wouldn't marry a man that expected me to be a ranch wife in Lost Chief, if I loved him black in the face." Judith jumped down from the fence and turned Whoop-la free for the night.

Douglas sat staring at her, wondering whether or not to mention the subject of the trip to Mountain City. He was firmly resolved that unless Judith gave in to her mother on the matter, he was going with her and his father. But finally he decided that he would not end their friendly conversation with a row and he clambered down and went about his chores.

And so the days passed and the time grew close for the departure to Mountain City. One evening, two days before the start, Douglas and Judith went to call on Little Marion and Jimmy. When they reached the ranch house, they found Little Marion in the big bed in the living-room and Jimmy sitting beside the unshaded lamp, reading to her.

"Well!" exclaimed Douglas. "What's happened to you, Marion?"

Marion put back her great braid of hair, but what answer she might have made they were not to know, for at that moment Charleton returned from his wild horse hunt. Dust-covered and sunburned he strode into the room with a pleasant grin.

"Hello, folks! Why, Marion, are you sick?"

"Kind of. What luck, Dad?"

"Fair. Brought in a good stallion and some weedy stuff. How's the ranch, Jimmy?"

He asked this with his eyes still on his daughter.

"O.K., Charleton," replied Jimmy.

"You made a long trip, Charleton," said Douglas.

"Left the day after the rodeo," tossing his hat and gloves on the floor and sitting down on the edge of the bed. "I remember Little Marion was laid up then with a sprained ankle or something. What do you hear from your mother, Marion?"

"She's well and so's the baby. They'll be home anytime now."

"What's the matter with you, Marion?"

"O, I'm sort of used up."

"How do you mean used up? I don't like your looks. I'm not a fool, you know."

Marion burst into tears. "You know what it is!"

Charleton made a sudden spring at Jimmy; but Douglas caught him by the arm.

"Hold on, Charleton!" cried Doug. "If things have gone wrong, you're as much to blame as any one."

"You clear out of here, Doug!" shouted Charleton.

"Don't you go, Doug and Judith!" sobbed Marion. "I need some one to stand by me."

"I'm standing by you, Marion," said Jimmy, who had not stirred from his chair. "I'd just as soon you'd beat me up, Charleton. A little sooner. But that isn't going to help matters."

Charleton stood glaring at his prospective son-in-law.

"Come off, Charleton!" cried Douglas disgustedly. "You are a fine one to raise trouble over a situation like this. Strikes me you've done everything you could do to bring it about."

Charleton did not seem to hear. His face was cold and hard. "Marion, you and Jimmy pack up and get out of here!"

"I can't, Dad! I'm too sick!" sobbed the girl.

"Sick or no sick, you get out of here!"

"Don't you do it, Marion!" cried Judith. "No man's got a right to act so at a time like this. I'll stick by you. Jimmy, you go get Grandma Brown. I'll bet she can fix Charleton."

Jimmy rushed out of the house.

"Now, Doug," Judith went on, walking over to take Marion's hand, "you and Charleton go on out while I have a talk with Marion."

"This happens to be my house," said Charleton. "Marion, get up and get out!"

"I can't!" repeated the girl.

"You are a fine guy to tell a fellow how to live on wine, women and horses," exclaimed Douglas, "and then raise the devil when your chickens come home to roost. We all know Little Marion was born a month before you were married."

Charleton gave Douglas an ugly look. "I'll settle with you, for that, young fellow!" He stepped toward the bed. "Are you going to get out, Marion?"

"No, she isn't!" snapped Douglas. He made a sudden rush at Charleton and pushed him into the kitchen, Judith slammed and locked the door behind them.

It was on this scene that John Spencer appeared, closing the outer door innocently behind him.

"I wanted to borrow your buckboard for a couple of weeks," he began. Then he paused and looked inquiringly from his son to his old friend.

"Marion's in trouble," said Douglas, "and Charleton is trying to drive her out. Jude and I won't let him."

"Why should you butt in?" demanded John.

"Anybody with a decent heart would," replied Douglas.

"Get your kids out of here, John!" roared Charleton. "Judith's in there with the door locked!"

"Judith!" called John. "'Come here!"

"I can't, Dad. I promised Marion to stick by her."

"You come out or I'll break the door down and bring you!"

"If you do, I'll not go to Mountain City with you!"

John hesitated, though his face was purple.

"You couldn't keep her away from the rodeo and you know it," sneered Charleton. "Fetch her out, John, unless you're afraid of Doug."

