So now the conversation died. No other sound came, but the two cattlemen and the bartender were keyed to tense alertness. They had sloughed instantly the easy indolence of casual talk.

There came the slap of running footsteps on the sidewalk. A voice called in excitement, "They've killed Ferril."

The eyes of the Elk Creek ranchers met. They knew now what was taking place. Ferril was cashier of the Bear Cat bank.



CHAPTER XXXIX

BEAR CAT AWAKE

At exactly eleven o'clock Houck, Bandy Walker, and the big young cowpuncher who had ridden into town with them met at the corner of one of the freight wagons. Houck talked, the others listened, except for a comment or two. A cattleman passing them on his way to the bank recalled afterward that the low voice of the Brown's Park man was deadly serious.

The two big men walked into the bank. Bandy stayed with the horses. In the building, not counting the cashier and his assistant, were two or three patrons of the institution. One was Sturgis, a round little man who had recently started a drug-store in Bear Cat. He was talking to the assistant cashier. The cattleman was arranging with Ferril for a loan.

The attention of the cattleman drifted from the business in hand. "Carryin' a good deal of hardware, ain't they, Gus?"

Ferril smiled. "Most of the boys are quittin' that foolishness, but some of 'em can't get it out of their heads that they look big when they're gun-toters. Kind of a kid business, looks to me."

The eyes of the cattleman rested on Houck. "I wouldn't call that big black fellow a kid. Who is he?"

"Don't know. Reckon we're due to find out. He's breakin' away from the other fellow and movin' this way."

Houck observed that the big cowpuncher was nervous. The hand hitched in the sagging belt was trembling.

"Don't weaken, Dave," he said in a whisper out of the corner of his mouth. "We'll be outa town in ten minutes."

"Sure," agreed the other in a hoarse murmur.

Houck sauntered to the cage. This was a recent importation from Denver. Bear Cat was proud of it as an evidence of progress. It gave the bank quite a metropolitan air.

He stood behind the cattleman, the wall at his back so that his broad shoulders brushed it. Jake had no intention of letting any one get in his rear.

"Stick yore hands up!" he ordered roughly.

The cattleman did not turn. His hands went up instantly. A half a second later those of the startled cashier lifted toward the ceiling.

The assistant made a bad mistake. He dived for the revolver in the desk close at hand.

Houck fired. The bank clerk dropped.

That shot sent panic through the heart of Sturgis. He bolted for the side door. A second shot from Houck's weapon did not stop him. A moment more, and he was on the street racing to spread the alarm.

The leader of the bank robbers swung round on Ferril. His voice was harsh, menacing. He knew that every moment now counted. From under his coat he had drawn a gunnysack.

"The bank money—quick. No silver—gold an' any bills you've got."

Ferril opened the safe. He stuffed into the sack both loose and packed gold. He had a few bills, not many, for in the West paper money was then used very little.

"No monkey business," snarled Houck after he had stood up against the opposite wall the cattleman and the depositor who chanced to be in the bank. "This all you got? Speak up, or I'll drill you."

The cashier hesitated, but the ominous hollow eye into which he looked was persuasive. He opened an inner compartment lined with bags of gold. These he thrust into the gunnysack.

The robber named Dave tied with shaking fingers the loose end of the sack.

"Time to go," announced Houck grimly. "You're goin' with us far as our horses—all of you. We ain't lookin' for to be bushwhacked."

He lined up the bodyguard in front and on each side of himself and his accomplice. Against the back of the cattleman he pushed the end of the revolver barrel.

"Lead the way," he ordered with an oath.

Houck had heard the sound of running feet along the street. He knew it was more than likely that there would be a fight before he and his men got out of town. This was not in his reckoning. The shots fired inside the bank had been outside his calculations. They had been made necessary only by the action of the teller. Jake's plan had been to do the job swiftly and silently, to get out of town before word of what had taken place reached the citizens. He had chosen Bear Cat as the scene of the robbery because there was always plenty of money in the bank, because he owed its people a grudge, and because it was so far from a railroad.

As he had outlined the hold-up to his fellows in crime, it had looked like a moderately safe enterprise. But he realized now that he had probably led them into a trap. Nearly every man in Bear Cat was a big-game hunter. This meant that they were dead shots.

Houck knew that it would be a near thing if his party got away in time. A less resolute man would have dropped the whole thing after the alarm had been given and ridden away at once. But he was no quitter. So he was seeing it out.

The cattleman led the procession through the side door into the street.

Sunshine warm and mellow still bathed the street, just as it had done ten minutes earlier. But there was a difference. Dave felt a shiver run down his spine.

From the horses Bandy barked a warning. "Hurry, Jake, for God's sake. They're all round us."



CHAPTER XL

BIG-GAME HUNTERS AT WORK

Bob and his partner did not rush out of the hotel instantly to get into the fray. They did what a score of other able-bodied men of Bear Cat were doing—went in search of adequate weapons with which to oppose the bank robbers. Bear Cat was probably the best-equipped town in the country to meet a sudden emergency of this kind. In every house, behind the door or hanging on the wall, was a rifle used to kill big game. In every house was at least one man who knew how to handle that rifle. All he had to do was to pick up the weapon, load it, and step into the street.

June was in the kitchen with Chung Lung. The Reverend Melancthon Browning had just collected two dollars from Chung for the foreign missionary fund. Usually the cook was a cheerful giver, but this morning he was grumbling a little. He had been a loser at hop toy the night before.

"Mister Blowning he keep busy asking for dollars. He tell me givee to the Lord. Gleat smoke, Lord allee timee bloke?"

The girl laughed. The Oriental's quaint irreverence was of the letter and not of the spirit.

Through the swing door burst Bob Dillon. "Know where there's a rifle, June?"

She looked at him, big-eyed. "Not the Utes again?" she gasped.

"Bank robbers. I want a gun."

Without a word she turned and led him swiftly down the passage to a bedroom. In one corner of it was a belt. Bob loaded the gun.

June's heart beat fast. "You'll—be careful?" she cautioned.

He nodded as he ran out of the door and into the alley behind.

Platt & Fortner's was erecting a brick store building, the first of its kind in Bear Cat. The walls were up to the second story and the window frames were in. Through the litter of rubbish left by the workmen Bob picked a hurried way to one of the window spaces. Two men were crouched in another of these openings not fifteen feet from him.

"How many of 'em?" he asked in a loud whisper.

Blister answered from the embrasure opposite. "D-don't know."

"Still in the bank, are they?"

"Yes."

