"She is impossible! Unspeakable! And I believe you are in love with her!"

For an instant Disston looked at her with an expression which was at once angry and startled, but before he had framed an answer Teeters appeared in the doorway behind them and said soberly:

"Looks like somethin' serious is startin' over yonder." He nodded toward the mountains.

"What do you mean?" Disston asked quickly.

"One of Kate's sheep wagons was blowed up a few nights ago, and there's a story circulatin' that somebody's goin' to shoot up the Outfit."

Disston's face wore a frown of concentration.

"Teeters," in sudden decision, "I'm going up to see her. She may need us."

"But isn't it dangerous?" Mrs. Rathburn protested.

"Not unless he's mistook for one of the Outfit, then they might try a chunk of lead on him," Teeters reassured her.

Miss Rathburn, having recovered her poise together with her drawl, was regarding the high luster on her nails when Disston came up on the porch before leaving.

"I am sorry I was rude, Beth," he said earnestly.

"Were you?" indifferently. "I hadn't noticed it."

"I did a contemptible thing to that girl once," he continued, "and I feel that the least I can do to make amends is to refuse to allow her to be spoken of slightingly in my presence."

"Quite right, Hughie. You are a credit to our southern chivalry." Miss Rathburn suppressed a yawn with the tips of her pink tapering fingers.

"When I come back," he spoke propitiatingly, "the day after to-morrow, probably we'll go and see that petrified tree of which Teeters told us."

"A lovely bribe," languidly, "but don't hurry, for mother and I are leaving to-morrow."

"You mean that?"

"Certainly."

"I won't believe it."

"You always were incredulous, Hughie."

"I don't suppose I can convince you that I am very fond of you, and that I shall feel badly if you leave like this?"

This was more like it:—Miss Rathburn lowered her beautiful lashes.

"You haven't tried, have you?" she asked softly.

She looked very desirable at the moment—pink and white and soft and fluffy—all that the traditions of his family demanded in a woman. He knew perfectly what was expected of him, and there was every reason why he should ask her to marry him, and none at all why he should not, yet somehow when he opened his lips to ask, "Will you let me?" the words choked him. He said, instead, with the utmost cordiality:

"Don't you dare do anything so unfriendly as to leave without saying good-bye to me. Will you promise to wait until I return?"

If she had obeyed her impulse she would have shrieked at him:

"No! no! no! Not a minute, if you go to see that woman!" She would have liked to make him choose between them, but she dared not put him to the test for fear that she would place herself in a position from which her pride would not allow her to recede.

Beth wept in chagrin and rage while Disston rode away buoyantly, marvelling at his own light-heartedness, tingling with the old-time eagerness which used to come to him the moment he was in the saddle with his horse's head turned toward Bitter Creek.

He had stubbornly fought his desire to visit Kate again. What was the use, he demanded of himself sternly. She did not want to see him and virtually had said so. She had changed radically; she cared only for her sheep—even Teeters admitted that much. Anything beyond a warm friendship between them was, of course, impossible. She was not of his world, she did not "belong," and had no desire to. She could no more preside at a dinner table or pour tea gracefully, as would be expected of his wife, than Beth could shear a sheep or earmark one.

These things and many others he had told himself a thousand times to stop the longing he had to saddle his horse and go to her. What a weakling he was, he thought contemptuously, that he could not put her out of his mind and do the obviously right and proper thing by asking Beth to marry him, and so end forever this disquieting conflict within him—a conflict that had not been in his calculations when he had planned a happy summer.

It was physical attraction, he argued, together with the interest aroused by her unusual personality, which drew him to Kate—a passing fancy, a curious, inexplicable infatuation; but, he assured himself stoutly, not at all the foundation upon which to build for permanency. Yet as he rode towards the mountains with his eyes fixed upon the low pass to which Teeters had directed him, he experienced the first real thrill of carefree happiness that had come to him since his arrival.

The trail was a long and a hard one. His horse lost a shoe and limped badly, so, as the day waned, he walked frequently to spare the animal. He was tired, but too eager to be conscious of it. He wondered what she would be doing when he found her, and whether he could surprise something like the old-time welcome from her. How her eyes used to sparkle when he rode up to her! He smiled to himself as he recalled her smile—frank, beaming, her face radiant with undisguised pleasure.

Kate was sitting on a rock on the backbone of a ridge when he drew in sight of her—a dark picturesque silhouette against the sky. The sheep fed below, and her horse, with a bedroll across its back, nibbled not far away.

Hugh stopped and looked at the lonely figure sitting motionless in the opaline-tinted light of the sunset, her chin sunk in her palm, her shoulders drooping. The tears rose to the man's eyes unexpectedly. It was not right, such solitude for a woman, he told himself vehemently.

It was singular, too, he reflected, how the mere sight of her revitalized him. Life took on a sudden interest, a zest that it never had elsewhere. He supposed it was because she was herself so vital. A feeling of exultation now swept over him—he forgot his fatigue, that he was hungry, and was conscious only of the fact that he was going to be near her, to talk to her uninterruptedly—for hours, maybe. After that he would go back content, ask Beth to marry him, and recover from this fever, this unreasoning, uncontrollable longing to see Kate again, which made him weak to imbecility.

Thinking her own thoughts, Kate stared at the ground, or at the sheep feeding quietly below her. Her rifle leaned against the rock upon which she was sitting. Occasionally she searched the juniper-covered sides of an adjacent mountain where an enemy could find convenient hiding, but mostly she sat looking at the ground at her feet.

She had taken over the valuable buck herd in the face of Bowers's protest, and was the first to graze on the top of the mountain, though the other bands were now also close to the summit. If more trouble was coming, it would very likely come quickly. They were fighters, these Rambouillets, she was thinking as she looked at them absently, and recalled an instance where a herd of them had battered a full-grown coyote to a jelly. They had surrounded him and by bunting him in the ribs, back and forth between them like a football, had stopped only when there was not a whole bone left in his carcass. However, she reflected, the coyotes were mostly puppies yapping at the entrance of their den at this time of year, and the last wolf had been cleaned out of the mountains, so there really was not much danger from any source save these human enemies.

But even a fighting Rambouillet was not proof against a 30-30. Instinctively her eyes swept the surrounding country for some unfamiliar moving object. Well, that was what she was there for—to protect them. She did not expect any quarter because she was a woman—or intend to give any. She meant to shoot to kill, if she had the opportunity.

