"Mormon Joe's Kate, then, if you like that better," replied Mrs. Pantin, nettled.

"Or 'Mormon Joe's Kate,' either," curtly.

"So sorry; I didn't know you knew her. Do you?"

Mr. Pantin, who at his own table was given the privilege of taking bones in his fingers, pointed the chop at her.

"Let me tell you something, Priscilla," impressively. "Someone who is cleverer than I am has said that it is never safe to snub a pretty girl, because there is always the possibility that she'll marry well and be able to retaliate. The same thing applies to one who has brains and is in earnest. I've made it a rule never to disparage the efforts of a person who had a definite purpose and works to attain it. It's about a fifty-to-one shot that he'll land—sometime."

Mrs. Pantin looked at her husband suspiciously. There were times when she had a notion that she had not explored the furthermost recesses of his nature—when she wondered if it had not ramifications and passages unknown to her. It had. It was Mr. Pantin's dearest wish to come home boiling drunk with his hat smashed and his necktie hanging. He longed to kick the front door in and see his wife cower before him. The mental orgies in which he indulged while sitting placidly in the bow window automatically snapping his Romeo against the heel of his foot by a muscular contraction of the toes—would have curdled the blood of Priscilla Pantin.

It was an interesting case of atavism. There was little doubt but that Mr. Pantin was a throwback to a sportive ancestor who had kept a pacer that could do a little better than 2.13 when conditions were favorable, but had rendered the family homeless by betting one hundred and sixty acres of black walnut timber against a horse that left him so far behind that the spectators urged him to throw something overboard to see if he was moving. All this was family history. Mr. Pantin fought against his predilection to gamble on anything or anybody as he would have fought an impulse to take human life.

It did not escape Mrs. Pantin's attention now that her husband had not answered her question as to whether he knew this notorious character. She repeated it.

Mr. Pantin returned her searching look with one in which she could discern no guile, but his words irritated her still further.

"I happened to be in the bank the other day when the girl was begging Wentz for time on the loan which Mormon Joe had contracted for running expenses," Mr. Pantin explained with somewhat elaborate carelessness. "It wasn't due, but they were putting the screws on her to serve their own purpose—or Neifkins' purpose, rather. He wants her leases. It was a mistake of judgment, for she would have been a good borrower. Bankers are born, not made, anyway," complacently, "and Vernon isn't one of them."

"It seems to me his judgment in this instance is excellent," Mrs. Pantin contradicted tartly. "It's quite evident the business men of Prouty agree with him, since none of them will trust her."

"That doesn't alter my opinion." Mr. Pantin's reply was calm. "It's the person behind a loan that counts, anyway—not the security. If I had been in Wentz's place when she said she could handle those sheep and meet the obligation when due, I should have believed her." Again Mr. Pantin waved the chop for emphasis as he added with something very like enthusiasm: "She has honesty, strength of character, intelligence, personal magnetism—"

"It appears to me that you made rather a close study, considering your limited opportunity," Mrs. Pantin interrupted acidly.

"She interested me."

"Evidently. But why this sudden change of opinion? I've heard you say a hundred times that all women are pinheads in business."

"Because she's no ordinary woman," Mr. Pantin defended. "The girl hasn't struck her gait yet; her mind is immature, her character undeveloped; but if she doesn't make good—" he paused while he fumbled for a convincing figure—"I'll eat my panama!"

Mrs. Pantin stared, both at the intemperate language and the rare display of animation. From a state of indifference, she felt distinct hostility toward Mormon Joe's Kate stirring in her bosom. Mr. Pantin should have known better—he did know better—but he had felt reckless, somehow. To make amends he said ingratiatingly:

"This mince pie is excellent, Prissy! Did you tell me there was no meat in it?"

"Tomatoes," frigidly. "It's mock mincemeat." A triumph in economy—an achievement! But Mr. Pantin's flattery and conciliating smile were alike futile. Like many another overzealous partisan, he had made for Kate one more enemy.

* * * * *

It seemed aeons ago to Mrs. Toomey that Jap had appeared to her in the light of a handsome conquering daredevil, whose dash and confident personality made all things possible.

The real test of Toomey's character had come with his misfortunes. So long as he had money to spend and could ride, arrogant and high-handed, over the obsequious shopkeepers who benefited by his prodigality, and the poor ranchers who had not the means, or often the spirit, to oppose him, he continued to appear to her in the light in which she had first seen him. She adored his imperious temper, his erratic lavish generosity, his Quixotic standards, but with the reversal of their fortunes she was slowly brought to realize that money had provided most of the glamor which surrounded him. To be imperious with no one to obey makes for absurdity, and this trait, in his poverty, made him ridiculous, as did the extravagances in which he indulged at the expense of necessities.

It was not often Mrs. Toomey would admit to herself the real cause of the heartsickness which filled her as she watched her husband deteriorate, but with every excuse known to a woman who loves she tried to bolster up her waning faith in the man and his ability. With an obstinacy which was pathetic, she endeavored to keep him on the pedestal where she had placed him. She listened with a fixed smile of interest to the extraordinary schemes he outlined to her, sometimes hypnotizing herself into believing in them, until he returned with the exaggerated swagger which proclaimed another failure. Then she would join him in his denunciation of those who could not see the value of his plan and refused to aid him.

But the conviction that Jap had not the qualities to win material success did not hurt as did the knowledge that he was not too brave to lie, too proud to borrow from those he considered his social inferiors and with no notion of repaying the obligation, nor too honest to obtain money by any subterfuge that occurred to him.

When she had attempted to borrow money from Abram Pantin, the light esteem in which that astute person held her husband had been as painful as her disappointment, for it was her first definite knowledge of others' estimate of him. Since then, with her eyes opened, she had come to see that Jap was regarded in Prouty as something between a joke and a pest.

Mrs. Toomey was thinking of Mormon Joe's murder one morning while she dusted, and of Kate—conjecturing as to what would become of the girl when the bank foreclosed and she lost everything. She sighed as, with the corner of her apron, she removed a smudge from her nose before the mirror. Wasn't there anything in the world any more but trouble for people who had no money?

She glanced casually out of the window and stiffened in something very like horror.

Kate was in front, tying her horse to a transplanted cottonwood sapling. What if Prissy Pantin should see her! She was visibly agitated, when she opened the door for Kate—stammering a welcome that had a doubtful ring, but Kate did not appear to notice. She looked older, Mrs. Toomey thought, in swift scrutiny. Yes, she had suffered terribly. Her heart went out to the girl, even while she glanced furtively through the windows to see who of the neighbors might be looking.

While Mrs. Toomey wondered what excuse she could make for Kate's presence, if anyone called, she indicated a chair and said nervously:

"I've been hoping to see you and tell you how sorry I am for all that's happened."

"I've been disappointed that you haven't," Kate replied, simply, "for your friendship has loomed like a mountain to me in my trouble."

She was still counting on it! Mrs. Toomey got out a frightened:

"Really?"

"When we shook hands on it up there in the draw," Kate went on, sadly, "I didn't dream how soon or how much I should need you. And women do need each other in trouble, don't they?" earnestly.

Mrs. Toomey nervously tucked in her "scolding locks."

"Er—of course," constrainedly. Her mind was rambling from Jap to Mrs. Pantin and the vigilant neighbors.

Kate rose suddenly, and crossing the room stooped to lay her gloved hand upon Mrs. Toomey's thin shoulders. Looking into her eyes she demanded:

"You don't believe I did it, do you?"

This was a question Mrs. Toomey could answer truthfully and she did, with convincing sincerity:

"No, I don't!"

"I knew it!" There was a joyous note in Kate's voice, and gratitude. "I was sure you were true-blue, and I know I'm going to love you!"

Lifting the woman to her feet, with an arm about her shoulders, Kate kissed her impulsively. She was so slight, so crushable, that Kate experienced a sense of shock as one does when he feels the bones of a little bird through its feathers. Her frailty appealed to something within the girl that was like masculine chivalry, awakening a desire that was keener than ever to protect and help her, while, as before, Mrs. Toomey felt the magnetism of the younger woman's health and strength and courage. Nevertheless, she was panic-stricken at what Kate was taking for granted and her quick little mind was darting about like some frightened rodent from corner to corner, thinking how she was going to disentangle herself from the situation with the minimum of hurt to the girl's feelings.

There was a suggestion of her former buoyancy in Kate's manner. Her eyes had something of their old-time sparkle as she reached inside the blousing front of her flannel shirt and laid in Mrs. Toomey's hand a packet of crisp banknotes secured by bands of elastic.

"You see—I've kept my promise."

Mrs. Toomey stood motionless, staring.

"Why! Where did you get it?" when speech came back to her.

"That's my secret," Kate replied, gently. "But it's yours to use as long as you need it."

Without warning, Mrs. Toomey burst into tears.