Some one peered out of Dolan's through the crack of a partly opened door. Bob caught the gleam of the sun upon the barrel of a gun. A hat with a pair of eyes beneath the rim of it showed above the sill of a window in the blacksmith shop opposite. Bear Cat was all set for action.

A man was standing beside some horses near the back door of Platt & Fortner's. He was partially screened from Bob's view by one of the broncos and by a freight wagon, but the young cattleman had a fleeting impression that he was Bandy Walker. Was he, too, waiting to get a shot at the bandits? Probably so. He had a rifle in his hands. But it struck Dillon he was taking chances. When the robbers came out of the bank they would be within thirty feet of him.

Out of the front door of the bank a little group of men filed. Two of them were armed. The others flanked them on every side. Ferril the cashier carried a gunnysack heavily loaded.

A man stepped out upon the platform in front of Platt & Fortner's. From his position he looked down on the little bunch of men moving toward the horses. Bandy Walker, beside the horses, called on Houck to hurry, that they were being surrounded.

"I've got you covered. Throw down yore guns," the man on the platform shouted to the outlaws, rifle at shoulder.

Houck's revolver flashed into the air. He fired across the shoulder of the man whom he was using as a screen. The rifleman on the store porch sat down suddenly, his weapon clattering to the ground.

"Another of 'em," Houck said aloud with a savage oath. "Any one else lookin' for it?"

Walker moved forward with the horses. Afraid that general firing would begin at any moment, Ferril dropped the sack and ran for the shelter of the wagons. His flight was a signal for the others who had been marshaled out of the bank. They scattered in a rush for cover.

Instantly Houck guessed what would follow. From every side a volley of bullets would be concentrated on him and his men. He too ran, dodging back into the bank.

He was not a tenth part of a second too soon. A fusillade of shots poured down. It seemed that men were firing from every door, window, and street corner. Bandy Walker fell as he started to run. Two bullets tore through his heart, one from each side. The big cowpuncher never stirred from his tracks. He went down at the first volley. Five wounds, any one of which would have been mortal, were later found in his body and head.

All told, the firing had not lasted as long as it would take a man to run across a street. Bear Cat had functioned. The bank robbers were out of business.

The news spread quicker than the tongue could tell it. From all directions men, women, and children converged toward the bank. In the excitement the leader of the bandits was forgotten for a minute or two.

"What about the third fellow?" a voice asked.

The question came from Dud Hollister. He had reached the scene too late to take any part in the battle, much to his chagrin.

"Went into the bank," Blister said. "I s-saw him duck in just before the shooting began."

The building was surrounded and rushed. Houck was not inside. Evidently he had run out of the back door and made for the willows by the river. A boy claimed that he had seen a man running in that direction.

A crowd of armed men beat the willows on both banks for a distance of a mile both up and down the stream wherever there was cover. No trace of the outlaw could be found. Posses on horseback took up the search. These posses not only rode up and down the river. They scoured the mesa on the other bank all day. When night fell Houck was still at large.



CHAPTER XLI

IN A LADY'S CHAMBER

The drama of the hold-up and of the retribution that had fallen upon the bandits had moved as swiftly as though it had been rehearsed. There had been no wasted words, no delay in the action. But in life the curtain does not always drop at the right moment. There was anticlimax in Bear Cat after the guns had ceased to boom. In the reaction after the strain the tongues of men and women were loosened. Relief expressed itself in chatter. Everybody had some contributing incident to tell.

Into the clatter Dud Hollister's voice cut sharply. "Some one get Doc Tuckerman, quick."

He was bending over the wounded man on the platform, trying to stop the flow of blood from a little hole in the side.

Mollie stepped toward him. "Carry Art into the hotel. I'll have a bed ready for him time you get there. Anybody else hurt?"

"Some one said Ferril was shot."

"No. He's all right. There he is over there by the wagons. See? Lookin' after the gold in the sack."

Blister came to the door of the bank in time to hear Mollie's question. "McCray's been s-shot—here in the bank."

"Bring him in too," ordered Mollie.

The wounded men were given first aid and carried into the hotel. There their wounds were dressed by the doctor.

In the corridor outside Bob and his partner met June coming out of one of the rooms where the invalids had been taken. She was carrying a towel and some bandages.

"Got to get a move on me," Dud said. "I got in after the fireworks were over. Want to join Blister's posse now. You comin', Bob?"

"Not now," Dillon answered.

He was white to the lips. There was a fear in his mind that he might be going to disgrace himself by getting sick. The nausea had not attacked him until the shooting was over. He was much annoyed at himself, but the picture of the lusty outlaws lying in the dust with the life stricken out of them had been too much.

"All right. I'll be hustlin' along," Dud said, and went.

Bob leaned against the wall.

June looked at him with wise, understanding mother-eyes. "It was kinda awful, wasn't it? Gave me a turn when I saw them lying there. Must have been worse for you. Did you—hit ..?"

"No." He was humiliated at the confession. "I didn't fire a shot. Couldn't, somehow. Everybody was blazin' away at 'em. That's the kind of nerve I've got," he told her bitterly.

In her eyes the starlight flashed. "An' that's the kind I love. Oh, Bob, I wouldn't want to think you'd killed either of those poor men, an' one of them just a boy."

"Some one had to do it."

"Yes, but not you. And they didn't have to brag afterward about it, did they? That's horrible. Everybody going around telling how they shot them. As if it was something to be proud of. I'm so glad you're not in it. Let the others have the glory if they want it."

He tried to be honest about it. "That's all very well, but they were a bad lot. They didn't hesitate to kill. The town had to defend itself. No, it was just that I'm such a—baby."

"You're not!" she protested indignantly. "I won't have you say it, either."

His hungry eyes could not leave her, so slim and ardent, all fire and flame. The sweetness of her energy, the grace of the delicate lifted throat curve, the warmth and color of life in her, expressed a spirit generous and fine. His heart sang within him. Out of a world of women she was the one he wanted, the lance-straight mate his soul leaped out to meet.

"There's no one like you in the world, June," he cried. "Nobody in all the world."

She flashed at him eyes of alarm. A faint pink, such as flushes the sea at dawn, waved into her cheeks and throat.

"I've got to go," she said hurriedly. "Mollie'll be expectin' me."

She was off, light-footed as Daphne, the rhythm of morning in her step.

All day she carried with her the treasure of his words and the look that had gone with them. Did he think it? Did he really and truly believe it? Her exaltation stayed with her while she waited on table, while she nursed the wounded men, while she helped Chung wash the dishes. It went singing with her into her little bedroom when she retired for the night.