It was in this survey that Kate saw Disston and recognized him instantly. She had a notion that even if her eyesight had failed her, her heart would have told her, for it jumped as if she had been badly frightened. She felt dizzy for a moment after she verified her first look—the world swam, as though she had been blinded. If she had followed her impulse, she would have held out her arms and ran to meet him crying, "Hughie! Hughie!" But her impulses, she remembered in time, always came back like boomerangs to hurt her, if she followed them, so, instead, she endeavored to pull herself together by recalling that he had been six weeks at Teeters' without coming to see her but the one time when he had brought that girl to laugh at her. Why had he come now, she wondered.

Kate's pride had come to be her strongest ally and she summoned it all in this emergency, so when Disston climbed to her, finally, leading his limping horse, she was awaiting him calmly, her enigmatic smile upon her face, which was but a shade paler than usual. Her composure chilled and disappointed him; he could not know that she had clasped her hands tightly about her knee to hide their trembling.

"I wanted to surprise you," he said regretfully.

"You have."

"You don't show it."

"Then I'm improving."

"I liked you as you were, Kate—warm-hearted, impulsive." He dropped the bridle reins and sat down beside her.

"That got me nothing," she replied curtly.

A shadow crossed his face.

"And you don't care for anything that doesn't get you something?"

"Absolutely not."

"That doesn't sound like you," he said after a silence.

"I'm not 'me' any longer," she responded. "I made myself over to suit my environment. I get along better."

"What has changed you so much, Kate—what in particular?"

She hesitated a moment, then answered coldly:

"Nothing in particular—everything."

"You mean you don't want to tell me?"

"What's the use?" indifferently.

"I might help you."

"How?"

"In ways that friends can help each other."

"I've tried that," she answered dryly.

"You've grown so self-sufficient that you make me feel superfluous and helpless."

"A clinging vine that has nothing to cling to sprawls on the ground, doesn't it?"

Since he did not answer immediately, she reminded him:

"Better loosen your horse's cinch; he'll feed better."

He glanced at her oddly as he obeyed her. How practical she was! What she said was the right and sensible thing, of course, but was she, as she seemed, quite without sentiment?

He returned to his place beside her and they sat without speaking, watching the colors change on a bank of sudslike clouds and the shadows deepen in the gulches. It never occurred to the new Kate to make conversation, so she was unembarrassed by the silence. Save for an occasional whimsical soliloquy, she seldom spoke without a definite purpose nowadays. To Disston, who remembered her faculty for finding something interesting or amusing in everything about which to chatter, the difference was noticeable.

It saddened him, the change in her, yet he was conscious that she still retained her strong attraction for him. With nerves relaxed, content, he had an absurd notion that he could sit beside her on that rock indefinitely, without speaking, and be happy.

Kate did not ask him the purpose of his visit, for her etiquette was the etiquette of the ranges, which does not countenance questions, and Disston, absorbed in the beauty of the sunset and his own thoughts, was in no mood to introduce the unpleasant subject of the dynamiting of the sheep wagon.

The pink deepened on gypsum cliffs and sandstone buttes of the distant Bad Lands, while purple shadows crept over the green foothills and blackened the canyons.

"Isn't it wonderful?" he said, finally, in a half whisper.

"Yes," she replied, huskily, wondering if Heaven itself had anything like this to offer.

It seemed as though without his volition his hand sought hers and covered it.

She left it so for a moment, then took hers away and got up abruptly.

"They are working up to the bed-ground and will lie down pretty soon. When they're settled, I'll go to camp and get you something to eat." Her tone was matter-of-fact, casual. She stooped, and, picking up a pebble, tossed it at two bucks that were butting each other violently:

"Here—you! Stop it! You give me a headache to look at you."

He did not even interest her, that was evident. Disston tried to assure himself that he would not have it otherwise, that anything else would be a misfortune in the circumstances; but self-deception was useless—his feelings were not a matter for argument or logic, they were of the heart, not the head, when he was near her, and his mind had nothing to do with them.

She walked away a little and stood apart with her face to the sunset, a lonely figure, silent, aloof, fitting perfectly into the picture. Disston tried to analyze his feelings, the emotions she inspired in him as he looked at her, but his lines of thought with their many ramifications always came back to the starting point—to the sure knowledge that he wanted her tremendously, that he yearned and hungered for her with every fiber of his nature.

She was the last woman in the world who would seem to need protection, yet he had a savage primitive desire to protect her, to put his arm about her and defy the world, if need be.

Beth's helpless femininity inspired no such passionate chivalry. He saved her annoyances, shielded her, helped her over the rough places, from habit—but this was different. And it had been so, he reflected, from that night at the Prouty House when he would gladly have fought those who had slighted and hurt her, when he would have shed blood, had his judgment not restrained him. Ever since then the least insinuation or slur against Kate had set his blood tingling, and Beth's ridicule had been one of the hardest things he had found to overlook in her. And, too, the curious serenity, the sense of completeness which came to him when she sat quietly beside him, puzzled him. He wondered if it was only a temporary state of mind, or would it last forever if he were with her. He would conquer himself—of course, he must; and he had proved by his life thus far that he was strong enough to do anything he had to.

Suddenly Hugh felt a keen desire to know what she was thinking, that she was so long silent, and he asked her. He was not sure that she answered his question when she said prosaically:

"You had better go on down to camp and feed your horse—it's over the ridge there; make a fire and put on the tea kettle. I'll be down in half an hour or three-quarters."

Disston lingered to watch her as she pulled the bedroll from her horse; and, clearing a space with her foot, freeing it of sticks and pebbles, spread out the canvas, pulling the "tarp" over a pillow beneath which he noticed a box of cartridges and a six-shooter.

"For close work," she said, with a short laugh, observing his interest.

He did not join her; instead his brows contracted.

"I can't bear to think of you going through such hardships."

"This isn't hardship—I'm used to it—I like it. I like to get awake in the night and look at the stars and to feel the wind in my face. When it rains, I pull the tarp over my head, and I love to listen to the patter on it. The sheep 'bed' all around me, and some of them lie on the corners, so it's not lonely." She said it with a touch of defiance, as though she resented his pity and wished him to believe there was no room for it.

"You see," she added, "I'm a typical sheepherder, even to mumbling to myself occasionally."

The sheep in the meantime had grazed to the top of the ridge and had spread out over the flat backbone for a few final mouthfuls before pawing their little hollows. Soon they would sink down singly and in pairs, by the dozen and half dozen, with a crackling of joints, their jaws waggling, sniffing, coughing, grunting from overladen stomachs, raising in their restless stirrings a little cloud of dust above the bed-ground.