"I c-can't help it!" she sobbed on Kate's shoulder. "It's so—unexpected."

Relief was paramount to all other emotions, but she vowed as she wept that she would show her gratitude, and would be Kate's friend as she had promised, and she would—the feeling of the money in her hand gave her courage—defy Prissy Pantin, if necessary.

Kate and Mrs. Toomey separated with the warm handclasp of friendship.

Mrs. Toomey waited in a tremulous state of eagerness for her husband's return. It was months since she had known such a feeling of relief; it was as though years suddenly had dropped from her. She went about the house humming, trying to decide upon the most effective way of surprising him, and planning how she would spend the money to derive the most good from it. At intervals she opened the top drawer of the bureau and looked at the banknotes to be sure she was not dreaming. They would pay a little on their most urgent bills, to show their good intentions, and then buy supplies enough to render impossible any such experiences as those they had undergone recently. A goodly portion would be kept for emergencies until Jap got into something.

Mrs. Toomey glowed with gratitude to Kate and the delightful sensation of relaxed nerves after a tension. She felt as peaceful as though she had taken an opiate, therefore, when Toomey came in swaggering and with the black brow which told her of disappointment, she smiled at him tranquilly.

The smile irritated him.

"I wish you'd stop grinning."

Too happy to be perturbed, she replied in mock severity:

"If I cry, you resent it; if I smile, you stop me. Really, you know, you're rather difficult."

"You'd be difficult, too, if you had to try to do business with a bunch of tightwads. We've nothing to grin about, let me tell you."

"Haven't we?" archly.

He eyed her radiant face and ejaculated:

"Lord, but you look simple! What ails you?"

"Nothing fatal," she laughed gaily. "But tell me, Jap, what went wrong this morning?"

The question recalled him to his grievances.

"You know that scheme I told you about last night?"

"Which one?" Mrs. Toomey searched her memory.

"Don't you ever listen when I talk to you?"

"I was so sleepy," apologetically.

"That one to 'glom' all the land between Willow Creek and the mountain."

"Oh, yes," vaguely. "Couldn't you interest anybody?"

"How can you interest clods who have no imagination?"

"What did they say about it?"

"Scales told me to go out and hold my head under the spout and he'd pump on it. If ever I get a dollar ahead to pay my fine, I'm going to work that son-of-a-gun over."

Mrs. Toomey sobered. The flippancy of the grocer was additional evidence that her husband was considered a light-weight, even in Prouty. It hurt her inexpressibly. The desire to work her surprise to a dramatic climax suddenly left her. She said quietly:

"Our worries are over for the present, Jap." She walked to the bureau and took out the money. "There is five hundred dollars."

He stared at it, at her, and back again incredulously.

"Is this a joke?" finally.

She shook her head.

"Kate Prentice."

He shouted at her.

"What? You borrowed from her?"

"She promised it to me before the—the—"

"You can't keep it."

"But, Jap—"

"I say you can't keep it."

"But, Jap—" she whimpered.

"Do you think I want to be under obligations to that—"

She put her hand over his mouth.

"You shan't say it! She's been generous. She kept her promise when neither you nor I would have done it, and I'm going to stand by her."

"You'll do nothing of the kind!" savagely.

"Now listen, Jap," she went on pleadingly. "We need this so terribly—we're in no position to consider our feelings—we can pay it back the minute you get into something. I don't understand why you feel so strongly about her, but since you do, I respect you for not wanting to take it. However, the loan isn't to you, it's to me; it's a business proposition, and when we return it we'll pay interest."

He was listening sullenly and she read in his wavering look that he was weakening.

"You must be sensible, Jap. Be reasonable, for we haven't a dollar, and look—here are five hundred of them! We simply can't refuse."

She saw the greedy glint in his eyes as she held the money toward him, and knew that the battle was over.

"I'll not have anything to do with it, anyway."

She could have smiled at his continued pretence of reluctance, his fictitious dignity, if it had not saddened her. As she returned the money to the bureau drawer and slowly closed it she was conscious that in her heart she would have been glad and proud if he had not yielded.



CHAPTER XII

THE DUDE WRANGLER

With his tongue in his cheek, literally, and perspiring like a blacksmith, Teeters sat at the table in the kitchen of the Scissor Ranch house, and by the flickering light of a candle in a lard can wrote letters to the heads of the Vanderbilt and Astor families, to the President and those of his Cabinet whose names he could remember.

Briefly, but in a style that was intimate and slightly humorous, Teeters conveyed the information that he was starting a dude ranch, and if they were thinking of taking an outing the coming summer they would be treated right at the "Scissor" or have their money refunded. He guaranteed a first class A1 cook, with a signed contract to wash his hands before breakfast, a good saddle horse for each guest, and plenty of bedding.

He did not aim to handle over ten head of dudes to start with, so, if they wanted to play safe, they had better answer upon receipt of his letter, he warned them, signing himself after deliberation:

Yure frend C. TEETERS

"I'll bet me I'll buy me some lamp chimbleys and heave out this palouser. A feller can't half see what he's doin'," he grumbled as he eyed a large blot on the envelope addressed to the President. "The whole place," sourly, "looks like a widdy woman's outfit."

Teeters hammered down the flaps with a vigor that made the unwashed dishes on the table rattle, and grinned as he pictured the astonishment of Major Stephen Douglas Prouty, who was still postmaster, when he read the names of the personages with whom he, Teeters, was in correspondence—after which he looked at the clock and saw that it was only seven.

So he thrust his hands in the pockets of his overalls, and, with his chair tilted against the wall at a comfortable angle, speculated as to his chances of success in the dude business.

The more Teeters had thought of Mormon Joe's assertion that, outside of stock, the chief asset of the country was its climate and its scenery, the more he had come to believe that Joe's advice to turn the Scissor outfit into a place for eastern tourists was valuable. It had been done elsewhere successfully, and there was no dearth of accommodations on the place, since there was nothing much to the ranch but the buildings, as Toomey had fenced and broken up only enough land to patent the homestead.

Although Teeters was now the ostensible owner, in reality the place belonged to Hughie Disston's father, who had been the heaviest loser in the cattle company. Hughie had written Teeters that if they recovered from the reverse, and others that had come to them, they hoped to re-stock the range that was left to them and he wished to spend at least a portion of the year there. In the meantime, it was for Teeters to do what he could with it.

"Dudes" had seemed to be the answer to his problem.

While making up his mind, he had not acted hastily. He had consulted the spirits, with Mrs. Emmeline Taylor and her ouija board as intermediary. "Starlight" had thought highly of the undertaking, and Mrs. Taylor, knowing that Miss Maggie's hope chest was full to overflowing, encouraged it. There had been a time when bankers, railroad and other magnates had been in her dreams for her daughter, and a mere rancher like Teeters was unthinkable, but with the passing of the years she had modified her ambitions somewhat. So she had said benignly, patting his shoulder:

"The angels will look after you, as they have after me. Don't be afraid, Clarence."

It had occurred to Clarence that the not inconsiderable herd of Herefords Mr. Taylor had left behind him at "Happy Wigwam" might have had as much to do with Mrs. Taylor's feeling of security as the guardianship of the angels, but he answered merely, though somewhat cryptically:

"Even if I lose my money it won't cost me nothin'—I worked for it."

Teeters glanced at the clock, yawned as he saw that the hands pointed to half past seven, and unhooked his heels from the rung of the chair preparatory to retiring.

A horse snorted, and the sound of hoofs on the frozen dooryard brought Teeters to attention. What honest person could be out jamming around this time of night, he wondered.

In preparation for callers he reached for his cartridge belt and holster that hung on a nail and laid them on the table.

The door opened and a stranger entered, blinking. The fringe of icicles hanging from his moustache looked like the contrivance to curtail the activities of cows given to breaking and entering.

"I seen you through the winder," he said apologetically.

"I heard your horse whinner," Teeters replied, politely, rising.

"This banany belt's gittin' colder every winter." The stranger broke off an icicle and laid it on the stove to hear it sizzle.

"I was jest fixin' to turn in," Teeters hinted. "Last night I didn't sleep good. I tossed and thrashed around until half-past eight 'fore I closed my eyes."

"I won't keep you up, then. I come over on business. Bowers's my name. I'm a-workin' for Miss Prentice. I'm a sheepherder myself by perfession."

Teeters received the announcement with equanimity, so he continued:

"Along about two o'clock this afternoon I got an idea that nigh knocked me over. I bedded my sheep early and took a chance on leavin' them, seein' as it was on her account I wanted to talk to you. You're a friend of her'n, ain't you?"

"To the end of the road," Teeters replied soberly.

Bowers nodded.

"So somebody told me. Are you goin' to town anyways soon?"

"To-morrow."

"Good! Will you take a message to Lingle?"

Teeters assented.