June sat down before the small glass and looked at the image she saw there. What was it he liked about her? She studied the black crisp hair, the dark eager eyes with the dusky shadows under them in the slight hollows beneath, the glow of red that stained the cheeks below the pigment of the complexion. She tried looking at the reflection from different angles to get various effects. It was impossible for her not to know that she was good to look at, but she had very little vanity about it. None the less it pleased her because it pleased others.

She let down her long thick hair and combed it. The tresses still had the old tendency of her childhood to snarl unless she took good care of them. From being on her feet all day the shoes she was wearing were uncomfortable. She slipped them off and returned to the brushing of the hair.

While craning her neck for a side view June saw in the glass that which drained the blood from her heart. Under the bed the fingers of a hand projected into view. It was like her that in spite of the shock she neither screamed nor ran to the door and cried for help. She went on looking at her counterfeit in the glass, thoughts racing furiously. The hand belonged to a man. She could see that now plainly, could even make out a section of the gauntlet on his wrist. Who was he? What was he doing here in her room?

She turned in the chair, deliberately, steadying her voice.

"Better come out from there. I see you," she said quietly.

From under the bed Jake Houck crawled.



CHAPTER XLII

A WALK IN THE PARK

June was the first to speak. "So you're here. You didn't get away."

"I'm here," Houck growled. "No chance for a getaway. I ran out the back door of the bank an' ducked into the hotel. This was the first door I come to, an' I headed in."

She was not afraid of him. The power he had once held over her was gone forever. The girl had found resources within herself that refused him dominance. He was what he always had been, but she had changed. Her vision was clearer. A game and resourceful bully he might be, but she knew one quiet youth of a far finer courage.

"They're lookin' for you along the river," she said.

The muscles of his jaw hardened. "They'd better hope they don't find me, some of 'em," he bragged.

"So had you," she said significantly.

He took her meaning instantly. The temper of Bear Cat was on edge for a lynching. "Did they die, either o' those fellows I shot?" the bandit demanded.

"Not yet."

"Fools, the pair of 'em. If that bank teller hadn't grabbed for his gun we'd 'a' got away with it fine."

She looked at him with disgust, not untouched with self-scorn because she had ever let him become an overpowering influence in her life. He could no more help boasting than he could breathing.

"As it is, you've reached the end of your rope," the girl said steadily.

"Don't you think I'm at the end of a rope. I'm a long ways from there."

"And the men with you are gone."

"How gone? Did they get 'em?"

"Neither of them ever moved out of his tracks."

"When I heard the shootin' I figured it would be thataway," Houck said callously.

She could see in him no evidence whatever of regret or remorse for what he had done. This raid, she guessed, was of his planning. He had brought the others into it, and they had paid the penalty of their folly. The responsibility for their deaths lay at his door. He was not apparently giving a thought to that.

"You can't stay here," she told him coldly. "You'll have to go."

"Go where? Can you get me a horse?"

"I won't," June answered.

"I got to have a horse, girl," he wheedled. "Can't travel without one."

"I don't care how far you travel or what becomes of you. I want you out of here. That's all."

"You wouldn't want me shootin' up some o' yore friends, would you? Well, then. If they find me here there'll be some funerals in Bear Cat. You can bet heavy on that."

She spoke more confidently than she felt. "They can take care of themselves. I won't have you here. I'll not protect you."

The outlaw's eyes narrowed to slits. "Throw me down, would you? Tell 'em I'm here, mebbe?" His face was a menace, his voice a snarl.

June looked at him steadily, unafraid. "You needn't try to bully me. It's not worth wasting your time."

To look at her was to know the truth of what she said, but he could not help trying to dominate the girl, both because it was his nature and because he needed so badly her help.

"Sho! You're not so goshalmighty. You're jes' June Tolliver. I'm the same Jake Houck you once promised to marry. Don't forget that, girl. I took you from that white-livered fellow you married—"

"Who saved you from the Utes when nobody else would lift a finger for you. That comes well from you of all men," she flung out.

"That ain't the point. What I'm sayin' is that I'll not stand for you throwin' me down."

"What can you do?" She stood before him in her stockings, the heavy black hair waving down to her hips, a slim girl whose wiry strength he could crush with one hand.

Her question stopped him. What could he do if she wanted to give him up? If he made a move toward her she would scream, and that would bring his enemies upon him. He could shoot her afterward, but that would do no good. His account was heavy enough as it stood without piling up surplusage.

"You aimin' for to sell me out?" he asked hoarsely.

"No. I won't be responsible for your death." June might have added another reason, a more potent one. She knew Jake Houck, what a game and desperate villain he was. They could not capture him alive. It was not likely he could be killed without one or two men at least being shot by him. Driven into a corner, he would fight like a wild wolf.

"Tha's the way to talk, June. Help me outa this hole. You can if you're a mind to. Have they got patrols out everywhere?"

"Only on the river side of the town. They think you escaped that way."

"Well, if you'll get me a horse—"

"I'll not do it." She reflected a moment, thinking out the situation. "If you can reach the foothills you'll have a chance."

He grinned, wolfishly. "I'll reach 'em. You can gamble on that, if I have to drop a coupla guys like I did this mornin'."

That was just the trouble. If any one interfered with him, or even recognized him, he would shoot instantly. He would be a deadly menace until he was out of Bear Cat.

"I'll go with you," June said impulsively.

"Go with me?" he repeated.

"Across the park. If they see me with you, nobody'll pay any attention to you. Pull your hat down over your eyes."

He did as she told him.

"Better leave your guns here. If anyone sees them—"

"Nothin' doing. My guns go right with me. What are you trying to pull off?" He shot a lowering, suspicious look at her.

"Keep them under your coat, then. We don't want folks looking at us too curiously. We'll stroll along as if we were interested in our talk. When we meet any one, if we do, you can look down at me. That'll hide your face."

"You going with me clear to the edge of town?"

"No. Just across the square, where it's light an' there are liable to be people. You'll have to look out for yourself after that. It's not more than two hundred yards to the sagebrush."

"I'm ready whenever you are," he said.

June put on her shoes and did up her hair.

She made him wait there while she scouted to make sure nobody was in the corridor outside the room.

They passed out of the back door of the hotel.

Chung met them. He grunted "Glood-eveling" with a grin at June, but he did not glance twice at her companion.

The two passed across a vacant lot and into the park. They saw one or two people—a woman with a basket of eggs, a barefoot boy returning home from after-supper play. June carried the burden of the talk because she was quicker-witted than Houck. Its purpose was to deceive anybody who might happen to be looking at them.