As he stood to go, Disston pictured her night after night waiting in patient silence for the sheep to grow quiet and then creeping between her blankets to sleep among them.

He left her reluctantly at length, for he had a feeling that, since his time with her was short, each minute that he was away from her was wasted; but as it was her wish, he could do nothing less than comply and, obviously, she did not share his regret. So he followed her directions and was soon at the summer camp, established near a spring one lower ridge over.

A half hour passed—three-quarters. He smoked and looked at his watch frequently. The stars came out and the moon rose full. The fire burned down and the water cooled in the kettle. Whatever was detaining her? Impatient at first, Disston finally grew worried. He ate a little cold food that he found, and started to walk back to her.

He was well up the first ridge when a sharp report broke the night-stillness and brought him to an abrupt standstill. It was followed by another, then three, four—a number of shots in succession. It was not loud enough for a 30-30. It was the six-shooter! "For close work!" she had told him tersely.

If he had been in doubt before as to the exact word to apply to his feelings for Kate, there was no need to hesitate longer. What did it matter that she did not know how to pour tea gracefully and preside at a dinner table? By God—he wanted her, and that was all there was to it!

He was breathless when he reached the top of the ridge and his heart was pounding with the exertion in the high altitude, but he gave a gasp of relief when he saw her standing in the moonlight with dead and dying sheep around her.

"What's the matter?" he called, when his breath came back to him sufficiently.

"Poison. Somebody has scattered little piles of saltpeter all over the summit. There's no cure for it, so I shot some of them to put them out of their agony."

In his relief at finding her unharmed, the loss of the sheep seemed of no moment and he did not realize what it meant to her until she said with a choke in her voice:

"They knew just where to hit me. I've scrimped and saved and sacrificed to buy those sheep—"

Her grief sent a flood of tenderness over him. He went to her swiftly, and taking the six-shooter gently from her hand laid it upon the ground.

"Come here," he said authoritatively, and drew her to him.

She did not resist, and her head dropped to his shoulder in a movement of disheartened weariness.

"Oh, Hughie—I'm so tired of fighting—so tired—of everything."

He smoothed her hair as he would have soothed a child, and said decisively—yet with a big tenderness:

"And you shan't do any more of it!"

He felt his heart breaking with the love he felt for her.

"Kiss me—Honey!" he said softly.

She winced at the old sweet term of endearment, then with a sharp intake of breath she raised her lips to his. He was sure that no other woman's kiss could so draw the soul out of him. Beth seemed only a shadow—like someone long dead whose personality is recalled with an effort.

This was love—this was the sort of feeling the Creator intended men and women to have for each other—mysterious, inexplicable, yet real as Nature. It was as it should be. These thoughts passed through Disston's mind swiftly. Up there on top of the world, in the moonlight, any consideration which interfered seemed trifling and indefensible.

"You do love me?" He held her off a little and looked at her. He did not doubt it—he merely wanted to hear her say it.

She replied simply:

"Yes, Hughie. I have always."

"You're so unexpectedly sweet!" he cried, as he again drew her close to him. "I've never forgotten that about you." He laughed softly as he added, "I can't understand why everyone that knows you isn't in love with you."

"There's no one else who has ever seen this side of me. I am not even likable to most people."

"It isn't so! But if it were, it doesn't make any difference, for you're going to marry me—you're going home with me and live a woman's life—the kind for which you were intended."

The radiance that illuminated her face transformed and glorified it.

She was woman—all woman, at heart—he had not been mistaken, he thought rapturously as he looked at her.

She stared at him wide-eyed, dazzled by the picture as she breathed rather than whispered:

"To be with you always—never to be lonely again—to have some one that cared really when I was sick or tired or heavy-hearted—never to be savage and bitter and vindictive, but to be glad every morning just to be living, and to know that each day would be a little nicer than the last one! It would be that way, wouldn't it, Hughie?"

"How could it be otherwise when just being together is happiness?" he answered.

"It's like peeking into Paradise," she said, wistfully.

"But you will—you'll promise me? You'll give up this?" There was a faint note of anxiety in his earnestness as he laid a hand upon her shoulder and looked at her steadily.

In the long space of time that she took to answer, the radiance died out of her face like a light that is extinguished slowly:

"I'll tell you in the morning, Hughie. I must think. I make mistakes when I do what my heart impels me to. My impulses have been wrong always. I rely upon my head nowadays. I am weak to-night, and I've just judgment enough left to know it."

"But, Kate!" he expostulated in a kind of terror. "There isn't anything to argue about—to consider. This isn't business."

She shook her head.

"I must think, Hughie. I'll tell you in the morning. You'd better go down to camp now," she urged gently. "There isn't anything to be done up here, for every sheep will die that got enough poison."

"I can't bear to think of leaving you alone up here," he protested vehemently. "Why not let me stay and you go down to the wagons?"

She shook her head.

"There's not the slightest danger. He's done his work for the present, and it may be a long time before I'm again molested."

"Whom do you mean?" he asked quickly.

"A 'breed' named Mullendore that hates me."

"Do you mean to say," incredulously, "that since you know who did it, he'll ever have another opportunity?"

"I can't prove it; and, besides," bitterly, "you don't know Prouty."

With a swift transition of mood she crept into his arms voluntarily, crying chokingly:

"Hold me close, Hughie! I feel so safe with your arms about me, as though nothing or nobody could hurt me ever!"

In the morning Kate drove down to the camp at daylight the few sheep that had not eaten enough of the saltpeter to kill them, or had missed it altogether—only a small percentage of the valuable herd that had started up the mountain.

Brusque, businesslike, she was as different from the girl who had clung to Hugh for love and sympathy as could well be imagined.

They had breakfast together in the cook tent, which in the summer camp was used as a dining tent also. It was while she was standing by the stove that she turned suddenly and said impulsively:

"Do you know, Hughie, I love to cook, this morning, and ordinarily I hate it! It's because it's for you—isn't it curious?" Her eyes were shining with a look of love that was warm and generous; then the tears filled them and she turned her back quickly.

"If I hadn't the same feeling about you, I might think so," he responded. "I'm simply aching to do something for you—to help you in some way—that's what I came for."

"Did you—really?" She looked at him gratefully.

"That—and because I couldn't stay away any longer. All the way up the trail I had a feeling that you had hold of my heartstrings pulling me to you, and as if they would break if I didn't get to you faster. I can't describe it exactly, but it was as real as an actual physical sensation."