"Jude, are you coming?" shouted John.

"No, sir."

John heaved against the flimsy door and it broke on its hinges. He rushed into the inner room. Judith, her great eyes blazing, stood with one hand on Marion's shoulder.

"Aren't you ashamed of yourself, Dad! You put a finger on me or Marion if you dare!"

"Don't touch her, Dad!" Douglas' voice had the old note of warning in it.

But John, furious that his children should be defying him in public, was quite beyond any effort at self control. He rushed on toward the bed.

"You blank-blank!" screamed Judith. "You aren't fit to touch Little Marion's feet! You or Charleton either!"

John seized Judith's arm. Quick as a lynx-cat, Douglas leaped across the room, seized his father from behind and was dragging him toward the door when Grandma Brown ran in.

"Now," she cried sternly, "what does this mean? Every one of you get out of here as fast as your feet will carry you!"

John stood up, sheepishly, Douglas eying him belligerently.

"Look here, Grandma," Charleton shook his finger in the old lady's face, "I want you to understand that—"

"Understand!" shrilled Grandma. "Understand! You have the face to try to say anything to me, Charleton Falkner? Do you think any man in this valley can have anything to tell me I want to hear, least of all you, Charleton Falkner? I know your history, man! And yours too, John Spencer. And you can either get out or listen while I tell these children a few facts about you."

Charleton put a cigarette between his teeth, handed one to John, lighted his own, gave a light to John and, John at his heels, walked out into the night.

"You and Douglas go home, Judith," said Grandma briskly. "Jimmy, I want a talk with Little Marion. You put that door back on the hinges, then disappear."

So Judith and Douglas rode away. It was a heavenly night, with more than a hint of frost in the air, and the horses were as frolicsome as Prince.

"Now, will you tell me," asked Judith as she brought Buster back into the trail for the third time, "just why Charleton acted so?"

"It's just like I told you once," replied Douglas. "A man wants his own women to be straight no matter how much he does to make 'em crooked."

"Men are yellow," said Judith succinctly. "What's the use of Charleton—" She paused as if words failed her, and they rode their prancing horses in silence till John galloped up and pushed Beauty between them.

"I hope you two fools feel better!" he shouted. "You've got a row going with Charleton."

"Lot I care!" chuckled Judith. "I'll sic Grandma Brown on him again if he bothers me."

"I'd rather have a wolverine after me than Charleton," John went on excitedly. "You both ought to be licked!"

"Try it," suggested both the young people together.

"I've a notion not to take you up to Mountain City and I wouldn't if—"

Judith interrupted him. "You're not going to take me. I'm going with Doug."

"O, no, you're not!" snarled John.

"And I'm not going to quarrel with you," Judith went on. "I'm sick of men. I don't like the way you acted to me to-night. I told you if you broke that door down I wouldn't go with you, and I always keep my word. I'm not going to take money from Douglas, either. I'll borrow from Inez. And I don't want to hear another word from you about it."

She put the spurs to Buster and was gone into the starlight. The men spurred after her, but she reached the home corral before they did. And John could storm only at the deeply perturbed Mary, for Doug and Judith went to bed, pulled the covers over their heads and were heard no more that night.

The next morning, before breakfast, half of Lost Chief had called the Spencers on the telephone to tell them that Little Marion had a daughter. The dominant note in the reports was one of huge laughter. Judith was serene, and so was John. But the serenity was not to last. When she went out to the corral to look after Sioux she came back stormily.

"Where's Sioux and Whoop-la?" she demanded of John, who was mending a spur strap.

"Put away!"

"Have you killed them?"

"No. I'll produce them as soon as you agree to keep your promise to go to Mountain City with me."

"I never promised. I intended to go with you, but I never promised."

"Remember if we don't get started by to-morrow," roared John, "we can't get there in time."

"I said I wouldn't go with you after last night, and now, I wouldn't go with you if you were the last man on earth."

She rushed from the house, and Douglas followed her.

"I'll help you hunt for them, Judith," he said.

She turned to him, white to the lips. "We're not going to hunt for them. There are other Mountain City rodeos coming. If he thinks I'm going to make a joke of myself rushing round the neighborhood after my outfit, he's mistaken! I'm not a child. Don't bother me, Douglas; I'm going to Inez."

She put Buster to a gallop and was off, the dust following her in a golden, whirling spiral. Douglas went into the house and stood before his father, face flushed, golden hair rumpled, soft shirt clinging to his big gaunt chest.