It chanced that some one was looking at them. He was a young man who had been lying on the grass stargazing. They passed close to him and he recognized June by her walk. That was not what brought him to his feet a moment later with a gasp of amazement. He had recognized her companion, too, or he thought he had. It was not credible, of course. He must be mistaken. And yet—if that was not Jake Houck's straddling slouch his eyes were playing tricks. The fellow limped, too, just a trifle, as he had heard the Brown's Park man did from the effects of his wounds in the Ute campaign.

But how could Houck be with June, strolling across the park in intimate talk with her, leaning toward her in that confidential, lover-like attitude—Jake Houck, who had robbed the bank a few hours earlier and was being hunted up and down the river by armed posses ready to shoot him like a wolf? June was a good hater. She had no use whatever for this fellow. Why, then, would she be with him, laughing lightly and talking with animation?

Bob followed them, as noiselessly as possible. And momentarily the conviction grew in him that this was Houck. It was puzzling, but he could not escape the conclusion. There was a trick in the fellow's stride, a peculiarity of the swinging shoulders that made for identification of the man.

If he could have heard the talk between them, Bob would have better understood the situation.

Ever since that memorable evening when Bear Cat had driven him away in disgrace, Houck had let loose the worse impulses of his nature. He had gone bad, to use the phrase of the West. Something in him had snapped that hitherto had made him value the opinions of men. In the old days he had been a rustler and worse, but no crime had ever been proved against him. He could hold his head up, and he did. But the shock to his pride and self-esteem that night had produced in him a species of disintegration. He had drunk heavily and almost constantly. It had been during the sour temper following such a bout that he had quarreled with and shot the Ute. From that hour his declension had been swift. How far he had gone was shown by the way he had taken Dillon's great service to him. The thing rankled in his mind, filled him with surging rage whenever he thought of it. He hated the young fellow more than ever.

But as he walked with June, slender, light-swinging, warm with young, sensuous life, the sultry passion of the man mounted to his brain and overpowered caution. His vanity whispered to him. No woman saved a man from death unless she loved him. She might give other reasons, but that one only counted. It was easy for him to persuade himself that she always had been fond of him at heart. There had been moments when the quality of her opposition to him had taken on the color of adventure.

"I'll leave you at the corner," she said. "Go back of that house and through the barbed-wire fence. You'll be in the sage then."

"Come with me to the fence," he whispered. "I got something to tell you."

She looked at him, sharply, coldly. "You've got nothing to tell me that I want to hear. I'm not doing this for you, but to save the lives of my friends. Understand that."

They were for the moment in the shadow of a great cottonwood. Houck stopped, devouring her with his hungry eyes. Bad as the man was, he had the human craving of his sex. The slim grace of her, the fundamental courage, the lift of the oval chin, touched a chord that went vibrating through him. He snatched her to him, crushing his kisses upon the disturbing mouth, upon the color spots that warmed her cheeks.

She was too smothered to cry out at first. Later, she repressed the impulse. With all her strength she fought to push him from her.

A step sounded, a cry, the sound of a smashing blow going home. Houck staggered back. He reached for a revolver.

June heard herself scream. A shot rang out. The man who had rescued her crumpled up and went down. In that horrified moment she knew he was Bob Dillon.



CHAPTER XLIII

NOT EVEN POWDER-BURNT

Houck stood over the prostrate man, the smoking revolver in his hand, on his lips a cruel twist and in his throat a wolfish snarl.

June, watching him with eyes held in a fascination of terror, felt that at any moment he might begin pumping shots into the supine body. She shook off the palsy that held her and almost hurled her soft young body at him.

"Don't!" she begged. "Don't!" Cold fingers clutched at his wrist, dragged down the barrel of the forty-five.

"He had it comin'. He was askin' for it," the outlaw said. He spoke huskily, still looking down at the crumpled figure.

The girl felt in him the slackness of indecision. Should he shoot again and make sure? Or let the thing go as it was? In an instant he would have made up his mind.

She spoke quickly, words tumbling out pell-mell. "You must hurry—hurry! When they heard that shot—Listen! There's some one coming. Oh, run, run!"

Her staccato warning deflected his mind from the course toward which it might have turned. He held up his head, listening. The slap of footsteps on a board walk could be plainly heard. A voice lifted itself in question into the night. The door of Dolan's opened and let out a fan-shaped shaft of light. The figures of men could be seen as they surged across the lit space into the darkness. June had spoken the truth. He must hurry if he was to escape. To shoot again now would be to advertise the spot where he was.

He wrenched his arm from her fingers and ran. He moved as awkwardly as a bear, but he covered ground swiftly. In a few seconds the night had swallowed him.

Instantly the girl was beside Dillon, on her knees, lifting his head into her arms. "Oh, Bob—Bob!" she wailed.

He opened his eyes.

"Where did he hit you?" she cried softly.

His face was puzzled. He did not yet realize what had taken place. "Hit me—who?"

"That Houck. He shot you. Oh, Bob, are you much hurt?"

Dillon was recalled to a pain in his intestines. He pressed his hand against the cartridge belt.

"It's here," he said weakly.

He could feel the wet blood soaking through the shirt. The thought of it almost made him lose consciousness again.

"L-let's have a look," a squeaky voice said.

June looked up. Blister had arrived panting on the scene. Larson was on his heels.

"We better carry him to the hotel," the cattleman said to the justice. "Who did it?"

"Houck," June sobbed. She was not weeping, but her breath was catching.

Bob tried to rise, but firm hands held him down. "I can walk," he protested. "Lemme try, anyhow."

"No," insisted June.

Blister knelt beside Dillon. "Where's the wound at?" he asked.

The young fellow showed him.

"J-June, you go get Doc T-Tuckerman," Blister ordered.

She flew to obey.

The fat man opened the shirt.

"Look out for the blood," Bob said, still faintly. "Ouch!"

Blister's hand was traveling slowly next to the flesh. "N-no blood here," he said.

"Why, I felt it."

"R-reckon not, son." Blister exposed his hand in the moonlight.

The evidence bore out what he said.

"Maybe it's bleeding internally," Bob said.

Larson had picked up the belt they had unstrapped from Dillon's waist. He was examining it closely. His keen eyes found a dent in the buckle. The buckle had been just above the spot where Bob complained of the pain.

"Maybe it ain't," Larson said. "Looks like he hit yore belt an' the bullet went flyin' wild."

A closer examination showed that this must be what had taken place. There was no wound on Bob's body. He had been stunned by the shock and his active imagination had at once accepted the assumption that he had been wounded.