She looked her understanding, though she made no response.

When breakfast was over and they had washed the dishes together in a silence which each felt momentous, Kate said finally:

"You'd better tack a shoe on your horse before you go. If you don't know how, I'll show you." He took her hand and looked at her searchingly:

"Is that my answer?"

As she stood with her back against the table she gripped the edge of it tightly.

"I guess it is, Hughie. I've thought it all out and it seems best."

"I can't—I won't believe you mean that!" he exclaimed, passionately.

"But I do. There are many reasons why I can't leave here and do as you ask."

"And," incredulously, "the fact that we love each other doesn't count?" He shook his head. "I must say I don't understand. I didn't know that you were so happy here—"

"Happy!" The color flooded her face as she cried fiercely, "Mostly it's—hell!"

"I don't comprehend at all."

"In the first place, your world and mine are far apart—that girl you brought to the corrals made me see that clearer than ever before. I might, in time, adapt myself—I don't know. I'm not ignorant of the things one can learn from books, and I'm not dull, but it would be an experiment, and if it failed it might be like that experience at the Prouty House on a larger scale. I would humiliate you and make you ashamed." Then, looking at him searchingly, she added: "Tell me the truth, Hughie—haven't you thought something of this yourself?"

"I realize, of course," he admitted candidly, "that naturally there would be situations which would be difficult for you at first; but what of that? You'll learn. You are more than intelligent—you have brains, and your instincts are right from first to last. I tell you I love you, and nothing else counts. I'm so sure of the result that I'm willing to risk the experiment."

Her eyes, fixed upon him, shone with pride, and there was a note of exultation in her voice as she cried:

"I hoped you would say that!"

He smiled back:

"You're tricky, Kate. You set traps for me. But," impatiently, "go on; if your other reasons are not more serious than this—"

She looked at him speculatively and doubtfully:

"I wonder, if I can make you see things from my point of view—if it's possible for you to understand how I feel. Our lives and experiences have been so different. I'm afraid I shall fail. It's just this—" an expression of grim purpose which he saw was not new to it settled upon her face—"I've set myself a goal; it's in sight now and I've got to reach it. If I stopped, I know that the feeling that I had been a quitter when a real temptation came to me would gnaw inside of me until I was restless and discontented, and I would have a contempt for myself that I don't believe ever would leave me.

"When people live alone a lot they get to know themselves—the way their minds work, their moods and the causes, their dispositions; and I know that whether my judgment is right or wrong I've got to follow the trail stretching away before me until I've reached my destination."

"What is it you want to do, Kate? Why can't I help you?"

"I want success—money! It's the only weapon for a woman in my position. Without it she's as helpless as though her hands were shackled and left a target for every one who chooses to throw a stone at her. It's an obsession with me. I've sworn to win out here, by myself, single-handed; it's a vow as sacred as an oath to me! It means time, patience, hardships and more hardships; and after this I'm going to suffer because you've shown me what I'm turning my back on. But no matter," fiercely, "I can crucify myself, if necessary!"

"It isn't yet clear to me why success means so much to you," he said, bewildered.

"Because," she cried, "soon after you left I went through purgatory for that want of money, and because I was nobody—because I was 'Mormon Joe's Kate,' accused of murder, and the daughter of 'Jezebel of the Sand Coulee,' and have nobody for a father!"

"Why didn't you ask me to come when I telegraphed you!"

"I didn't dare—I was afraid to test you. If you, too, had failed me, it would have crushed me. Perhaps all this sounds absurd and melodramatic, but I can't help it.

"You know, everybody has some little quirk in his brain that makes him different—some trait that isn't quite normal. I've come to watch for it, and it's always there, even in the most commonplace people. It's the quirk which, when accentuated, makes religious fanatics, screaming suffragists and anarchists. My 'twist' takes the form of an uncontrollable desire to retaliate upon those who have deliberately, through sheer cruelty and without any personal reason for their animosity, gone out of their way to hurt me."

That was it, then—she had been hurt—terribly!

Her eyes were like steel, her voice trembled with the intensity of the passion that shook her as she continued:

"I hate them in Prouty! I can't conceive of any other feeling towards the town or its inhabitants. I don't suppose it will ever come in my way to pay in full the debt I owe them, but I can at least by my own efforts rise above them and force their grudging recognition!"

"I understand now," Disston said slowly. "But, Kate, is it worth the price you'll pay for it?"

"I'm used to paying well for everything, whether it's success or experience," she replied bitterly. "As I feel now, it's worth the sacrifice demanded, and I'm willing to make it."

"It's like seeing a great musician concentrate his energies upon the banjo—he may dignify the instrument, but he belittles himself in doing it. Kate," he pleaded, "don't throw away any years of happiness! Don't hurt your own character for a handful of nonentities whose importance you exaggerate! I'm right, believe me."

"I am as I am, and I have to learn all my lessons by experience."

"It may be too late when you've learned this one," he said sadly.

"Too late!" She shivered. A specter rose before her that she had seen before—hard-featured, domineering, unloved, unloving, chafing in ghastly solitude, alone with her sheep and her money, and the best years of her life behind her. She saw herself as her work and her thoughts would make her. For an instant she wavered. If Disston had known, he might have swayed her then, but, since he could not, he only said with an effort:

"If your love for me isn't big enough to make you abandon this purpose, I shan't urge you. I know it would be useless. You have a strange nature, Kate—a mixture of steel and velvet, of wormwood and honey."

Absorbed in the swiftly moving panorama that was passing before her, she scarcely heard him. She was gazing at a bizarre figure in a wreath of paper roses trip down a staircase, radiant and eager—to be greeted by mocking eyes and unsuppressed titters; at a crowded courtroom, staring mercilessly, tense, with unfriendly curiosity; at Neifkins with his insolent stare, his skin, red, shiny, stretched to cracking across his broad, square-jawed face; at Wentz, listening in cold amusement to a frightened, tremulous voice pleading for leniency; at a sallow face with dead brown eyes leering through a cloud of smoke, suggesting in contemptuous familiarity, "Why don't you fade away—open a dance hall in some live burg and get a liquor license?"; at Mrs. Toomey, pinched with worry and malnutrition, a look of craven cowardice in her blue eyes, blurting out in the candor of desperation, "Your friendship might hurt us in our business!"

She saw it all—figures and episodes passed in review before her, even to irrelevant details, and each contributed its weight to turn the scales in this crisis.

"It's the fork of the road," she said in curt decision, "and I've chosen."