"Dad, that's a rotten deal to put over Judith."

John rose slowly to his full height and the two men looked levelly into each other's eyes. John's expression was curiously concentrated. He tapped Douglas on the arm.

"Doug, you keep out of this, or I'll forget you are my son. You're smart and you've got a bossy way with you. But I'm still master here. There never was a Spencer that didn't rule his own family. Now, understand me. Keep out of this matter between me and Jude. I'm going to break that highty-tighty filly; and by God, she knows it!"

"You'll never break her while I'm alive," said Douglas, and he walked out of the house.

Mary, coming from the cow shed with a pail of milk, looked at him anxiously. "Let it go, Doug," she said in a low voice. "It's hard on Judith, but she's been very headstrong and she's point-blank disobeyed me in the matter. She deserves what she's got. Let it go."

Douglas looked at Mary's care-worn face, so appealingly like, yet so unlike Judith's. Suddenly his tense muscles relaxed. "I guess you are right. I'd better be thankful it is as it is. But it sure is a rotten trick of Dad's."

Mary shrugged her shoulders and went on into the house. Douglas went off to bring up horses for the fall round-up. A number of people rode up during the morning to see the start for Mountain City. They found the ranch deserted, except for Mary, who pleaded a sick headache and refused to talk. Inez had no such reticence, however, and at the post-office that night Judith's troubles ran neck and neck in popular interest with Little Marion's. Both situations were of a nature to appeal to Lost Chief's sense of humor. Douglas appeared during the session and learned that Charleton's wife had come home.

"I hope she won't go crazy too," he said.

"No danger!" Peter tossed a letter to Frank Day. "Charleton'll be in line by to-morrow. Too bad some one can't hobble John too."

"Plumb unnecessary, the whole affair," grunted the sheriff. "I suppose the next thing on the program will be a big wedding."

"I guess they'll manage it like the Browns did," volunteered Young Jeff, squirting his quid accurately to the center of the hearth. "Be around borrowing my car in two or three weeks, run up to Mountain City for to be married, then give a big party upstairs here, and nobody the worse off for anything."

Everybody nodded and grinned. Douglas sat on a pile of mail order catalogs smoking, his hat on the back of his head, his eyes thoughtful. "Anybody know how Jimmy's been behaving to-day?"

Frank Day laughed heartily. "I rode up there this morning after I heard the news, friendly like, of course. Grandma had Jimmy out in the yard, washing baby dresses, while she stood in the door giving him what for. Jimmy was dribbling cigarette ashes over the suds but he sure was game. He grinned and got red when he saw me. 'I'm the hen-peckedest damn fool in the Rockies,' he says."

There was a roar of laughter.

"What was Charleton doing?" asked Young Jeff, wiping his eyes.

"I found him in the corral. He'd slept in the alfalfa stack and he wasn't quoting poetry. I didn't stay with him but a minute."

Again there was laughter.

"Big Marion will calm him," said Peter.

"I know one thing," exclaimed Douglas. "None of us will be saying the things to Charleton we've been saying behind his back."

"We sure won't," agreed Frank. "I suppose Judith's all broke up, poor little devil!"

Douglas nodded.

"I saw her and Inez hobnobbing in the Rodmans' corral to-day," said Young Jeff. "She'd better cut Inez out."

Douglas stared at the familiar faces around the room as if he never before had seen them. Peter, thin, melancholy, his long sinewy throat exposed by his buttonless blue shirt; Frank Day, big and keen of eye, squatting as usual against the wall; Young Jeff, ruddy and heavy-set, with his kind blue eyes and heavy jaw. All clean shaven, all in chaps and spurs, all good fellows, and all as helpless before the nameless mystery of life as Doug himself. The sweat started to his forehead. He rose, pulling on his gloves.

"It's early yet, Doug," said Peter.

"I'm going to call for Judith," replied Douglas. He went out into the night, whistled to Prince, mounted the Moose and galloped across to the west trail.

It was sharp and frosty but Inez and Judith, in mackinaws, were sitting on the back steps with a little fire of chips at their feet. Douglas dismounted and came into the fireglow. The light caught the point of his chin, his clean-cut nostrils, and the heavy overhang of his brows.

"Ready to come home, Jude, old girl?" he asked.

"Sit down and talk to us a little, Douglas," suggested Inez.

Douglas hauled up a broken wagon seat and sat down. Prince crawled up beside him and went to sleep with his head and one paw on Doug's knee.