"Tell him for me that the night of the murder there was a onery breed-lookin' feller that smelt like a piece of Injun-tanned buckskin a settin' in Doc Fussel's drug store. He acted oneasy, as I come to think it over, and he went out jest before the killin'. I never thought of it at the time, but he might have been the feller that done it."

"I'll tell Lingle, but I don't think there's anything in it."

"Why?"

Teeters' eyes narrowed.

"Because I know where the gun come from!"

Bowers looked his astonishment.

"I'd swear to that gun stock on a stack of Bibles," Teeters continued. "It was swelled from layin' in water, and a blacksmith riveted it. The blacksmith died last summer or by now we'd a had his affidavit."

"Ain't that sick'nin'!" Bowers referred to the exasperating demise of the blacksmith.

"Anyway, Lingle's workin' like a horse on the case, and I think he'll clear it up directly. How's she standin' it?"

"Like a soldier."

"She's got sand."

"She's made of it," laconically, "and I aims to stay by her."

Teeters hesitated; then, for the first time in his life he gave his hand to a sheepherder, and, at parting, as further evidence that the caste line was down between them, said heartily:

"Come over next Sunday and eat with me; I got six or eight cackle-berries I been savin' fur somethin' special."

"Thanks. Aigs is my favor-ite fruit," Bowers replied appreciatively.

The next day Teeters went into the post office at Prouty with more letters than he had written in all his life together. The Major was at the window perspiring under the verbal attack of a highly incensed lady.

A deeply interested listener, Teeters gathered that the postmaster's faulty orthography was to blame for the contumely heaped upon him. In vain the Major protested his innocence of any malicious intent when, after hearing a rumor to the effect that the lady had died during an absence from Prouty, he wrote "diseased" upon a letter addressed to her, and returned it to the sender.

"I'm goin' to sue you for libel!" was her parting shot at him.

"Like as not she'll do it," said the Major, despondently, and added with bitterness, "I wisht I'd died before I got this post office! Teeters," he continued, impressively, "lemme tell you somethin': anybody can git a post office by writin' a postal card to Washington, but men have gone down to their graves tryin' to git rid of 'em. The only sure way is to heave 'em into the street and jump out o' the country between sundown and daylight.

"I've met fellers hidin' in the mountains that I used to think was fugitive murderers—they had all the earmarks—but now I know better; they was runnin' away from third-and fourth-class post offices. If ever you're tempted, remember what I've told you. Anything I can do for you, Teeters?"

Teeters threw out his mail carelessly.

"Just weigh up them letters, will you?"

The name of the head of the Astor family caught the postmaster's eyes and he looked his astonishment.

"I'm expectin' him out next summer," Teeters said casually.

"You don't say?" with a mixture of respect and skepticism. "Visitin'?"

"Not exactly visitin'—he'll pay for stayin'. I'm tellin' you private that I'm goin' to wrangle dudes next season. I made him a good proposition and I think it'll ketch him."

"It would be a good ad. for the country," said the Major, thoughtfully. "But wouldn't you be afraid he'd get lonesome out there with nobody passin'?"

"I've thought over this consider'ble," Teeters lowered his voice, "and I figger that the secret of handlin' dudes is to keep 'em busy. I've been around 'em a whole lot, off an' on, over on the Yellastone, and I've noticed that the best way to get anythin' done is to tell 'em not to touch it and then go off and leave 'em. Of course an out-an'-out dude is a turrible nuisance, and dang'rous, but you got to charge enough to cover the damage he does tryin' to be wild and woolly."

He went on confidentially: "Between you and me, I've worked out a scale of prices for allowin' 'em to help me—so much for diggin' post holes and stretchin' wire, so much for shinglin' a roof or grubbin' sagebrush. Only the very wealthy can afford to drive a wagon and spread fertilizer, or clean out the corral and cowshed, and it'll take a bank account to pitch alfalfa in hayin'. If they thought I wanted 'em to help, or needed 'em, they'd laugh at me."

"Dudes is peculiar," the Major admitted. "I never had much truck with 'em, but I knowed a feller in the Jackson Hole County that made quite a stake out of dudin'. They took him to Warm Springs afterward—he'd weakened his mind answerin' questions—but he left his family well pervided for. Teeters," earnestly, "why don't you put your money in somethin' substantial—stock in the Ditch Company, or Prouty real estate?"

Teeters shook his head.

"Without aimin' to toot my horn none, I got a notion I can wrangle dudes to a fare-ye-well. I'll give it a try-out, anyway. By the way, Major, have you seen Lingle? How's the case comin'?"

The Major's face changed instantly and he said with quite obvious sarcasm:

"He's busier than a man killin' rattlesnakes, and he's makin' himself unpopular, I can tell you, tryin' to stir up somethin'."

Teeters looked at him wonderingly but said nothing; instead, he went out in search of the deputy.

Lingle was sitting dejectedly on the edge of the sidewalk when Teeters found him, and the deputy returned his spicy greeting dispiritedly.

"You look bilious as a cat," said Teeters, eying him. "Why don't you take somethin'?"

"You bet I'm bilious—the world looks plumb ja'ndiced!" the deputy answered, with feeling.

"What's the matter?" Teeters sobered in sudden anxiety. "Ain't the case—"

A frown grew between the deputy's eyebrows.

"The case is gettin' nowhere. Things don't look right, and I can't exactly put my finger on it."

"What do you mean, Lingle?" quickly.

"I mean that people are actin' curious—them sports inside—" he jerked his thumb at the Boosters' Club behind him, "and the authorities."

"How do you mean—curious?"

"Don't show any interest—throw a wet blanket over everything as if they wanted to discourage me—I'm not sure that they're not tryin' to block me."

"But why would they?" Teeters looked incredulous.

Lingle shrugged a shoulder.

"I don't know yet, but I've got my own opinion."

"But you won't lay down," Teeters pleaded, "even if they pull against you?"

"Not to notice!" the deputy replied grimly.



CHAPTER XIII

MRS. TOOMEY'S FRIENDSHIP IS TESTED

Momentarily flustered, flattered, and not a little curious, Mrs. Toomey opened the door one afternoon and admitted Mrs. Abram Pantin, who announced vivaciously that she had run in informally for a few minutes and brought her shadow embroidery.

Since Mrs. Pantin never ran in informally anywhere, and she was wearing the sunburst and rings which Mrs. Toomey had noted were in evidence when she wished particularly to have her position appreciated, the hostess, while expressing her pleasure, sought for the real purpose of the visit.

Ostensibly admiring Mrs. Pantin's new coiffure, she thought, bridling, "Perhaps she's come to find out how we're managing since Mr. Pantin refused us."

Yet Mrs. Toomey had to acknowledge that this did not seem like her visitor, either, for ordinarily she was too self-centered to be very curious about others.

As the afternoon passed and Mrs. Pantin twittered brightly on impersonal subjects, introducing topics which evidenced clearly that her mentality was of a higher order than that of the women about her, whose conversation consisted chiefly of gossip and trivial happenings, Mrs. Toomey came to think that she was mistaken and that this friendly visit was a rare compliment.

While Mrs. Pantin's bejewelled and rather clawlike fingers flew in and out of the embroidery hoop as she plied her needle, and while Mrs. Toomey adroitly selected the stockings which needed the least darning from her basket of mending, the latter came nearer really liking Priscilla Pantin than she had since she had known her.

Mrs. Pantin exhibited a completed spray for Mrs. Toomey's approval and commented upon the swiftness with which time sped in congenial company. A delightful afternoon was especially appreciated in a community where there were so few with whom one could really unbend and talk freely—to all of which Mrs. Toomey agreed thoroughly, understanding, as she did, what Mrs. Pantin meant exactly.

"Even in a small community one must keep up the social bars and preserve the traditions of one's up-bringing, mustn't one?"

"One is apt to become lax, too democratic—it's the tendency of this western country," Mrs. Toomey assented. She felt very exclusive and elegant at the moment.

Mrs. Pantin's eyes had been upon her work, now she raised them and looked at Mrs. Toomey squarely.

"Have you seen—a—Miss Prentice lately?"

Mrs. Toomey had the physical sensation of her heart flopping over. That was it, then! She had the feeling of having been trapped—hopelessly cornered. In a mental panic she answered:

"Not lately."

"Are you expecting to see much of her?"

There was something portentous in the sweetness with which Mrs. Pantin asked the question.

It was a crisis—not only the test of her promised friendship and loyalty to Kate but to her own character and courage. Was she strong enough to meet it?

It was one of Mrs. Toomey's misfortunes to be not only self-analytical, but honest. She had no hallucinations whatever regarding her own weaknesses and shortcomings. As she called a spade a spade, so she knew herself to be by instinct and early training a toady. Of the same type, in appearance and characteristics, in this trait, lay the main difference in the two women: while Mrs. Pantin with her better intelligence was intensely selfish, Mrs. Toomey's dominant trait was a moral cowardice that made her a natural sycophant.