There was something so implacable in her face and voice and manner that Disston felt like one shut out behind a door that is closed and bolted; he had a sensation as though his heart while warm and beating had been laid upon the unresponsive surface of cold marble. The chill of it went all through him. With another woman than Kate he might still have argued. But he could only look at her sorrowfully:

"When you are older, and have grown more tolerant and forgiving, I'm afraid you will find that you have chosen wrongly."

"If ever I should grow tolerant and forgiving," she cried fiercely, "then I will have failed miserably."



CHAPTER XXI

"HEART AND HAND"

"Come in, Bowers." Kate looked up from the market report she was reading as her trusted lieutenant scraped his feet on the soap box which did duty as a step to the tongue of the sheep wagon.

After a final glance at the report, during which Bowers eyed the mail sack with interest, she folded the sheet and turned to him inquiringly.

"I wisht you'd order some turpentine—'bout two quarts of it," he said.

"What do you want with so much?" She reached for a pad and pencil to make a note.

"Ticks. I never seen the beat of 'em. I bet I picked a thousand off me a'ready this season. They ain't satisfied with grabbin' me from a sagebrush as I go by, but when they gits wind of me they trails me up and jumps me. All the herders is complainin'."

"How's the new herder doing?"

Bowers's face clouded. "Dibert's havin' trouble with Neifkins's herder—says the feller does most of his herdin' in the wagon, and there would a been a 'mix' a dozen times if he hadn't been with his sheep every minute. Dibert says it looks to him like the feller's doin' it on purpose."

"I don't know but what I'd rather have it that way than for them to be too friendly. More 'mixes' come from herders visiting than any other cause, and I wouldn't run that band through the chutes for three hundred dollars. It would take that much fat off of them, to say nothing of the bother. Who is Neifkins's herder?"

"I ain't seen him. Dibert says he's an o'nery looker."

"Next time you go over, notify him that he's to herd lines closer. If he keeps on crowding, I'll take a dog and set his sheep back where they belong so they won't forget it. You can tell him. You think Dibert's all right, do you?"

"Well," Bowers replied judicially, "he's one of these fellers that would fight like hell fer his sheep one day, and the next, if you brought him prunes instead of the aprycots he'd ordered, he'd turn 'em loose to the coyotes to git hunks with you. He's all right, only he's crazy."

Kate shrugged a shoulder.

"Is there much water-hemlock in the gulch this summer?"

"Quite a bit of it—it's spreadin'. Neifkins has lost several sheep a'ready by poison, but it's careless herdin'."

"I should own that section," Kate commented. "It's public land. I could have it put up at auction and buy it in, but I suppose they'd run the price up on me just to make me pay for it. How are Svenson's lambs doing?"

"They're so fat they can't play—and Woods's got twenty-five hundred of the best wethers that ever blatted!"

Kate's eyes sparkled.

"I'm going to be a real Sheep Queen, Bowers, if wool and mutton keep climbing. The price of wool is the highest in its history."

Bowers looked at her in mute admiration. He was always loyal, but when she was sociable and friendly like this he adored her. Alas, however, the times when she was so were yearly growing rarer.

Kate went on tentatively:

"I think I'll 'cut' for a hard winter. You know my motto, 'Better be sure than sorry.'"

"I wouldn't be surprised if 'twan't a humdinger—last winter was so open. I think we'd be safer if we ship everything that's fat enough."

Bowers always said "we" when he spoke of the Outfit, though he was still only a camptender working for wages.

Kate relied upon him to keep her informed of the details of the business, which she had less time than formerly to look after personally. His judgment was sometimes at fault, but she trusted his honesty implicitly and, though she gave him little of her confidence, it was so much more than she gave to any other person that he was flattered by it.

"Guess what that Boston woolbuyer is offering me?" She tapped a letter.

"No idee."

"Twenty-six cents."

Bowers whistled.

"Gosh a'mighty! You're goin' to take it, ain't you?"

"I'll get a quarter more, if I hold out for it."

His face fell a little.

"I'll get it!" Her voice had a metallic quality. "It's a fine long staple, and clean. If he won't, some one else will give it to me."

The sheep woman had the reputation now of being difficult to deal with, of haggling over fractions, and it was of this that Bowers was thinking. To others he would never admit that she was anything but perfect, though to himself he acknowledged the hardening process that was going on in her. He saw the growth of the driving ambition which made her indifferent to everything that did not tend to her personal interest.

Outside of himself and Teeters, Kate took no interest whatever in individuals. There was no human note in her intercourse with those who worked for her. She cared for results only, and showed it.

They resented her appraising eyes, her cold censure when they blundered, her indifference to them as human beings, and they revenged themselves in the many ways that lie in a herder's power if he cares to do so.

They gave away to the dry-farmers in the vicinity the supplies and halves of mutton she furnished them. In the lambing season they left the lambs whose mothers refused to own them to die when a little extra effort would have saved them. When stragglers split off from the herd they made no great attempt to recover them. They shot at coyotes and wildcats when it was convenient, but did not go out of their way to hunt them.

She was just but not generous. She never had spared herself, and she did not spare her herders. "Hard as nails" was the verdict in general. In her presence they were taciturn to sullenness; among themselves they criticised her constantly, exaggerating her faults and taking delight in recounting her failures. She was too familiar with every detail of the business for her men to dare to neglect her interests too flagrantly, but they had learned to a nicety how high their percentage of losses might run without getting their "time" for it.

Bowers knew of this silent hostility, which was so unnecessary, but he dared not speak of it. He could only deny that she had faults and resent it with violence when the criticisms become too objectionable.

If Kate had known of the antagonism, it would have made no difference—she would rather have taken the losses it entailed than to conciliate. She would have argued that if she was harsh, imperious, it was her privilege—she had earned it.

Life for Kate had resolved itself into an unromantic routine—like extracting the last penny for her wool that was possible, shipping on favorable markets, acquiring advantageous leases, discharging incapable herders and hiring others, eliminating waste and unnecessary expenditures, studying range conditions against hard winters.

"Any mail for the herders?" Bowers asked, innocently, since she showed no disposition to give him her confidence farther.

He watched her intently as she sorted the mail, tossing him a paper finally from which he removed the wrapper with a certain eagerness. He peered into it with a secrecy that attracted her attention, and, looking at it hard, Kate recognized it as the publication of a matrimonial agency.

"Bowers, you surprise me!" She regarded him quizzically.

Bowers started guiltily.

"Aw—it's one they sent me," he said disparagingly—"jest a sample copy."