"I suppose congress was sitting at the post-office, to-night?" said Judith.

"Yes. Everybody's strong for you and Little Marion."

"I don't see why I should be bunched with her. Not that I care though!" Judith tossed her head and then dropped her chin to the palm of her hand.

"I swear some one ought to give John Spencer a good thrashing!" exclaimed Inez.

"Don't worry!" Judith spoke through set teeth. "I'll be even with him some day."

"I just as soon try to lick him," said Doug. "But what good would it do?"

The three sat in silence for a moment; then Douglas asked suddenly, "Inez, do you believe that poetry about the Fire Mist that you taught Judith?"

"No; but I think it's a beautiful poem, just the same."

"Say it all for me, will you, Inez?"

Inez, in her soft contralto, repeated the lines.

"And you don't believe it?" Douglas' voice was wistful. "Don't you wish you did?"

"I don't know as I do," replied Inez.

"But don't you see," urged Douglas, "that without believing it, there's no meaning to anything?"

"Well, what of it?" asked Inez.

"I'm the kind of a guy that has to see a purpose to things, I guess," replied Douglas, heavily. "Peter is dead right. Lost Chief is a rotten hole."

"It's a rotten place for women and a paradise for men," stated Judith flatly.

"Never was any place in the world more beautiful," mused Inez. "If you'd just see the beauty all around you, Doug, you'd do without the religion."

"I do see the beauty," replied Douglas. "I've been seeing it ever since you told me to look for it. But it just makes me blue."

"You're no cowman, Douglas," Inez spoke thoughtfully. "You ought to go East to college and get into politics or something!"

Douglas shook his head. "I'm like Charleton. I couldn't leave these hills and plains for anything the East has to offer me." He rose slowly, and Inez stared up at him. Tall, slender, straight, his young face a little strained, a little wistful, he was to the older woman something finer than Lost Chief knew.

"Judith," she said suddenly, "you're an awful fool!"

Judith grunted, immersed in her own troubles.

"Come, old lady," said Douglas. "We must get home."

"I'm going to stay all night with Inez."

"No, you're not, Jude," said Douglas quietly, and he stood waiting.

"Let her stay, Doug. She'll be all right," urged Inez.

"No," replied the young rider, with the familiar straightening of his chin. "Come, Judith!"

The tall girl rose, shrugged her shoulders, and followed slowly to the corral after Douglas. Inez did not move and shortly they trotted away, leaving her alone in the firelight.

The next day, sullenly enough, John ordered Doug to make the horses ready for the round-up. Frost had set in and he suddenly announced himself as fearful lest snows catch the herds high on the mountains. So Douglas and Judith spent the day bringing in several stout horses from the range. On the morning following, before breakfast was finished, Scott Parsons hallooed from the corral. The family went to the door.

Scott was leading Sioux and Whoop-la.

"Found these in the old Government corral up on Lost Chief Mountain," he said laconically.

"I suppose you're going to get something worth while from Dad for this!" cried Judith passionately.

Scott looked at the girl curiously. "You sure are crazy, Jude! Do you suppose I'd help John Spencer do you like that? John's a blank-blank and he knows it."

Douglas moved to stand by Ginger's head.

"No man says that to me without a grin." John drew his gun.

"Jude!" said Doug sharply. He reached up and seized Scott's hand and with a sudden twist relieved him of his six-shooter.

Judith struck up her father's arm and a shot scattered dust from the sod roof of the cabin. John smacked Judith on the cheek. She threw herself on him like a fighting she-bear. John dropped his gun to seize her wrists and Mary promptly picked the weapon up and gave it to Douglas.

"Now," said Doug, when Judith stood panting like a young Diana, her eyes black with anger and excitement, "if you two men want to fight, take your fists and go to it!"

John suddenly grinned, his eyes on Judith. "I don't see anybody spoiling for a fist fight but Judith. You little lynx-cat! You get handsomer every day!"

"I'd hate to let a woman make putty of me like that," sneered Scott. "Let me have my shooting-iron, Doug."

Douglas had broken the revolver and unloaded it. He gave it back, receiving the lead ropes of the two animals in return, and Scott trotted away.

"I'm much obliged to you, Scott!" shrieked Judith. "I'll ride up and tell you all about it, some day."

Scott waved his hand but did not look back. John, still holding Judith's wrists, suddenly drew her to him and kissed her full on the lips. Then, with a laugh, he freed her and returned to his breakfast. Douglas swore under his breath and turned the uneasy Sioux and Whoop-la into the corral. The day went forward as if nothing had happened.