No quaking soldier ever exerted more will power to go into battle than did Mrs. Toomey to answer:

"I hope so."

Mrs. Pantin's bright blue eyes sharpened. "Ah-h, they must have money!" she reflected. Aloud she said:

"Really?"

"Certainly."

This was mutiny. Mrs. Pantin lifted a sparse eyebrow—the one which the application of a burnt match improved wonderfully.

"Do you think that's—wise?"

Mrs. Toomey had a notion that if she attempted to stand her legs would behave like two sticks of wet macaroni, yet she questioned defiantly:

"Why not?"

Undoubtedly they had made a raise somewhere!

"Why—my dear—her reputation!"

"She doesn't know any more about that murder than we do," bluntly.

"I wasn't referring to the murder—her morals."

"I don't question them, either."

"You are very charitable, Delia. She lived alone with Mormon Joe, didn't she?"

A frost seemed suddenly to have touched the perfect friendship between these kindred spirits.

"I'm merely just," Mrs. Toomey retorted, though her heart was beating furiously. "All we know is hearsay."

With the restraint and sweetness of one who knows her power, Mrs. Pantin replied:

"I'm sure it's lovely of you to defend her."

"Not at all—I like her personally," Mrs. Toomey answered stoutly.

It was time to lay on the lash; Mrs. Pantin saw that clearly.

"Nevertheless, as a friend I wouldn't advise you to take her up—to—er—hobnob with her." Mrs. Pantin did not like the word, but the occasion required vigorous language.

"I'm the best judge of that, Prissy." Her hands were icy.

"When you came to town a stranger I tried to guide you in social matters," Mrs. Pantin reminded her. "I told you whose call to return and whose not to—you found my judgment good, didn't you?"

"You've been more than kind," Mrs. Toomey murmured miserably, and added, "I'm so sorry for her."

"We all are that, Delia, but nevertheless I think you will do well to follow my suggestion in this matter."

Mrs. Toomey recognized the veiled threat instantly. It conveyed to her social ostracism—not being asked to serve on church committees—omitted when invitations for teas were being issued—cold-shouldered out of the Y.A.K. Society, which met monthly for purposes of mutual improvement—of being blackballed, perhaps, when she would become a Maccabee! She repressed a shudder; her work swam before her downcast eyes and she drew up the darn on the stocking she was repairing until it looked like a wen. The ordeal was worse than she had imagined it.

And how she hated Priscilla Pantin!

Always Mrs. Toomey had had a quaint conceit that if she listened attentively she would be able to hear Priscilla's heart jingling in her body—rattling like a bit of ice in a tin bucket. Now the woman's mean, chaste little soul laid bare before her filled Delia Toomey with a dumb fury.

Mrs. Pantin waited patiently for her answer, though the experience was a new one. Usually she had only to reach for the whip when her satellites mutinied; almost never was it necessary to crack it.

While Mrs. Toomey hesitated Mrs. Pantin folded her work—this, too, was significant.

Mrs. Toomey replied, finally, in desperation:

"I'll think over what you've said, Priscilla. I appreciate your intentions, thoroughly, believe me."

There was a cowed note in her voice which Mrs. Pantin detected. She smiled faintly.

"I don't know when I've spent such a delightful afternoon," and kissed her.

Mrs. Toomey curbed an impulse to bite her friend as she returned the parting salute.

"And I've so enjoyed having you," she murmured.

* * * * *

Mrs. Toomey turned pale when she looked through the front window and saw Kate, a few days after Mrs. Pantin's visit, dismount and tie her horse to the cottonwood sapling, for the threat, which held for her all the import of a Ku-Klux warning, had been hanging over her like the sword of Damocles.

It had haunted her by day, and at night she could not sleep for thinking of it, and yet she was no nearer reaching a decision than when the struggle between her conscience and her cowardice had started.

Quite instinctively she glanced again to see if the neighbors were looking. There were interested faces at several windows. Mrs. Toomey had a sudden feeling of irritation, not with the sentinels doing picket duty but with Kate for tying her horse in front so conspicuously. Mrs. Toomey shrank from the staring eyes as though she had found herself walking down the middle of the road in her underclothing.

The feeling vanished when Kate came up the walk slowly and she saw how white and haggard the girl's face was.

Mrs. Toomey opened the door and asked her in nervously.

Kate looked at her wistfully as though she yearned for some display of affection beyond the conventional greeting, but since Mrs. Toomey did not offer to kiss her she sank into a chair with a suggestion of weariness.

"I hope you're not busy—that I'm not bothering?"

"Oh, no—not at all."

"I couldn't help coming, somehow—I just couldn't go back without seeing you. I wanted to see a friendly face—to hear a friendly voice." She clasped her fingers tightly together: "Oh, you don't know how much you mean to me! I feel so alone—adrift—and I long so for some one to lean on, just for a little, until I get my bearings. It seems as though every atom of courage and confidence had oozed out of me. I don't believe that ever again in all my life I'll long for sympathy as I do this minute." She spoke slowly with breaths between, as though the heaviness of her heart made talking an effort.

"I presume you miss your—uncle." There was a constraint in Mrs. Toomey's voice and manner which Kate was too engrossed and wretched to notice.

She put her hand to her throat as though to lessen the ache there.

"I can't tell you how much. And remorse—it's like a knife turning, turning—his eyes with the pain and astonishment in them when I struck at him so viciously in my temper; they haunt me. It's terrible."

Mrs. Toomey fidgeted.

Kate went on as though she found relief in talking. Her voice sounded thick, somehow, and lifeless with suffering.

"I have such a feeling of heaviness, of oppression"—she laid her hand upon her heart—"I can't describe it. If I were superstitious I'd say it was a premonition."

"Of what, for instance?" Mrs. Toomey looked frightened.

Kate shook her head.

"I don't know. The thought keeps coming that, bad as things have been, there are worse ahead of me—unhappiness—more unhappiness—like a preparation for something."

Distinctly impressed, Mrs. Toomey exclaimed inanely:

"Oh, my! Do you think so?" Was she going to get "mixed up" in something, she wondered.

"I have a dread of the future—a shrinking such as a blind person might have from a danger he feels but cannot see. Your friendship is the only bright spot in the blackness—it's a peak, with the sun shining on it!" Kate's eyes filled with quick tears. They were swimming as she raised them and looked at Mrs. Toomey.

"I'm glad you feel that way," Mrs. Toomey murmured.

Something in the tone arrested Kate's attention, an unconvincing, insincere note in it. She fixed her eyes upon her face searchingly, then she crossed the room swiftly and dropped upon her knees beside her. Taking one of her thin hands between both of hers she said, pleadingly:

"You will be my friend, won't you? You won't go back on me, will you?" She could scarcely have begged for her life with more earnestness.

"I am very fond of you," Mrs. Toomey evaded. She did not look at her.

Kate regarded her steadily. Laying down the hand she had taken she asked quietly:

"Will you tell me something truthfully, Mrs. Toomey?"

Mrs. Toomey's mind, ratlike, scuttled hither and thither, wondering what was coming.

"If I can," uneasily.

Kate laid her hand upon the older woman's shoulder and searched her face:

"Is my friendship an embarrassment to you?"

Mrs. Toomey squirmed.

"Tell me! The truth! You owe that to me!" Kate cried fiercely, her grip tightening on the woman's shoulder.

As Mrs. Toomey was a coward, so was she a petty liar by instinct. Her first impulse when in an uncomfortable position was to extricate herself by any plausible lie that occurred to her. But Kate's voice and manner were too compelling, her eyes too penetrating, to admit of falsifying or even evading further. Then, too, she had a wild panicky feeling that she might as well tell the truth and have it over—though it was the last thing in the world she had contemplated doing.

"It is—rather."

"Why?" Her voice sounded guttural.

Like a hypnotic subject Mrs. Toomey heard herself whimpering:

"People will talk about it—Mrs. Pantin has warned me—and I'll—I'll get left out of everything, and—and when Jap gets into something it will hurt us in our business."

Kate got up from her knees; involuntarily Mrs. Toomey did likewise.

The girl did not speak but folded her arms and looked at her "friend." Mrs. Toomey had the physical sensation of shrivelling: as though she were standing naked before the withering heat of a blast furnace.

In the silence that seemed interminable, Kate's eyes moved from her head to her shabby shoes and back again, slowly, as though she wished to impress her appearance upon her memory, to the minutest detail.

As by divination, Mrs. Toomey saw herself as Kate saw her. Stripped of the virtues in which the girl had clothed her, she stood forth a scheming, inconsequential little coward in a weak ineffectual rack of a body—not strong enough to be vicious, without the courage to be dangerous. Thin-lipped, neutral-tinted, flat of chest and scrawny, without a womanly charm save the fragility that incited pity; to Kate who had idealized her she now seemed a stranger.