"Bowers, I think you're lying," she accused him good-humoredly. "Tell me the truth—didn't you send for it?"

He squirmed and colored.

"I did write to 'em—out of cur'osity."

"Don't forget that married men are not hired into this Outfit," she reminded him, smiling. "I'd be sorry to lose you."

"Gosh a'mighty!" he protested vigorously. "I ain't no use fer women!"

The subject seemed to interest him, however, for he continued with animation:

"They's always somethin' about 'em I don't like when I git to know 'em. I've knowed several real well—six or eight, altogether, countin' two that run restauraws and one that done my warshin'. I got a kind o' cur'osity about 'em, but I don't take no personal interest in 'em. Why—Gosh—a'mighty—"

Bowers nearly kicked the stove over in his embarrassed denial.

Kate looked after him speculatively as he made his escape in a relief that was rather obvious. His protests had been too vehement to be convincing. Was he growing discontented? Didn't her friendship satisfy him any longer?

There was something of the patient trust of a sheepdog in Bowers's fidelity. "The queen can do no wrong," was his attitude. Kate was so accustomed to his devotion and admiration that it gave her a twinge to think of sharing it.

She called after him as he was leaving:

"If you meet that freighter, tell him for me he'll get his check if he gets in again as early as he did last trip. I won't have a horse left with a sound pair of shoulders."

"And I fergot to tell you that somebody's 'salted' over in Burnt Basin," he answered, turning back. "There's a hunerd head o' cattle eatin' off the feed there. We'll need that, later."

"Tsch! tsch!" Kate frowned her annoyance at the information.

"Be sure and warn Neifkins's herder as soon as you can get around to it," she reminded him.

"You bet!" Bowers responded cheerfully, and went on.

Yes, she certainly would miss Bowers if anything happened that he left her, she thought as she turned inside to her market report and her letters.

It was days, however, before Bowers found the opportunity to go to Dibert's camp with supplies and incidentally warn Neifkins's herder, if he was still crowding. Now as he jolted towards the fluttering rag, thrust in a pile of rocks to mark the location of Dibert's sheep-wagon, his thoughts, for once, were not of sheep or anything pertaining to them. He was, forsooth, composing for the matrimonial paper an advertisement which should be sufficiently attractive to draw a few answers without making himself in any way liable. He thought he might with safety say that he was a single gentleman, crowding forty, interested in the sheep industry, who would be pleased to correspond with a plump blonde of about thirty. He would not go so far as to say that his object was matrimony, since, of course, it was not, and the declaration might somehow prove incriminating. The Denver Post was full of suits for breach of promise and it behooved him to be wary.

Bowers felt like a fox, at the adroit wording of the advertisement, and chuckled at his cunning. He would notify the postmaster in Prouty to hold out his mail for him and thus escape further "joshing" from Kate, who would be sure to observe letters addressed to him in feminine writing.

The matrimonial paper had proved to be in the nature of a debauch to Bowers, who had worn it to tatters poring over its columns. The "petite blondes" and "dashing brunettes" who enumerated their charms without any noticeable lack of modesty furnished food for his imagination. He selected brides, as the description pleased him, with the prodigal abandon of a sultan.

However, the idea of an advertisement of his own, dismissed promptly at first, grew upon him. The thought of getting something in the mail besides a catalogue and the speeches of his congressman, of having something actually to look forward to, appealed to him strongly the more he considered it. Bowers craved a little of the warmth of romance in his drab existence and this was the only way he knew of obtaining it.

Smiling at the brash act he contemplated, Bowers threw the brake mechanically as the front wheels of the wagon sank into a chuck-hole and the jolt all but landed him on the broad rump of Old Peter.

As he raised his eyes he saw a sight charged with significance to one familiar with it.

Neifkins's sheep were coming down the side of the mountain like a woolly avalanche. In the shape of a wedge with a leader at the point of it, they were running with a definite purpose and as though all the dogs in sheepdom were heeling them. The very thing against which he had come to warn the herders was about to happen—the band was making straight for Dibert's sheep, which were still feeding peacefully on the hillside.

With an imprecation that was not flattering to either herder, Bowers wrapped the lines around the brake and leaped over the wheel to head them if it were possible. But they seemed possessed by all the imps of Satan, as they came on bleating, hurdling boulders, letting out another link of speed at Bowers's frantic shoutings.

The leaders of the two bands were not fifty feet apart when Bowers, realizing he could not get between them, reached for a rock with a faint hope that he might hit what he aimed for. His prayer was answered, for the ewe in the lead of Neifkins's band blinked and staggered as the rock bounced on her forehead. With a surprised bleat she turned and started back up the mountain, the rest of the band following.

The perspiration was streaming from under Bowers's hat as his eyes searched the surrounding country. Not a sign of either herder! A cactus thorn that had penetrated his shoe leather did not improve Bowers's temper. As he sat down to extract it, he considered whether it would be advisable to pound Dibert to a jelly when he found him or wait until they got a herder to replace him.

The man's horse and saddle were missing in camp, Bowers discovered, so it was fairly safe to assume that he was over visiting Neifkins's herder.

After Bowers had brought the supply wagon up and unloaded, he secured the horses and started on foot up the mountain.

From the summit he could see the white canvas top of Neifkins's wagon gleaming among the quaking asp well down the other slope of the mountain. No one was visible, but as he got closer he saw Dibert's horse tied to the wheel. Bowers felt "hos-tile."

"What you doin' here?" he demanded unceremoniously, as Dibert, hearing the rocks rattle, all but tumbled out of the wagon in his eagerness.

"I never was so tickled to see anybody in my life!" he cried.

"I'm about as pleased to see you as a stepmother welcomin' home the first wife's children," Bowers replied, eyeing him coldly. "You ain't answered my question."

The herder nodded towards the wagon:

"He's come down with somethin'. Clean off"—he touched his forehead—"I dassn't leave him."

Bowers immediately went into the wagon, where, after a look at the man mumbling on the bunk, he said laconically:

"Tick bite."

The brown blotches, flushed forehead, and burning eyes told their own story.

As Bowers continued to look at the sick man, with his unshaven face and mop of oily black hair, so long that it was beginning to curl, Dibert commented:

"He ain't what you'd call pretty—I've no idee he has to keep a rock handy to stone off the ladies."

But Bowers was searching his mind in the endeavor to recall where he had seen those curious eyes with the muddy blue-gray iris. It came to him so suddenly that he shouted it:

"I know him! It's the feller that blowed up my wagon! It's the—that killed Mary!"