That night, Charleton and John appeared at the post-office gathering for the first time since the birth of Little Marion's baby. Only Peter had the intrepidity to comment on recent events.

"I didn't want Judith to go alone with you to Mountain City, John," he said. "But, all the same, that was a rotten deal you gave her."

"She's a disobedient little hussy," John's voice was truculent, "and it was the only way I could get at her."

"You mean the fight she put up to help Little Marion?" demanded Peter.

"O, dry up, Peter!" exclaimed Charleton. "Me, I'm sick of the sound of a woman's name. They're all alike, ungrateful minxes."

"Ungrateful is the word," agreed Peter grimly. "But I'd like to know just what Marion was under obligation to you for?"

Charleton did not reply.

"When are they going to be married?" asked Peter, after a moment.

"First of the month. We'll give 'em a party up here in the hall that Lost Chief will never forget. John, do you ride to-morrow?"

"Yes, Charleton. Everybody's reported but you."

"I'll be there. Start from your place, as usual?"

John nodded, and the rest of the evening was given over to a discussion of details of the round-up.

The fall round-up was always a long and arduous affair. The cattle were scattered all through the ranges covered by the Forest Reserve. Slowly and with infinite labor and skill, they were sought out and herded down into Hidden Gorge Canyon, below Fire Mesa. Thence, they were driven to the plains east of the post-office, where the riders cut out their own cattle.

The weather held for two weeks, star-brilliant at night, with the low of mother-cows separated from their calves from mountain to mountain, with the crisp wind bringing down the frosted leaves of the aspens, and at noon the hot dust swirling up from the horses' hoofs into the sweating faces of the riders.

Perhaps thirty men rode in the Lost Chief crowd. The work was more or less solitary by day, but at night over the camp-fires, there was society enough. Douglas enjoyed it all to the very tips of his being. He was coming now into the great strength that belonged to his height and could do his full share of the heavy work. He had thought that, rolled in his blankets, under the stars, he would find inspiration that would help him solve the problem of life. But long before the camp-fire was low, he would drop into slumber that ended only when his father shook him at dawn.

When the round-up reached the plains, the women set up a camp kitchen and served hot meals. The weather this year held clear to the last day, when a blizzard swept down from Dead Line Peak and the last of the cutting out was finished in blinding snow. Douglas and John, after putting the last of their yearlings into the cut over fields, staggered into the warm ranch kitchen half-perished with the cold.



CHAPTER X

WILD HORSES

"If I could believe in God and a heaven I'd ask nothing more of life except a good-saddle-horse."

—Charleton's Wife.

And so another long winter was upon Lost Chief. It was much like other winters for Douglas except for the fact that he began systematically to trap for pelts. It was a heavy winter and game was plentiful, with pelts of exceptionally fine quality for which there was a good market in St. Louis. Douglas worked hard and began the accumulation of a sum of money which he planned to use eventually to start his own ranch on the old Douglas section, which was to be his when he came of age.

But although to the young rider the money earned seemed the main aspect of the winter's work, the important result really lay in the deepening it gave to his appreciation of the beauty and mystery of this mountain valley.

Lost Chief was lovely in the summer with its crystal glory of color on hill and plain. But Lost Chief in winter was awe-inspiring in its naked splendor. Dead Line Peak and Falkner's Peak, barren save for the great blue snows and for the black shadows that crept up and down their tremendous flanks, were separated from each other by a long, narrow, slowly rising valley. Down this valley rushed a tiny brook whose murmur the bitterest weather could not quite still. Along this brook grew quivering aspens, and beside it coyotes kept open a little trail. Along this trail, Doug set his traps, as well as up on the wall of the mountains where lynx-cats and wolverine were hid.

Each day at noon, mounted on the Moose, with Prince at heel, he rode the circuit of the traps, seldom reaching home until long after supper was cleared away. There were days when, on leaving the ranch for the long, bitter-cold ride, it seemed to Douglas that he never could come back again, that the pain of living in the same house with Judith in her girlish indifference was to be endured no longer. The primitive intimacy in which the family dwelt made every hour at home a sort of torture to him, a torture that he did not wish to forego yet that he scarcely could endure. One cannot say how much of Douglas' self-control was due to innate refinement, how much to expediency, how much to the male power of inhibition when fighting to win the love of a woman.