Kate completed her scrutiny, and searched her mind for the word which best expressed the result of it. Her lip curled unconsciously when she found it. She said with deliberate scathing emphasis:

"You—Judas Iscariot!"

Then she walked out, feeling that the very earth had given way beneath her.

Nothing was definite, nothing tangible or certain; there was not anybody or anything in the world, apparently, that one could count on. She had a feeling of nausea along with a curious calm that was like the calm of desperation. Yet her mind was alert, active, and she understood Mrs. Toomey with an uncanny clearness. She believed her when she had said that she liked her, just as she knew that she had lied when she had said that she was glad to see her. She understood now that Mrs. Toomey had accepted the loan hoping to carry water on both shoulders, and finding herself unable to do so, had eased herself of the burden which required the least courage. The perspicacity of years of experience seemed to come to Kate in a few minutes, so surely did she follow Mrs. Toomey's motives and reasoning.

Was this human nature when one understood it? Was this what the world was like if one were out in it? Wasn't there anybody sincere or kind or disinterested? She asked herself these questions despairingly as she untied her horse and swung slowly into the saddle.

"Poverty makes most people sordid, selfish, cowardly." She fancied she heard Mormon Joe saying it, and herself expressing her disbelief in the statement. "There are few persons strong enough to stand the gaff of public opinion." She had contradicted him, she remembered.

She recalled—word for word, almost—a philosophical dissertation apropos of Prouty as he sat on the wagon tongue one evening smoking his pipe in the moonlight.

"People who live without change in a small community grow to attach an exaggerated importance to the opinions of others. They come to live and breathe with a view to what their neighbors think of them. When life resolves itself into a struggle for a bare existence, it makes for cowardice and selfishness. In time the strongest characters deteriorate with inferior associates and only small interests to occupy their minds. Wills weaken, standards lower unconsciously, ideals grow misty or vanish. Youth, enthusiasm, hope, die together. Ambition turns to bitterness or stolid resignation. Suspicion, meanness, cruelty, are the natural offspring of small intelligences and narrow environment—and they flourish in a town like Prouty."

"I don't believe it!" she had cried, shocked by his cynicism. He had shrugged a shoulder and replied solemnly:

"I hope to God you'll never know how true it is, Katie. I hope no combination of circumstances will ever place you at their mercy. It is to make any such condition impossible that I am bending all my energies to get on my feet again."

In this moment it seemed to Kate that his cynicism had the sweetness of honey compared to her own bitterness.

Since the murder, curiosity had changed to unfriendliness, and unfriendliness in some instances to actual hostility. Her slightest advance was met by a barrier of coldness that froze her, and she quickly had come to wince under each fresh evidence of enmity as from a blow in the face. Thoughts of Mrs. Toomey's friendship and the belief that this antagonism was only temporary and would disappear when the local authorities had brought out the truth concerning the murder, had sustained and comforted her. The last time she had questioned Lingle, the deputy had told her with much elation in his manner that "the trail was getting warmer."

Now, crushed, heartsick, staggering fairly under the brutal blow that Mrs. Toomey's weak hand had dealt her, it was an ordeal to ride back to Main Street and run the gauntlet.

All that was left to her was the hope that Lingle might soon clear her, and she felt in her despair that she could not return to the ranch until he had given her some reassurance. She checked her horse at the corner and looked each way for him, but he was nowhere visible. Then, while she hesitated she saw him emerge from a doorway where a steep stairway led to the office of the mayor on the second floor of Prouty's only two-story building.

Kate received the swift impression that the deputy was agitated, and a closer view confirmed it. His face was pale, and the light that shone in his eyes was unmistakably due to anger. He walked to the edge of the sidewalk and stood there, too engrossed in thought to see Kate until she had ridden close to him.

"Will you tell me what progress you're making? It's so hard, this waiting and not knowing."

The deputy's eyes blazed anew when he recognized the girl, and under stress of feeling he blurted out harshly:

"I'm called off, Miss Prentice!"

"Called off!" she gasped. "You mean—"

"Stopped!" fiercely. "I've been blocked at every turn by the authorities and others, and now it's come straight from 'Tinhorn' himself—the mayor."

Speechless, Kate's trembling hand sought the saddle horn and gripped it.

"But why?" finally.

Ineffable scorn was in the deputy's answer:

"It might hurt the town to have this murder stirred up and the story sent broadcast—make prospective settlers hesitate to invest in such a dangerous community—that's what was given me, along with my instructions to quit. But another reason is that the man implicated belongs to one of them secret orders."

"I can't believe it!" she cried piteously.

"I couldn't either, until I had to. But I've got sense enough to know that I'm done, with nobody to back up my hand. After all, I'm only a deputy," he said savagely. "I'm all broke up, I can tell you!"

"But aside from the way in which it leaves me it seems such a—such an insult to Uncle Joe—as though nobody cared—as though—" she could not finish.

"I know—I know," he nodded gravely.

"I'm going up to see the mayor—to beg him to keep on—to tell him what it means to me!" she declared passionately.

"I wouldn't, Miss Prentice," Lingle advised.

"I must! It can't stop like this! He shall understand what it means to me—this suspicion—this disgrace that is nearly killing me!"

He saw that she was determined, so he did not protest further, but his reluctant gaze followed her as she disappeared up the narrow dirty stairway.

The mayor attended to the official business of Prouty at a flat-top desk in a large front room where he also wrote an occasional life insurance policy. As the insurance business was a rise from a disreputable saloon and gambling joint, so the saloon and gambling joint had been a step upward from his former means of livelihood as a dance-hall tout in a neighboring state.

With his election to an office which nobody else wanted, an incipient ambition began to stir. Already his mind was busy with plans for advancement, and each move that he made was with an eye to the future. But one thing was certain, and it was that wherever his Star of Destiny led him he would remain, underneath any veneer of polish which experience might give him, the barroom bully, the mental and moral tinhorn that Nature had made him.

Enveloped in a cloud of the malodorous smoke of a cheap cigar and tilted on the hind legs of his chair with his heels hooked in the rungs, he was resting his head against the wall where a row of smudges from his oily black hair bore evidence to the fact that it was a favorite position.

Hearing a woman's light step and catching a glimpse of a woman's skirt as Kate came down the corridor, he removed his cigar and unhooked his heels preparatory to rising.

She was in the doorway before he recognized her; where she paused during a moment's look of mutual inquiry. Then, with all the deliberation of an intentional insult he retilted his chair, returned his heels to the rungs and replaced his cigar while he surveyed her with a quite indescribable insolence.

"Tinhorn" had no special reason for the act and it served no purpose; it was merely the instinctive act of the bully who strikes in wanton cruelty at something or somebody he knows cannot retaliate. His Honor found a satisfaction now in watching the blood rise flaming to the roots of Kate's hair and it gave him a feeling of power knowing that she must accept the humiliation or leave with her errand unstated, though he guessed the nature of her visit.

It pleased him, however, to feign ignorance when, gripping the frame of the doorway, she said in a voice that trembled noticeably in spite of her obvious effort to steady it:

"I came to ask you if it's true—that you mean to stop work—on the—case?"

He rolled the chewed end of his cigar between his yellow snags of teeth and asked insolently:

"What case you talkin' about?"

"There's only one that interests me," she replied, with a touch of dignity.

"What do you want, anyhow?"

Kate's labored breathing was audible.

"Is it so that you are not going to do any more about the murder of my uncle?"

"Your uncle!" he snorted, necked the ashes from the end of his cigar, rolled it back into place with his tongue and reiterated: "Your uncle!" Then: "What's it to you? You got off, didn't you?"

She came into the room a step or two.

"It's everything to me or I wouldn't be here. Can't you understand what it means to me—going through life with people thinking—"

"You got the money, didn't you?" he interrupted.

"What you throwing a bluff like this for, anyhow? I guess what people think ain't worryin' you."

Kate's fingers clenched, but she said quietly:

"You haven't answered my question."

He resented the rebuke, but chiefly her self-control. The bully in him wanted to see tears, to see her overawed and humble; she had too much assurance for a social cipher. If she did not realize that fact yet, it was for him to let her know it.

He brought the front legs of his chair down with a thump and thundered:

"Yes—it's closed, and it won't be opened, neither! You'd better not start in tryin' to stir up somethin', or you'll be sorry—as it is, you're a detriment to the community!"

He mistook her white-faced silence, and added with less violence:

"Why don't you fade away, anyhow—sell out and get into something in your line in some good town or city?"

She was shivering as with a chill as she walked closer and asked in a hoarse whisper:

"What would you suggest—exactly?"

Ah, this was more like it! There was something even beneficent in his relaxed features as he answered:

"You could open a first-class place with your stake. It's quick and big money, if you can get the right kind of a stand-in with the police. No cheap joint, but a high-toned dance hall in some burg where you can get a liquor license. That's my advice to you."