CHAPTER XXII

MULLENDORE WINS

Kate sat on the side bench listening to Mullendore's disjointed mumblings. It was now well towards midnight and she had been sitting so for hours in the hope that he might have a lucid moment, but to the present her vigil had been unrewarded. Mostly his sentences were a jumble relative to trapping or sheep. Again, he lay inert with his eyes fixed upon her face in a meaningless stare.

Gusts of wind shook the wagon and swayed the kerosene lamp in its bracket, while a pounding rain beat a tattoo on the canvas cover. The tension was telling on Kate and a kind of nervous frenzy grew upon her as the time dragged by and she was no nearer learning what she had hoped to learn—than when she had had Mullendore brought to her camp.

She and Bowers had taken turns guarding him, and in growing despair she had watched him weaken, for each day the chances lessened that his mind would clear; and now Kate sat staring back into his unblinking eyes asking herself if it was possible that his crime was to be buried with him and she must go on the rest of her life bearing the onus of his guilt? The answer to every question she wanted to know was locked in the breast of the emaciated man lying on the bunk.

Bowers had proved to be correct in his diagnosis. The headache, backache, stiff neck and muscles with which Mullendore's illness had started were the forerunner of brown blotches, fever and jangling nerves. A virulent case of spotted fever, it was pronounced by "Doc" Fussel, who doubted that he would recover.

"I'd knock him in the head and put him to bed with a shovel, if 'twere me," Bowers had grumbled when he had helped move Pete Mullendore over to Kate's headquarters.

"We've got to make him talk," Kate had replied grimly. "We've got to get the truth somehow, Bowers, before he goes."

Kate had no prearranged plan as to the course she would pursue if Mullendore became rational, but trusted to her instinct to guide her. She was certain only of one thing—that if he had a spark of manhood in him she would reach it somehow. Though he inspired in her a feeling which was akin to her repugnance for creeping things, and there were moments when something like her childish terror of the half-breed trapper returned, she was determined that there were no lengths to which she would not go, in the way of humbling her pride, to attain her end.

The clock, ticking loudly on its nail, said midnight, and still Mullendore, deaf and blind to all save the fantastic world into which he stared, mumbled incoherently.

At last, unable longer to sit quietly, Kate arose and leaned over him.

"Do you remember the Sand Coulee, Pete?—the Sand Coulee Roadhouse where you used to stop?" she asked softly.

His mumblings ceased as if her voice had penetrated his dulled ears. Then his lips moved:

"The Sand Coulee Roadhouse—the Sand Coulee—"

"Where you trapped. Remember the bear hides you brought in that spring Katie left?"

"The pack's slippin' agin—them saddles is far and away too narrer—and them green hides weigh like lead—" He ran his words together like a person talking in his sleep.

"You load too heavy—you load to break a horse's back—Katie Prentice always told you that."

A troubled frown grew between his eyes as though he was groping, vainly groping for some elusive thought.

"Katie told me—Katie Prentice—" His voice trailed off and ended in a breath.

She made a gesture of despair, but repeated persistently:

"She told you that you ought to be ashamed to pack a horse like that. Three hundred pounds, Pete Mullendore! You haven't any feeling for a horse."

"Killed Old Blue and left him on the trail. My, but you're gittin' growed up fast. Ain't you got a kiss for Pete?"

She leaned closer.

"Would you do something for me if I kissed you—if Katie Prentice kissed you, Pete Mullendore?"

She repeated her words, speaking in a whisper, with careful distinctness.

"Will you tell Katie something that she wants to know, if she kisses you, Pete Mullendore?"

"Goin' to take you back to the mountings next trip—learn you to tan hides good—with ashes and deer brains—all—same—squaw—make good squaw out o' you—Katie—break your spirit first—you brat—lick you till I break your heart."

Katie's hands clenched.

"My mother wouldn't let me go with you!"

A shadowy cunning crossed his face.

"You'll go, when I say so. I got the whip-hand o' Jezebel."

"You're bragging, Pete Mullendore. My mother's not afraid of you."

"Jest a line on a postal—ud bring the Old Man on a special. You're more afraid of the Old Man than you are of dyin'—ain't it the truth, Isabelle?" he mumbled.

"You're only talking to hear yourself—you wouldn't know where to write. You've forgotten the name of the town where the 'Old Man' lives. You can't remember at all, can you, Pete?"

A frown lined his forehead while she waited with parted lips, afraid to move lest she start him rambling elsewhere again.

"You couldn't say the name of the town where Katie Prentice's father lives!"

Bending over him, rigid, tense, it seemed as though she would draw the answer from him through sheer will power.

He rolled his head fretfully to and fro, looking into her eyes with dilated pupils that burned in yellow bloodshot eyeballs. The wind rattled loose wagon bolts and scattered the ashes on the hearth in a puff, while Kate with a thumping heart waited for a response.

"Think!" she urged. "Say it out loud, Mullendore—the name of the town you'd put on the postal if you were going to write to the 'Old Man.'"

His lips moved to speak, and then somewhat as if the habit of secrecy asserted itself even in his delirium, he checked himself with an expression of obstinacy on his face.

Kate's hand crept to his shoulder and clutched it tight.

"Tell me, Pete!" She shook him hard. "Say it—quick!"

He muttered thickly:

"What for?"

"You're a liar, Pete Mullendore!" she taunted. "You don't know. You haven't any idea where Katie Prentice's father lives!"

The gibe brought no response; yet slowly, so gradually that it was not possible to tell when it began, a look that was wholly rational came into his eyes. He blinked, touched his dry lips with his dry tongue and, turning his head, recognized her without surprise.

"Git me a drink."

She held a dipper to his lips.

He fixed his eyes upon her face.

"I been sick?"

"Spotted fever."

He stirred slightly.

"What's this?" A weak astonishment was in his voice as he felt a rope across his arms and chest.

"To keep you in bed."

"I been—loony?"

She nodded.

He looked at her quizzically.

"Emptied my sack?"

"You've talked."

He lay motionless, staring at her fixedly; then, as if arriving at a conclusion:

"Guess I didn't say much."

"You said plenty," significantly.

"But not enough, eh?" he jeered.

She regarded him silently.

"Where am I, anyhow?"

"In my camp."

"Oh." He considered a moment, then mocked, "Got religion?"

"Not yet," curtly.

"Jest wanted me close? Ol' friends are the best friends—ain't they?" He grinned weakly at her.