Bob rose with a shamefaced laugh. The incident seemed to him very characteristic. He was always making a fool of himself by getting frightened when there was no need of it. One could not imagine Dud Hollister lying down and talking faintly about an internal bleeding when there was not a scratch on his body, nor fancying that he could feel blood soaking through his shirt because somebody had shot at him.

As the three men walked back toward the hotel, they met June and Dud. The girl cried out at sight of Bob.

"I'm a false alarm," he told her bitterly. "He didn't hit me a-tall."

"Hit his b-belt buckle. If this here T-Texas man lives to be a hundred he'll never have a closer call. Think of a fellow whangin' away with a forty-five right close to him, hitting him where he was aimin' for, and not even scratching Bob. O' course the shock of it knocked him cold. Naturally it would. But I'll go on record that our friend here was born lucky. I'd ought by rights to be holdin' an inquest on the remains," Blister burbled cheerfully.

June said nothing. She drew a long sigh of relief and looked at Bob to make sure that they were concealing nothing from her.

He met her look in a kind of dogged despair. On this one subject he was so sensitive that he found criticisms where none were intended. Blister was making excuses for him, he felt, was preparing a way of escape from his chicken-hearted weakness. And he did not want the failure palliated.

"What's the use of all that explainin', Blister?" he said bluntly. "Fact is, I got scared an' quit cold. Thought I was shot up when I wasn't even powder-burnt."

He turned on his heel and walked away.

Dud's white teeth showed in his friendly, affectionate grin. "Never did see such a fellow for backin' hisself into a corner an' allowin' that he's a plumb quitter. I'll bet, if the facts were known, he come through all right."

June decided to tell her story. "Yes, Dud. He must have seen Jake Houck with me, and when Jake—annoyed me—Bob jumped at him and hit him. Then Jake shot."

"Lucky he didn't shoot again after Bob was down," ventured Dud on a search for information.

In the darkness none of them could see the warm glow that swept across the cheeks of the girl. "I kinda got in his way—and told him he'd better hurry," she explained.

"Yes, but—Where did you meet Houck? How did he happen to be with you?" asked Larson. "To be on this side of town he must 'a' slipped through the guards."

"He never went to the river. I found him under the bed in my room a few minutes ago. Said he ran in there after he left the bank. He wanted me to get him a horse. I wouldn't. But I knew if he was found cornered he would kill somebody before he was taken. Maybe two or three. I didn't know. And of course he wouldn't 'a' let me leave the room alone anyhow. So I said I'd walk across the park with him and let him slip into the sage. I thought it would be better."

Dud nodded. "We'd better get the boys on his trail immediate."

They separated, with that end in view.



CHAPTER XLIV

BOB HOLDS HIS RED HAID HIGH

At the corner of the street Bob came upon Tom Reeves and an old Leadville miner in argument. Tom made the high sign to Dillon.

"What's all the rumpus about?" he wanted to know.

"Jake Houck was seen crossin' the park. He got into the sage."

"Sho! I'll bet the hole of a doughnut he ain't been seen. If you was to ask me I'd say he was twenty-five miles from here right now, an' not lettin' no grass grow under his feet neither. I been talkin' to old wooden head here about the railroad comin' in." Tom's eyes twinkled. His friend guessed that he was trying to get a rise out of the old-timer. "He's sure some mossback. I been tellin' him the railroad's comin' through here an' Meeker right soon, but he can't see it. I reckon the toot of an engine would scare him 'most to death."

"Don't get excited about that railroad, son," drawled the former hard-rock driller, chewing his cud equably. "I rode a horse to death fifteen years ago to beat the choo-choo train in here, an' I notice it ain't arriv yet."

Bob left them to their argument. He was not just now in a mood for badinage. He moved up the street past the scattered suburbs of the little frontier town. Under the cool stars he wanted to think out what had just taken place.

Had he fainted from sheer fright when the gun blazed at him? Or was Blister's explanation a genuine one? He had read of men being thrown down and knocked senseless by the atmospheric shock of shells exploding near them in battle. But this would not come in that class. He had been actually struck. The belt buckle had been driven against his flesh. Had this hit him with force enough actually to drive the breath out of him? Or had he thought himself wounded and collapsed because of the thought?

It made a great deal of difference to him which of these was true, more than it did to the little world in which he moved. Some of the boys might guy him good-naturedly, but nobody was likely to take the matter seriously except himself. Bob had begun to learn that a man ought to be his own most severe critic. He had set out to cure himself of cowardice. He would not be easy in mind so long as he still suspected himself of showing the white feather.

He leaned on a fence and looked across the silvery sage to a grove of quaking asp beyond. How long he stood there, letting thoughts drift through his mind, he did not know. A sound startled him, the faint swish of something stirring. He turned.

Out of the night shadows a nymph seemed to be floating toward him. For a moment he had a sense of unreality, that the flow and rhythm of her movement were born of the imagination. But almost at once he knew that this was June in the flesh.

The moonlight haloed the girl, lent her the touch of magic that transformed her from a creature not too good for human nature's daily food into an ethereal daughter of romance. Her eyes were dark pools of loveliness in a white face.

"June!" he cried, excitement drumming in his blood.

Why had she come to find him? What impulse or purpose had brought her out into the night in his wake? Desire of her, tender, poignant, absorbing, pricked through him like an ache. He wanted her. Soul and body reached out to her, though both found expression only in that first cry.

Her mouth quivered. "Oh, Bob, you silly boy! As if—as if it matters why you were stunned. You were. That's enough. I'm so glad—so glad you're not hurt. It's 'most a miracle. He might have killed you."

She did not tell him that he would have done it if she had not flung her weight on his arm and dragged the weapon down, nor how in that dreadful moment her wits had worked to save him from the homicidal mania of the killer.

Bob's heart thumped against his ribs like a caged bird. Her dear concern was for him. It was so she construed friendship—to give herself generously without any mock modesty or prudery. She had come without thought of herself because her heart had sent her.

"What matters is that when I called you came," she went on. "You weren't afraid then, were you?"

"Hadn't time. That's why. I just jumped."

"Yes." The expression in her soft eyes was veiled, like autumn fires in the hills blazing through mists. "You just jumped to help me. You forgot he carried two forty-fives and would use them, didn't you?"

"Yes," he admitted. "I reckon if I'd thought of that—"

Even as the laughter rippled from her throat she gave a gesture of impatience. There were times when self-depreciation ceased to be a virtue. She remembered a confidence Blister had once made to her.