"It's what I thought you meant, but I wanted to be sure of it!" Her voice came between her teeth, guttural, and the face into which his startled eyes looked was the face of Jezebel of the Sand Coulee. "I'd kill you if I had anything to do it with, but, so help me God, you shan't say that to me and get away with it!"

The girl struck him full across the face with such force that he recoiled under it, while the prints of her fingers stood out like scars on his sallow cheek for a full minute. She was gone before he recovered, but curses followed her as she ran panting in her blind rage down the narrow stairway.

Kate felt as though liquid fire were racing through her veins, like some one rushing from a house with his clothes on fire, as she tore open the knot of the bridle reins and swung into the saddle. She did not need to hear the words to know that the guffaw which reached her from a group on the sidewalk was inspired by some coarse witticism concerning her.

There was not a single friendly pair of eyes, or one pair that was even neutral, among the many that looked at her and after her as she gave her horse its head and let it clatter at a gallop that was all but a run down the main street and over the road that led out of Prouty.

It was a crisis, and intuitively she recognized it—one of those emotional climaxes that sear and burn and leave their scars forever.

The powerful horse bounded up the steep grade without slackening, but at the top she checked it, and from the edge of the bench stood looking down upon the crude town sprawling on the flat beneath her. It represented one antagonistic personality to her, and as such she addressed it aloud, with deliberately chosen words, as one throwing down the gauntlet to an enemy.

"You've hurt me! You've never done anything else but hurt me, and I've forgiven and forgotten and tried to make myself believe you didn't mean it. Now I know better.

"You still have it in your power to hurt me, to anger me, sometimes to defeat me. I am one and you are many, but you can't crush me, you can't break my heart or spirit; you can't keep me down! I'll succeed! I may be years in doing it, but I'll win out over you. I'll be remembered when you're rotten in your graves, and if I can live long enough I'll pay back every blow you've ever given me, one by one, and collectively—no matter what it costs me!"



CHAPTER XIV

LIKE ANY OTHER HERDER

The northeast wind lifted Kate's shabby riding skirt and flapped it against her horse's flank as she sat in the saddle with field glasses to her eyes looking intently at a covered wagon that was crawling over the sagebrush hummocks, its top swaying at perilous angles. She shivered unconsciously as the loose ends of her silk neckerchief fluttered and snapped in front of her and the limp brim of her Stetson blew straight against the crown of it.

"There are certainly two of them," she murmured, "and they must be lost or crazy to be wandering through the hills at this season. They had better get back to the road, if they don't want to find themselves snowed up in a draw until summer."

She replaced the glasses in the case that she wore slung by a strap over her shoulder, and looked behind her. They were undoubtedly snow clouds that the wind was driving before it from the distant mountains.

"Good thing I brought my sour-dough," she muttered as she untied the sheepskin-lined canvas coat from the back of her saddle. "We'd better sift along, Cherokee, and turn the sheep back to the bed-ground."

By the time the sheep had fed slowly back and settled themselves for the night on the gently sloping side of a draw above the sheep wagon there was just daylight enough left for her to feed and hobble the horse and cut wood without lighting a lantern. From half a mutton hanging outside at the back of the wagon she cut enough for her own supper, and fed the young collie she was training. Then, she dipped a bucket of water from the barrel, made a fire in the tiny camp stove and put on the tea kettle. She looked with distaste at a pile of soiled dishes that remained from Bowers's breakfast, and at the unmade bunk with a grimy flour sack for a pillow case.

"Thank goodness, Bowers will be back to-morrow!"

She swept the untidy floor with a stump of a broom and replaced it in its leather straps outside the wagon. When the water was heated, she washed the dishes and scoured the greasy frying pan with a bit of sagebrush, for there was no makeshift of the west with which she was not familiar. Then she made biscuits, fried bacon and a potato, and boiled coffee, eating, when the meal was ready, with the gusto of hunger.

Her hair glistened with flakes as she withdrew her head after opening the upper half of the door to throw out the dish water later.

"It's coming straight down as though it meant business," she muttered. "I'm liable to have to break trail to get them out to feed to-morrow." Then, with a look of anxiety as the thought came to her, "If they ever 'piled up' in a draw they're so fat half of them would smother."

While the fire went out she sat thinking what such a loss would mean to her—ruin, literally; and worse, for in addition she had an indebtedness to consider.

"It seems colder." She shivered, and straightening the soiled soogans, she spread her canvas coat over the grimy pillow, pulled off her riding boots and lay down with her clothes on. Before she fell asleep Kate remembered the eccentric travelers, and again wondered what possible business could bring them, but mostly she was thinking that she must not sleep soundly, although the collie was under the wagon to serve as ears for her.

While she slept, the moist featherlike flakes hardened to jagged crystals and rattled as they struck the canvas side of the wagon with a sound like gravel. The top swayed and loose belts rattled, but inside Kate lay motionless, breathing regularly in a profound and dreamless sleep. Underneath the wagon the dog rolled himself in a tighter ball and whimpered softly as the temperature lowered.

Exactly as though an unseen hand had shaken her violently, she sat bolt upright and listened. Instantly she was aware that the character of the storm had changed, but it was not that which had aroused her; it was the faint tinkle of bells which told her that the sheep were leaving the bed-ground. Her alert subconscious mind had conveyed the intelligence before even the dog heard and warned her. He now barked violently as she sprang out of bed and groped for the matches.

While she pulled on her boots, and a pair of Bowers's arctics she had noticed when sweeping, and slipped on her coat and buttoned it, the tinkle grew louder and she knew that the sheep were passing the wagon. She flung on her hat, snatched up the lantern and opened the door. The lantern flickered and she gasped when she stepped out on the wagon tongue and a blast struck her.

"I'm in for it," she said between her teeth as she ran in the direction of the bells, the dog leaping and barking vociferously beside her.

The wagon disappeared instantly, the blizzard swirled about her and the flickering lantern was only a tiny glowworm in the blackness which enveloped her. She tripped over buried sagebrush, falling frequently, picking herself up to run on, calling, urging the dog to get ahead and turn the leaders.

"Way 'round 'em, Shep! Way 'round 'em, boy!" she pleaded. But the dog, half-trained and bewildered, ran only a little way, to return and fawn upon her as though apologetic for his uselessness.

There was no thought or fear for herself in her mind as she ran—she thought only of the sheep that were drifting rapidly before the storm, now they were well started, and she could tell by the rocks rolling from above her that they were making their way out of the gulch to the flat open country.

If only she could get ahead and turn them before they split up and scattered she could perhaps hold them until morning. Was it long until morning, she wondered? Breathless, exhausted from climbing and floundering and stumbling, the full fury of the blizzard struck her when she reached the top. The driving ice particles stung her skin and eyeballs when she turned to face it, the wind carried her soothing calls from her lips as she uttered them, her skirt whipped about her as though it would soon be in ribbons, and then with a leap and a flicker the flame went out in the smoke-blackened chimney, leaving her in darkness.

There was a panic-stricken second as she stood, a single human atom in the howling white death about her but it passed quickly. She dreaded the physical suffering which experience told her would come when her body cooled and the wind penetrated her garments, yet there was no feeling of self-pity. It was all a part of the business and would come to any herder. The sheep were the chief consideration, and she never doubted but that she could endure it somehow until daylight.

"I've got to keep moving or I'll freeze solid," she told herself practically, and added between her set teeth with a grim whimsicality:

"Be a man, Kate Prentice! It's part of the price of success and you've got to pay it!"

Kate knew that hourly she was getting farther from the wagon as the sheep drifted and she followed. But daylight would bring surcease of suffering—she had only to endure and keep moving. So she stamped her feet and swung her arms, tied her handkerchief over her ears, rubbed her face with snow when absence of feeling told her it was freezing, and prayed for morning. Surely the storm was too severe to be a long one—it would slacken when daylight came, very likely, and then she could quickly get her bearings. She thought this over and over, and over and over again monotonously, while somehow the interminable hours of dumb misery passed.

Daylight! Daylight! And when the first leaden light came she was afraid to believe it. It was faint, just enough to show that somewhere the sun was shining, yet her chilled blood stirred hopefully. But there was no warmth in the dawn, the storm did not abate, and at an hour which she judged to be around nine o'clock she was able to make out only the sheep in her immediate vicinity, snow encrusted, huddled together with heads lowered, and drifting, always drifting. She had no notion where she was, and to leave the sheep was to lose them. No, she must have patience and patience and more patience. At noon it would lighten surely—it nearly always did—and she had only to hold out a little longer.

The top of the sagebrush made black dots on the white surface, and there were comparatively bare places where she dared sit down and rest a few moments, but mostly it was drifts now—drifts where she floundered and the sheep sunk down and stood stupidly until pushed forward by those behind them.

Twelve o'clock came and there was no change save that the drifts were higher and she could see a little farther into the white wilderness.