But, whatever the cause, Douglas was developing a power of self-control possessed by no other man in the valley. It made him, even at eighteen, a little grim, a little lonely, a little abstracted. And he rode his traps like a man in a dream. He thought much, but not constantly, of Judith; though she perfumed all his thoughts. For the most part he pondered on the blank mystery of life and on the enigma of love, which to him seemed far more productive of pain than of joy. Little by little, he found himself eager to get into the hills. Quite consciously he left the ranch each day with the thought that when he reached the crest of old Falkner's lower shoulder, where his lynx trap was set, and beheld the unspeakable strength and purity of the far-flung ranges, to whose vastness the Lost Chief peaks were but foothills, he would find a wordless peace.

And thus the winter slipped away and blue-birds dipped again in the spring beyond the corral. And again alfalfa perfumed the alkaline dust that followed the birds into the Reserve; and then again, frost laid waste the struggling gardens of high altitudes; and for another winter Doug followed traps, varying the monotony by getting out pine-logs for his ranch house.

The winter that Judith was twenty and Douglas twenty-two was one of the most severe ever known in Lost Chief country. It was preceded by a summer of drought and the alfalfa and wild hay fields failed. Feed could not be bought. Steers and horses died by the score. Doug did little trapping. He and his father spent the bitter storm-swept days fighting to save their stock. By March they were cutting young aspens and hauling them to the famished herds to nibble. Coyotes moved brazenly by day across the home fields, stealing refuse from the very door-yards. Eagles perched on fence-posts near the chicken runs. Jack-rabbits in herds of many score milled about the wind-swept barrens, gnawing the grass already cattle-cropped to the roots. The cold and snow persisted till mid-April, and even then Lost Chief was only beginning to thaw on its lower northern edge.

It was a winter of tremendous nerve strain. There had been little opportunity for the neighbors to get together, and the battle with the cold never ceased. John Spencer, always at his best when great physical demands were being made upon him, came through the winter better than Douglas, whose profound restlessness was beginning to tell even on his youthful strength. It was almost as much of a relief to Doug's family as to Doug to have Charleton Falkner insist, late in April, that Doug go on a wild horse hunt with him.

It was like the opening of a prison door to the young rider. He had dwelt within himself too much, had seen too much of Judith, had been too deeply perplexed by his own relation to life. He resolved that during the week they were to be out on the hunt, he would not once permit himself a serious thought.

They left Charleton's ranch early one morning, driving a sheep wagon which trailed four saddle horses. On the tail-board of the wagon were a bale of alfalfa and several bags of oats, for which Charleton had scraped Lost Chief to the bottom of its bins.

The snow was running off the trail in roaring streams. There was brilliant sun. Magpies dipped across the blue. Charleton drove while Douglas lay across the bunk, his spurred boots resting on an embroidered sofa cushion which he had purloined from Mary for lack of a pillow. He lay thus all day, except at meal time, neither man caring to talk. All day long, they pushed north, over the hills, each hill and valley lower than the last. When they made their night camp, the snows were gone. The next day, too, they pursued ever-dropping trails, that disappeared toward noon, leaving Charleton to find his way through barren hills that were criss-crossed only by antelope and coyote tracks. At mid-afternoon, from the crest of one of these hills they beheld a winding, black river with a flush of green along its borders. They covered the miles to this at a trot and made their camp beside the rushing waters. The eager horses almost rended harness and halter in their desire to taste the budding grass around the sage-brush roots.

They carried food and fodder only for a week, so they dared allow but two days for the actual hunting. At dawn they had finished breakfast and were riding up into the rolling hills to the west. Brown hills against a pale blue morning sky, then a sudden flood of crimson against a high horizon line. Against this crimson, a row of grazing horses!

"We'll separate now," said Charleton. "Do like we always do. Pick out one horse and ride him down. They will be awful soft after such a winter. Don't get side-tracked from one horse to another. They'd kill the Moose off at that. He's getting pretty old for this kind of thing. I'll see you at camp to-night."

Douglas dropped into a valley which twisted under the hill where the wild horses were grazing. Here he dismounted and, leading his horse, began to snake his way upward through the sage-brush which covered the hillside. When he was within a hundred yards of the herd, he paused. There were fifteen horses, of every kind and color. Douglas selected a jet black mare with a wonderful tail and mane. Then he turned to mount. Charleton, at this moment, appeared on the far side of the hill. The Moose nickered, and the herd tossed heads and broke.