"T-Texas man," she squeaked, stuttering a little in mimicry, "throw up that red haid an' stick out yore chin."

Up jerked the head. Bob began to grin in spite of himself.

"Whose image are you m-made in?" she demanded.

"You know," he answered.

"What have you got over all the world?"

"Dominion, ma'am, but not over all of it, I reckon."

"All of it," she insisted, standing clean of line and straight as a boy soldier.

"Right smart of it," he compromised.

"Every teeny bit of it," she flung back.

"Have yore own way. I know you will anyhow," he conceded.

"An' what are you a little lower than?"

"I'm a heap lower than one angel I know."

She stamped her foot. "You're no such thing. You're as good as any one—and better."

"I wouldn't say better," he murmured ironically. None the less he was feeling quite cheerful again. He enjoyed being put through his catechism by her.

"Trouble with you is you're so meek," she stormed. "You let anybody run it over you till they go too far. What's the use of crying your own goods down? Tell the world you're Bob Dillon and for it to watch your dust."

"You want me to brag an' strut like Jake Houck?"

"No-o, not like that. But Blister's right. You've got to know your worth. When you're sure of it you don't have to tell other people about it. They know."

He considered this. "Tha's correct," he said.

"Well, then."

Bob had an inspiration. It was born out of moonshine, her urging, and the hunger of his heart. His spurs trailed across the grass.

"Is my red haid high enough now?" he asked, smiling.

Panic touched her pulse. "Yes, Bob."

"What have I got over all the world?" he quizzed.

"Dominion," she said obediently in a small voice.

"Over all of it?"

"I—don't—know."

His brown hands fastened on her shoulders. He waited till at last her eyes came up to meet his. "Every teeny bit of it."

"Have your own way," she replied, trying feebly to escape an emotional climax by repeating the words he had used. "I know you will anyhow."

He felt himself floating on a wave of audacious self-confidence. "Say it, then. Every teeny bit of it."

"Every teeny bit of it," she whispered.

"That means June Tolliver too." The look in his eyes flooded her with love.

"June Dillon," the girl corrected in a voice so soft and low he scarcely made out the words.

He caught her in his arms. "You precious lamb!"

They forgot the rest of the catechism. She nestled against his shoulder while they told each other in voiceless ways what has been in the hearts of lovers ever since the first ones walked in Eden.



CHAPTER XLV

THE OUTLAW GETS A BAD BREAK

Houck crawled through the barbed-wire fence and looked back into the park from which he had just fled. June was kneeling beside the man he had shot. Some one was running across the grass toward her. Soon the pursuit would be at his heels. He dared not lose a second.

He plunged into the sage, making for the hills which rose like a saw-toothed wall on the horizon. If he could reach them he might find there a precarious safety. Some wooded pocket would give him shelter until the pursuit had swept past. He was hungry, but if he must he could do without food for a day.

The bandit was filled with a furious, impotent rage at the way fortune had tricked him. Thirty-five miles from Bear Cat, well back from the river, three horses were waiting for him and his dead companions in a draw. Unless somebody found them they would wait a long time. The way that led to them was barred for him. He would have to try to reach Glenwood or Rifle. From there he could perhaps catch a freight east or west. His one chance was to get clear out of the country. After this day's work it would be too small to hold him.

Nothing had come out as he had planned it. The farthest thing from his hopes had been that he would have to fight his way out. He had not killed that fool Dillon of set purpose. He knew now that if his anger had not blazed out he might have made his getaway and left the fellow alive. But he had been given no time to think. It was a bad break of the luck. The White River settlers would not forgive him that. They would remember that Dillon had saved him from the Indians in the Ute campaign, and they would reason—the thickheaded idiots—that the least he could have done was to let the boy go.

He plunged through the sand of the sage hills at a gait that was half a run and half a walk. In his high-heeled boots fast travel was difficult. The footgear of the cattleman is not made for walking. The hill riders do most of their travel in a saddle. Houck's feet hurt. His toes were driven forward in the boots until each step became torture. From his heels the skin peeled from sliding up and down against the hard leather.

But he dared not stop. Already he could hear the pursuers. In the still night there came to him the shout of one calling to another, the ring of a horse's hoof striking on a stone. They were combing the mesa behind him.

Houck stumbled forward. Vaguely there rose before him a boulder-strewn slope that marked the limit of the valley. Up this he scrambled in a desperate hurry to reach the rocks. For the pursuit was almost upon him now.

Two outcroppings of sandstone barred the way. They leaned against each other, leaving a small cave beneath. Into this Houck crawled on hands and knees.

He lay crouched there, weapon in hand, like a cornered wolf, while the riders swept up and past. He knew one palpitating moment when he thought himself about to be discovered. Two of the posse stopped close to his hiding-place.

"Must be close to him," one said. "Got the makin's, Jim?"

"Sure." Evidently the tobacco pouch was passed from one to the other. "Right in these rocks somewhere, I shouldn't wonder."

"Mebbeso. Mebbe still hot-footin' it for the hills. He's in one heluva hurry if you ask me."

"Killed Bob Dillon in the park, I heard."

"If he did he'll sure hang for it, after what Dillon did for him."

There came the faint sound of creaking leather as their horses moved up the hill.

The outlaw waited till they were out of hearing before he crept into the open. Across the face of the slope he cut obliquely, working always toward higher ground. His lips were drawn back so that the tobacco-stained teeth showed in a snarl of savage rage. It would go ill with any of the posse if they should stumble on him. He would have no more mercy than a hunted wild beast.

With every minute now his chances of safety increased. The riders were far above him and to the left. With luck he should reach Piceance Creek by morning. He would travel up it till he came to Pete Tolliver's place. He would make the old man give him a horse. Not since the night he had been ridden out of Bear Cat on a rail had he seen the nester. But Pete always had been putty in his hands. It would be easy enough to bully him into letting him have whatever he wanted. All he needed was a saddled mount and provisions.

Houck was on unfamiliar ground. If there were settlers in these hills he did not know where they were. Across the divide somewhere ran Piceance Creek, but except in a vague way he was not sure of the direction it took. It was possible he might lay hold of a horse this side of Tolliver's. If so, he would not for a moment hesitate to take it.

All night he traveled. Once he thought he heard a distant dog, but though he moved in the direction from which the barking had come he did not find any ranch. The first faint glimmer of gray dawn had begun to lighten the sky when he reached the watershed of Piceance.

It had been seventeen hours since he had tasted water and that had been as a chaser after a large drink of whiskey. He was thirsty, and he hastened his pace to reach the creek. Moving down the slope, he pulled up abruptly. He had run into a cavvy grazing on the hill.