"What if—what if—" she gulped, for the thought brought a contraction of the throat muscles that made swallowing difficult. "What if there were twenty-four more of it!" Could she stand it? She was tired to exhaustion with walking, with the strain of resisting the cold, and the all-night vigil—weak, too, with hunger.

Was she to become another of those that the first chinook uncovered? One of the already large army that have paid with their lives in just such circumstances for their loyalty, or their bad judgment? After all she had gone through to reach the goal she had set for herself was she to go out like this—like a common herder who had no thought or ambition beyond the debauch when he drew his wages?

When the dimming light told her the afternoon was waning, and then indications of darkness and another night of torture, despair filled her. Numb, hungry, her vitality at low ebb, she doubted her ability to weather it. Was she being punished, she wondered, for protesting against the life the Fates appeared to have mapped out for her? Was this futile inane end coming to her because since that day when she had stood looking down upon Prouty and vowed to succeed she had fought and struggled and struck back, instead of meekly acknowledging herself crushed and beaten? Had she shaken her fist at the Almighty in so doing, when she should have bowed her head and folded her hands in resignation? She did not know; in her despair and bewilderment she lost all logic, all perspective; she knew only that in spite of the exhaustion of her body her spirit was still defiant and protesting.

She spread out her hands in supplication, raising her face to the pitiless sky while needlelike particles stung her eyeballs, and she cried despairingly:

"Oh, Uncle Joe, where are you? Is this the end of me—Katie Prentice? Is this all I was born for—just to live through heartaches and hardships, and then to drop down and die like an animal without knowing happiness or success or anything I've worked and longed and prayed for? Oh, Uncle Joe, where are you?"

The wail that the wind carried over the desert was plaintive, minor, like the cry that had reached him when she sought him in the darkness in that other crisis. She herself thought of it, but then he had responded promptly, and with the sound of his voice there had come a sense of safety and security.

She stood motionless thinking of it, the snow beating into her upturned face, the wind whipping her skirts about her. Then a feeling of exultation came to her—an exultation that was of the mind and spirit, so tangible that it sent over her a glow that was physical, creeping like a slow warm tide from her toes to the tips of her numb fingers. Even as she marveled it vanished—a curious trick of the imagination she regarded it—but it left her with a feeling of courage; inexplicably it had roused her will to a determination to fight for her life with the last ounce of her strength, and so long as there was a heart beat in her body.

The time came, however, when this moment of transport and resolution seemed so long ago that it was like some misty incident of her childhood. Her body, as when a jaded horse lashed to a gallop reaches a stage where it drops to a walk from which no amount of punishment can rouse it, was refusing to respond to the spur of her will. It became an effort to walk, to swing her arms and stamp her feet, to make any brisk movement that kept the circulation going. She knew what it portended, yet was unable to make greater resistance against the lethargy of cold and exhaustion.

The dog was still with her, close at her heels, and she pulled off her gauntlets clumsily, the act requiring a tremendous effort of will, and tried to warm her fingers in the long hair of its body; but she felt no sensation of heat and she replaced the gloves with the same effort.

The second night was full upon her now—a night so black that she could feel the storm, but not see it. At intervals she experienced a sense of detachment—as if she were a disembodied spirit, lonely, buffeted in a white hell of torture.

Usually the faint tinkle of a sheep bell recalled her, but each time the sound had less meaning for her, and the sheep seemed less and less important. She was staggering, her knees had an absurd fashion of giving way beneath her, but she could not prevent them. She was approaching the end of her endurance; she could not resist much longer—this her dull rambling brain told her over and over. And that curious phenomenon—that feeling of confidence and exultation that she had had away back—when was it? Long ago, anyhow—that had meant nothing—nothing—meant nothing. The Supreme Intelligence who had made things didn't know she existed, probably. Her coming was nothing; her going was nothing. And now she was stepping off of something—she was going down hill—down hill—the first gulch she had found in her wanderings. It was full of drifts, likely she'd stumble in one and lie there—it was tiresome to keep going, and it made no difference to anybody. Then she stumbled and fell to the bottom, prone, her arms outstretched, the briars of a wild-rose bush tearing her cheek as she lay face downward in the center of it. But she did not know it—she was comfortable, very comfortable, and she could as well lie there a little while—a little while—

Then somewhere a querulous voice was saying:

"I told you the picture would be overexposed when you were takin' it. You'll never listen to me."

A deeper voice answered:

"The light was stronger than I thought; but, anyway, it's a humdinger of a negative." Then, sharply, "Sh-ss-sh! What was that, Honey?"

A silence fell instantly.

"Honey!" Kate had a notion that she smiled, though her white face did not alter its expression. Her tongue moved thickly, "I like that name, Hughie."

Her collie whimpered and scratched again at the door of the wagon. The traveling photographer pushed it open and the animal sprang inside, leaping from one to the other in his gratitude.

"It's a sheep dog!" the man cried in consternation. "There's a herder lost somewhere."

"Can we do anything—such a night?" the old woman asked doubtfully. "Can anyone be alive in it?"

"Light the lantern—quick! Maybe I can track the dog back before the snow fills them. He might be down within a stone's throw of the wagon." Snatching the lantern from her hand he admonished his wife as he stepped out into the wilderness:

"You-all keep hollerin' so I can hear you. I kin git lost mighty easy."

The light became a blur almost instantly, but he was not fifty feet from the wagon when he shouted:

"I got him!" Then—his voice shrilled in astonishment—"Sufferin' Saints! It's a woman!"



CHAPTER XV

ONE MORE WHIRL

Mr. Toomey folded his comfortable bathrobe over his new pajamas and tied the silken cord and tassel, remarking casually:

"I think we'll have breakfast here this morning."

The flowing sleeve of Mrs. Toomey's pink silk negligee fell away from her bare arm as she stood arranging her hair before the wide-topped dresser of Circassian walnut that looked so well against a background of pale gray wall paper with a delicate pink border.

"They charge extra," she reminded him.

Toomey was already at the telephone.

"Whole ones? Certainly—and Floridas—be particular. Eggs—soft to medium. Toast for two, without butter. And coffee? Of course, coffee. Send a paper with it, will you?"

As he hung up the receiver, "This is our last breakfast on earth, Old Dear—we're going home to-morrow."

Mr. Toomey repaired to the adjoining bathroom with its immaculate porcelain and tiling, where he inspected his chin critically in the shaving mirror and commented upon the rapid growth of his beard, which he declared became tropical in a temperate climate.

"Just to be warm and not have to carry ashes—it's heavenly!" ecstatically sighed Mrs. Toomey.

"Forget it!" laconically. "What makes 'em so slow with that order?" Mr. Toomey lighted a gold-tipped cigarette and paced the floor impatiently.

Mrs. Toomey could not entirely rid herself of the notion that she was dreaming. A lace petticoat hanging over the back of a chair and a brocaded pink corset over another contributed to the illusion. She could not yet believe they were hers, any more than was the twenty-dollar creation in the hat box on the shelf in the closet.

During their week's stay in Chicago Mrs. Toomey had gone about mostly in a state which resembled the delightful languor of hasheesh, untroubled, irresponsible, save when something reminded her that after Chicago—the cataclysm. Yet she had not yielded easily to Toomey's importunities. It had required all his powers of persuasion to overcome her scruples, her ingrained thrift and natural prudence.

"We need the change; we've lived too long in a high altitude, and we're nervous wrecks, both of us," he had argued. "We should get in touch with things and the right kind of people. A trip like this is an investment—that's the way you want to look at it. If you want to win anything in this world you've got to take chances. It's the plungers, not the plodders, who make big winnings. I gotta hunch that I'm going to get in touch with somebody that'll take an interest in me."

Left to herself, Mrs. Toomey would have paid something on their most urgent debts and bought prudently, but she told herself that Jap was as likely to be right as she was, and the argument that he might meet some one who would be of benefit to him was convincing; so finally she had consented. The sense of unreality and wonder which Mrs. Toomey experienced when she saw her trunk going was surpassed only by the astonishment of the neighbors, who all but broke the glass in their various windows as they pressed against it to convince themselves that the sight was not an optical illusion.

The Toomeys had traveled in a stateroom, over Mrs. Toomey's feeble protest, and the best room with bath in one of the best hotels in Chicago was not too good for Mr. Toomey. They had thought to stay three weeks, with reasonable economy, and return with a modest bank balance, but the familiar environment was too much for Toomey, who dropped back into his old way of living as though he never had been out of it, while the new clothes and the brightness of the atmosphere of prosperity after the years of anxiety and poverty drugged Mrs. Toomey's conscience and caution into a profound slumber—the latter to be awakened only when, counting the banknotes in her husband's wallet, she was startled to discover that they had little more than enough to pay their hotel bill and return to Prouty in comfort. If either of them remembered the source from which their present luxurious enjoyment came, neither mentioned it.

The breakfast and service this morning were perfect and Mrs. Toomey sighed contentedly as she crumpled her napkin and reached for the paper.

"There's been a terrible blizzard west of the Mississippi," she murmured from the depths of the Journal.

"I'm glad we've missed a little misery," Toomey replied carelessly. "It'll mean late trains and all the rest of it. We'd better stay over until they're running again on schedule."

Mrs. Toomey ignored, if she heard, the suggestion, and continued:

"It says that the stock, and the sheep in particular, have died like flies on the range, and scores of herders have been frozen."

"There's more herders where they came from." Toomey brushed the ashes from his cigarette into the excavated grapefruit, and yawned and stretched like a cat on its cushion.

"Think of something pleasant—what are we going to do this evening?"

"We mustn't do anything," Mrs. Toomey protested quickly. "If we spend any more we will have to get a check cashed, and that might be awkward, since we know no one; besides, we can't afford it. Let's have a quiet evening."

"A quiet evening!" Toomey snorted. "That's my idea of hell. I'll tell you about me, Old Dear—I'm going to have one more whirl if I have to walk back to Prouty, and you might as well go with me."

Since he was determined, Mrs. Toomey arrived at the same conclusion also, for not only did she too shudder at the thought of a quiet evening, but her presence was more or less of a restraint upon his extravagant impulses. She endeavored to soothe her uneasiness by telling herself that they could make up for it by some economy in traveling. And just one more good play—what, after all, did it really matter?

The theater was only four blocks from the hotel, but, as a matter of course, Toomey called a taxicab. These modern conveniences were an innovation that had come during his absence from "civilization" and his delight in them was not unlike the ecstasy of a child riding the flying horses. It availed Mrs. Toomey nothing to declare that she preferred exercise and they arrived at the theater in a taxi. At sight of the box office Toomey forgot his promise to buy inexpensive seats, but asked for the best obtainable.

Carefree and debonair, between acts Mr. Toomey strolled in the lobby smoking and looking so very much in his element that Mrs. Toomey temporarily forgot her disquietude in being proud of him. His dinner jacket was not the latest cut, but after giving it much consideration they had decided that it was not far enough off to be noticeable, and how very handsome and assured he looked as he sauntered with the confident air of a man who had only to entertain a whim to gratify it.

Such is the psychology of clothes and the effect of environment upon some temperaments that that was the way Mr. Toomey felt about it. Prouty and importunate creditors did not exist for him. This condition of mental intoxication continued when the play was over and, fearful, Mrs. Toomey spoke hastily of going home immediately.

"I'm hungry," he asserted. "We'll go somewhere first and eat something."

"Let's have sandwiches sent up to the room," she pleaded.

"Why not a bow-wow from the night-lunch cart I noticed in the alley? I like the feeling of the mustard running between my fingers," derisively.

"Oh, Jap, we oughtn't to—we really ought not!"

But he might have been deaf, for all the attention he paid to her earnest protests as he turned into one of the brilliantly lighted restaurants which he had previously patronized and that he liked particularly. There was a glitter in his eyes which increased her uneasiness, and a recklessness in his manner that was not reassuring.

"I may go to my grave without ever seeing another lobster," he said as he ordered shellfish. "What will you have to drink?" while the waiter hovered.

"Nothing to-night," she replied, startled.

"Different here, Old Dear, I'm thirsty. The wine list, waiter."

That was the beginning. From the time the champagne and oysters arrived until long past midnight Mrs. Toomey experienced all the sensations that come to the woman who must sit passive and watch her husband pass through the several stages of intoxication. And in addition, she had the knowledge that he could less afford the money he was spending than the waiter who served him.

In high spirits at first, with his natural drollness, stimulated to brilliancy, his sallies brought smiles from those at adjoining tables. Then he became in turn boastful, arrogant, argumentative, thick of speech, finally, and slow of comprehension, but obstinate always.

"Goin' back jail 'morra, Ol' Dear—goin' finish out my life sentence," when she reminded him of the lateness of the hour and her weariness, and he resented her interference so fiercely when she countermanded an order that she dared not repeat it.

"You lis'en me, waiter, thish my party. Might think I was town drunkard—village sot way my wife tryin' flag me." Mrs. Toomey colored painfully at the attention he attracted.

He turned to a late comer who had seated himself at a small table across the narrow aisle from them. "My wife's a great disappointment to me—no sport—never was, never will be. 'Morra," addressing himself to the stranger exclusively, "goin' back to hear the prairie dogs chatter—goin' listen to the sagebrush tick—back one thousan' miles from an oyster—"

"Jap!" Mrs. Toomey interrupted desperately, "we must be going. Everyone's leaving."

"We'll be closing shortly," the waiter hinted.

Toomey blinked at the check he placed before him.

"Can't see whether tha's twenty dollars, or two hundred dollars or two thousand dollars."

The waiter murmured the amount, but not so softly but that Mrs. Toomey paled when she heard it. He had not enough to pay it, she was sure of it, for while he had brought from the room an amount that would have been ample for any ordinary theater supper, wine had not been in his calculations.

Mrs. Toomey looked on anxiously while he produced the contents of his pocket.

"Sorry, sir, but it isn't enough," said the waiter, after counting the notes he tossed upon the plate.

Toomey found the discovery amusing.

"You s'prise me," he chuckled.

"Sorry, sir, but—" the waiter persisted.

With a swift transition of mood Toomey demanded haughtily:

"Gue'sh you don' know who I am?"

"No, sir."

Toomey tapped the lapel of his jacket impressively with his forefinger.

"I'm Jasper Toomey of Prouty, Wyoming."

The waiter received the information without flinching.

"Call up the Blackstone and they'll tell you I'll be in to-morra an' shettle." He wafted the waiter away grandly, that person shrugging a dubious shoulder as he vanished. "They'll tell 'im the f'ancial standin' of Jasper Toomey—shirtingly."

The waiter returned almost immediately.

"The hotel knows you only as a guest, sir."

"Thish is insult—d'lib'rate insult." Mr. Toomey rose to his feet and stood unsteadily. "Send manager to me immedially—immedially!"

"He's busy, sir," replied the waiter with a touch of impatience, "but he said you'd have to settle before leaving."

Mrs. Toomey, crimson with mortification and panic-stricken as visions of a patrol wagon and station house rose before her, interrupted when Toomey would have continued to argue.

"Jap, stay here while I go to the hotel—I can take a taxi and be back in a few minutes."

Toomey refused indignantly. He declared that not only would this be a reflection upon his honesty, but equivalent to pawning him.

"How'd I know," he demanded shrewdly, "that you'd ever come back to redeem me?"

As Mrs. Toomey cast a look of despair about, her eyes met those of the man who was sitting alone at the table across the aisle. Even in her distress she had observed him when he had entered, for his height, breadth of shoulder, erectness of carriage—together with the tan and a certain unconventional freedom of movement which, to the initiated, proclaimed him an outdoor westerner, made him noticeable.

He was fifty—more, possibly—with hair well grayed and the face of a man to whom success had not come easily. Yet that he had succeeded was not to be doubted, for neither his face nor bearing were those of a man who could be, or had been, defeated. His appearance—substantial, unostentatious—inspired confidence in his integrity and confidence in his ability to cope with any emergency. The lines in his strong face suggested something more than the mere marks of obstacles conquered, of battles lost and won in the world of business—they came from a deeper source than surface struggles. His mouth, a trifle austere, had a droop of sadness, and in his calm gray eyes there was the look of understanding which comes not only from wide experience but from suffering.

Mrs. Toomey had the feeling that he comprehended perfectly every emotion she was experiencing—her fright, her mortification, her disgust at Jap's maudlin speech and foolish appearance. But it was something more than these things which had caused her to look at him frequently. He reminded her of some one, yet she could not identify the resemblance. In their exchange of glances she now caught a sympathetic flash; then he rose immediately and came over.

"May I be of service, brother?" As he spoke he indicated the small button he wore which corresponded to another on Toomey's waistcoat. With a slight inclination of the head towards Mrs. Toomey, "If you'll allow me—"

The relieved waiter promptly fled with the note he laid on the plate.

"These situations are a little awkward for the moment," he added, smiling slightly.

"Mighty nice of you, Old Top!" Toomey shook hands with him. "Lemme buy you somethin'. Wha'll you have?"

The stranger declined and thanked him.

Mrs. Toomey expressed her gratitude incoherently.

"You must leave your name and address; we'll mail you a check to-morrow."

"I always stay at the Auditorium. Mail addressed to me there will be forwarded." He laid his visiting card upon the table.

Toomey placed a detaining hand upon his arm as he turned from the table.

"Look here! Won't let you go till you promise come make us a visit—stay month—stay year—stay rest o' your life—la'sh string hanging' out for you. Pure air, Swizzerland of America, an' greatest natural resources—"