A thick growth of pine and pinon ran up to the ridge above. Back of a scrub evergreen Houck dropped to consider a plan of action. He meant to get one of these horses, and to do this he must have it and be gone before dawn. This was probably some round-up. If he could drift around close to the camp and find a saddle, there would likely be a rope attached to it. He might, of course, be seen, but he would have to take a chance on that.

Chance befriended him to his undoing. As he crept through the brush something caught his ankle and he stumbled. His groping fingers found a rope. One end of the rope was attached to a stake driven into the ground. The other led to a horse, a pinto, built for spirit and for speed, his trained eye could tell.

He pulled up the stake and wound up the rope, moving toward the pinto as he did so. He decided it would be better not to try to get a saddle till he reached Tolliver's place. The rope would do for a bridle at a pinch.

The horse backed away from him, frightened at this stranger who had appeared from nowhere. He followed, trying in a whisper to soothe the animal. It backed into a small pinon, snapping dry branches with its weight.

Houck cursed softly. He did not want to arouse anybody in the camp or to call the attention of the night jinglers to his presence. He tried to lead the pinto away, but it balked and dug its forefeet into the ground, leaning back on the rope.

The outlaw murmured encouragement to the horse. Reluctantly it yielded to the steady pull on its neck. Man and beast began to move back up the hill. As soon as he was a safe distance from the camp, Houck meant to make of the rope a bridle.

In the pre-dawn darkness he could see little and that only as vague outlines rather than definite shapes. But some instinct warned the hunted man that this was no round-up camp. He did not quite know what it was. Yet he felt as though he were on the verge of a discovery, as though an unknown but terrible danger surrounded him. Unimaginative he was, but something that was almost panic flooded up in him.

He could not wait to mount the horse until he had reached the brow of the hill. Drawing the rope close, he caught at the mane of the horse and bent his knees for the spring.

Houck had an instant's warning, and his revolver was half out of its scabbard when the rush of the attack flung him against the startled animal. He fought like a baited bear, exerting all his great strength to fling back the figures that surged up at him out of the darkness. From all sides they came at him, with guttural throat cries, swarming over each other as he beat them down.

The struggling mass quartered over the ground like some unwieldy prehistoric reptile. Houck knew that if he lost his footing he was done for. Once, as the cluster of fighters swung downhill, the outlaw found himself close to the edge of the group. He got his arms free and tried to beat off those clinging to him. Out of the melee he staggered, a pair of arms locked tightly round his thighs. Before he could free himself another body flung itself at his shoulder and hurled him from his feet.

His foes piled on him as ants do on a captured insect. His arms were tied behind him with rawhide thongs, his feet fastened together rather loosely.

He was pulled to a sitting posture. In the east the sky had lightened with the promise of the coming day.

His clothes torn from arms and body, his face bleeding from random blows, Houck looked round on the circle of his captors defiantly. In his glaring eyes and close-clamped, salient jaw no evidence was written of the despair that swept over him in a wave and drowned hope. He had in this bleak hour of reckoning the virtue of indomitable gameness.

"All right. You got me. Go to it, you red devils," he growled.

The Utes gloated over him in a silence more deadly than any verbal threats. Their enemy had been delivered into their hands.



CHAPTER XLVI

THE END OF A CROOKED TRAIL

In the grim faces of the Utes Houck read his doom. He had not the least doubt of it. His trail ended here.

The terror in his heart rose less out of the fact itself than the circumstances which surrounded it. The gray dawn, the grim, copper-colored faces, the unknown torment waiting for him, stimulated his imagination. He could have faced his own kind, the cattlemen of the Rio Blanco, without this clutching horror that gripped him. They would have done what they thought necessary, but without any unnecessary cruelty. What the Utes would do he did not know. They would make sure of their vengeance, but they would not be merciful about it.

He repressed a shudder and showed his yellow teeth in a grin of defiance. "I reckon you're right glad to see me," he jeered.

Still they said nothing, only looked at their captive with an aspect that daunted him.

"Not dumb, are you? Speak up, some of you," Houck snarled, fighting down the panic within him.

A wrinkled old Ute spoke quietly. "Man-with-loud-tongue die. He kill Indian—give him no chance. Indians kill him now."

Houck nodded his head. "Sure I killed him. He'd stolen my horse, hadn't he?"

The old fellow touched his chest. "Black Arrow my son. You kill him. He take your horse mebbe. You take Ute horse." He pointed to the pinto. "Ute kill Man-with-loud-tongue."

"Black Arrow reached for his gun. I had to shoot. It was an even break." Houck's voice pleaded in spite of his resolution not to weaken.

The spokesman for the Indians still showed an impassive face, but his voice was scornful. "Is Man-with-loud-tongue a yellow coyote? Does he carry the heart of a squaw? Will he cry like a pappoose?"

Houck's salient jaw jutted out. The man was a mass of vanity. Moreover, he was game. "Who told you I was yellow? Where did you get that? I ain't scared of all the damned Utes that ever came outa hell."

And to prove it—perhaps, too, by way of bolstering up his courage—he cursed the redskins with a string of blistering oaths till he was out of breath.

The captive needed no explanation of the situation. He knew that the soldiers had failed to round up and drive back to the reservation a band of the Utes that had split from the main body and taken to the hills. By some unlucky chance or evil fate he had come straight from Bear Cat to their night camp.

The Utes left Houck pegged out to the ground while they sat at a little distance and held a pow-wow. The outlaw knew they were deciding his fate. He knew them better than to expect anything less than death. What shook his nerve was the uncertainty as to the form it would take. Like all frontiersmen, he had heard horrible stories of Apache torture. In general the Utes did not do much of that sort of thing. But they had a special grudge against him. What he had done to one of them had been at least a contributory cause of the outbreak that had resulted so disastrously for them. He would have to pay the debt he owed. But how? He sweated blood while the Indians squatted before the fire and came to a decision.

The council did not last long. When it broke up Houck braced his will to face what he must. It would not be long now. Soon he would know the worst.

Two of the braves went up the hill toward the cavvy. The rest came back to their captive.

They stood beside him in silence. Houck scowled up at them, still defiant.

"Well?" he demanded.

The Utes said nothing. They stood there stolid. Their victim read in that voiceless condemnation an awful menace.

"Onload it," he jeered. "I'm no squaw. Shoot it at me. Jake Houck ain't scared."

Still they waited, the father of Black Arrow with folded arms, a sultry fire burning in his dark eyes.

The two men who had gone to the cavvy returned. They were leading a horse with a rope around its neck. Houck recognized the animal with a thrill of superstitious terror. It was the one about the possession of which he had shot Black Arrow.

The old chief spoke again. "Man-with-loud-tongue claim this horse. Utes give it him. Horse his. Man-with-loud-tongue satisfied then maybe."

"What are you aimin' to do, you red devils?" Houck shouted.

Already he guessed vaguely at the truth. Men were arranging a kind of harness of rope and rawhide on the animal.

Others stooped to drag the captive forward. He set his teeth to keep back the shriek of terror that rose to his throat.

He knew now what form the vengeance of the savages was to take.



CHAPTER XLVII

THE KINGDOM OF JOY

A prince of the Kingdom of Joy rode the Piceance trail on a morning glad with the song of birds and the rippling of brooks. Knee to knee with him rode his princess, slim and straight, the pink in her soft smooth cheeks, a shy and eager light in the velvet-dark eyes. They were starting together on the long, long trail, and the poor young things could vision it only as strewn with sunbathed columbines and goldenrods.

The princess was a bride, had been one for all of twelve hours. It was her present conviction that she lived in a world wonderful, and that the most amazingly radiant thing in it was what had happened to her and Bob Dillon. She pitied everybody else in the universe. They were so blind! They looked, but they did not see what was so clear to eyes from which the veil had been stripped. They went about their humdrum way without emotion. Their hearts did not sing exultant paeans that throbbed out of them like joy-notes from a meadow-lark's throat. Only those who had come happily to love's fruition understood the meaning of life. June was not only happy; she was this morning wise, heiress of that sure wisdom which comes only to the young when they discover just why they have been born into the world.

How many joys there were for those attuned to receive them! Her fingers laced with Bob's, and from the contact a warm, ecstatic glow flooded both their bodies. She looked at his clean brown face, with its line of golden down above where the razor had traveled, with its tousled, reddish hair falling into the smiling eyes, and a queer little lump surged into the girl's throat. Her husband! This boy was the mate heaven had sent her to repay for years of unhappiness.

"My wife!" It was all still so new and unbelievable that Bob's voice shook a little.

"Are you sorry?" she asked.

Her shy smile teased. She did not ask because she needed information, but because she could not hear too often the answer.

"You know whether I am. Oh, June girl, I didn't know it would be like this," he cried.

"Nor I, Bob."

Their lithe bodies leaned from the saddles. They held each other close while their lips met.

They were on their way to Pete Tolliver's to tell him the great news. Soon now the old cabin and its outbuildings would break into view. They had only to climb Twelve-Mile Hill.

Out of a draw to the right a horse moved. Through the brush something dragged behind it.

"What's that?" asked June.

"Don't know. Looks kinda queer. It's got some sort of harness on."

They rode to the draw. June gave a small cry of distress.

"Oh, Bob, it's a man."

He dismounted. The horse with the dragging load backed away, but it was too tired to show much energy. Bob moved forward, soothing the animal with gentle sounds. He went slowly, with no sudden gestures. Presently he was patting the neck of the horse. With his hunting-knife he cut the rawhide thongs that served as a harness.

"It's a Ute pony," he said, after he had looked it over carefully. He knew this because the Indians earmarked their mounts.

June was still in the saddle. Some instinct warned her not to look too closely at the load behind that was so horribly twisted.

"Better go back to the road, June," her husband advised. "It's too late to do anything for this poor fellow."

She did as he said, without another look at the broken body.

When she had gone, Bob went close and turned over the huddled figure. Torn though it was, he recognized the face of Jake Houck. To construct the main features of the tragedy was not difficult.

While escaping from Bear Cat after the fiasco of the bank robbery, Houck must have stumbled somehow into the hands of the Ute band still at large. They had passed judgment on him and executed it. No doubt the wretched man had been tied at the heels of a horse which had been lashed into a frenzied gallop by the Indians in its rear. He had been dragged or kicked to death by the frightened horse.

As Bob looked down into that still, disfigured face, there came to him vividly a sense of the weakness and frailty of human nature. Not long since this bit of lifeless clay had straddled his world like a Colossus. To the young cowpuncher he had been a superman, terrible in his power and capacity to do harm. Now all that vanity and egoism had vanished, blown away as though it had never been.

Where was Jake Houck? What had become of him? The shell that had been his was here. But where was the roaring bully that had shaken his fist blasphemously at God and man?

It came to him, with a queer tug at the heartstrings, that Houck had once been a dimpled baby in a mother's arms, a chirruping little fat-legged fellow who tottered across the floor to her with outstretched fingers. Had that innocent child disappeared forever? Or in that other world to which Jake had so violently gone would he meet again the better self his evil life had smothered?

Bob loosened the bandanna from his throat and with it covered the face of the outlaw. He straightened the body and folded the hands across the breast. It was not in his power to obliterate from the face the look of ghastly, rigid terror stamped on it during the last terrible moments.

The young husband went back to his waiting wife. He stood by her stirrup while she looked down at him, white-faced.

"Who was it?" she whispered.

"Jake Houck," he told her gravely. "The Utes did it—because he killed Black Arrow, I reckon."

She shuddered. A cloud had come over the beautiful world.

"We'll go on now," he said gently. "I'll come back later with your father."

They rode in silence up the long hill. At the top of it he drew rein and smiled at his bride.

"You'll not let that spoil the day, will you, June? He had it coming, you know. Houck had gone bad. If it hadn't been the Utes, it would have been the law a little later."

"Yes, but—" She tried to answer his smile, not very successfully. "It's rather—awful, isn't it?"

He nodded. "Let's walk over to the cabin, dear."

She swung down, into his arms. There she found comfort that dissipated the cloud from her mind. When she ran into the house to throw her arms around Pete Tolliver's neck, she was again radiant.

"Guess! Guess what!" she ordered her father.

Pete looked at his daughter and at the bashful, smiling boy.

"I reckon I done guessed, honeybug," he answered, stroking her rebellious hair.

"You're to come and live with us. Isn't he, Bob?"

The young husband nodded sheepishly. He felt that it was a brutal thing to take a daughter from her father. It had not occurred to him before, but old Pete would feel rather out of it now.

Tolliver looked at Bob over the shoulder of his daughter.

"You be good to her or I'll—" His voice broke.

"I sure will," the husband promised.

June laughed. "He's the one ought to worry, Dad. I'm the flyaway on this team."

Bob looked at her, gifts in his eyes. "I'm worryin' a heap," he said, smiling.

THE END