"Pete," slowly, "there are some questions I want to ask you."

"Thought it was about time for the pumps to start. What do you want to know?"

Kate's heart leaped. She endeavored to steady her voice, to keep out of her face the eagerness with which she trembled, as she replied:

"I want to know who my father is—where he is, if he's alive. Oh, Pete!" Her hands came together beseechingly, "Tell me that—I beg of you tell me about him."

Satisfaction glistened in his eyes.

"I thought that would be it! The only civil words I ever got out of you when you was a kid was when you hoped to make me loosen up and talk to you about him." Then he asked again with an expression she could not interpret, "You're sure you'd ruther I give up that than anything else on earth?"

"Yes, Pete!" she gulped. "It means so much to me."

"I guess yes. The ground wouldn't be good enough for your feet if the 'Old Man' had you."

"Is that the truth? He'd care for me like that? Oh, Pete!"

"Care? He'd worship you. Them Prouty folks would bite themselves if they could see your Old Man," he chuckled faintly.

"He is still living, then? Oh, Pete!" She extended two pleading hands impulsively, "Don't make me wait!"

Something other than fever glittered in his eyes, and there was more than satisfaction in his voice when he said:

"That's somethin' like it—somethin'—not quite! It's sweeter nor music to hear you beg. But, damn you, you ain't humble enough yet!"

"What do you want me to do?" she cried. "I'll—I'll get down on my knees, if only you'll tell me what I want to know!"

"That's it!" in shrill excitement. "Get down on your knees. I ain't forgot that you called me a 'nigger' once, and hit me with a quirt. It'll kinda wipe it out to see you crawlin' to Pete, that you always treated like dirt. Git down on your knees and beg, if you want me to talk!"

She sank to the floor of the wagon without a word.

He looked at her queerly as she knelt. There was intense gratification in his voice, "You do want to know, when you'll swaller that."

"Yes, Pete," humbly, "I do."

His thin hands lay inert upon the soogan. His head turned weakly while he kept his eyes upon her as though enjoying the situation to the utmost. There was a silence in which he seemed both to be gathering strength and considering how to begin.

"He's the kind of a feller—your Old Man—that don't have to holler his head off to git himself heard. They'd listen in any man's country when he talks. He don't talk much, but what he says goes—the kind that can always finish what he starts.

"He's six feet, and there wasn't any man in the country could handle him in those days. I've seen him throw a three-year-ol' steer like you'd slap over a kid. He was easy and quiet, commonly, like one of them still deep rivers that slip along peaceful till somethin' gits in its way. The patientest feller I ever see with dumb brutes, and a patience that wasn't hardly human, even with folks. But when he did break loose—well, them that thought he was 'harmless' and went too far on account of it never made the same mistake twice."

He continued with evident relish:

"That's where he fooled her—Isabelle—she didn't read him right. She thought he was 'soft' because she had her way with him."

"They were married, Pete?"

"Married, right enough—he never thought any other way about her. She was all-the-same angel to him," he grinned. "She never was straight—we all knowed that but him, but she was slick, and she was swingin' her throwrope for him in about a week after they brought her in from the Middle West to teach the school in that district. Anybody that said a word ag'in' her to him would have gone to the hospital. So he went ahead and married her—while she laffed at him to his own hired men.

"If he'd worked her over with a quirt about onct a month, instead of wonderin' what he could do for her next, he might have had her yet.

"If he made a door-mat out of hisself before, it was worse after you come. He was the greatest hand for little things that ever I see—colts, kittens, calves, puppies and a baby! He walked the floor carrying you on a pillow for fear you'd break.

"It was too slow for Isabelle—that life—and only one man to fetch and carry for her. We used to make bets among ourselves as to how long 'twould last, and the short-time man won out. She liked 'em 'tough,' she said—no white-collared gents for her; and she got what she was lookin' for when she throwed in with Freighter Sam that hauled supplies from the railroad to the ranch.

"They skipped out between daylight and dark and made as clean a getaway as ever was pulled off. But where she made her big mistake was takin' you along. If it hadn't been for that, he wouldn't a-walked a half mile to bring her back. Twenty-four hours put ten years on him, and he never squeaked. But if he'd caught that freighter he'd took him by the heels and swung him like you'd knock a rabbit's brains out agin a post.

"He went over the country with a fine-tooth comb, hopin' to git you back. A couple of times he almost closed in on 'em, but they managed to give him the slip and headed north while mostly he hunted south and west.

"You was well growed before I run into 'em. Freighter Sam used to bang her head agin the door jamb about twict a week, and they got along good until he fell for a hasher in an eatin' house and quit Isabelle cold. She hit bottom pretty pronto after that." Mullendore stopped.

"But my father, Pete;—tell me more about him!"

He eyed her with a quizzical and appraising look before he replied:

"You favor the Old Man as much as if you was made out of the mud that was left when they was done workin' on him. Your eyes, your mouth, your chin—the way you walk and stand—the easy style you set a horse. As the sayin' is, 'You're the spit out of his mouth.' God A'mighty! Wouldn't he spile you if you was with him!"

"But you don't tell me where he is, Pete!"

He ignored the interruption and said with slow malice, watching her face:

"I've often thought what a shame it was that you two never got together—a hankerin' for each other so."

Something in his tone struck terror to her heart.

"But you're going to tell me, Pete? You are! You are!" She crawled closer to the bunk, on her knees.

A passionate satisfaction glittered in his eyes.

"Yes! it's a plumb pity that you and him never happened to meet up."

There was cold cruelty in his tantalizing voice.

"You mean—you mean—" she stammered with colorless lips—"that—that you're only tormenting me again—you don't intend—"

"That depends." His pupils dilated, his white teeth gleamed.

"But you promised, Pete! Haven't you any honor—not a speck?"

"I git what I want any way I can git it. That's me—Mullendore."

"Tell me what you want! Is it money, Pete?"

"Money! Hell! What's money good for to me? Money's only to blow after you've got enough to eat. What do you spose I want? I want you!"

"What do you mean?"

"Just that." An oath came between his clenched teeth. "I'm stuck on you! I want you so I hate you, if you can understand that—and always have. I'd like to take you off like a dog packs a bone away for himself. I've dealt you and your sheep all the misery I could, because every step you took up was just so far from me. What I've done," savagely, "is nothin' to what I'll do when I git out of this, if you don't say yes."

Kate's face, that had gone scarlet, was a grayish white as she got up slowly from her knees.

Her breathing was labored as she demanded:

"You—mean—that—you'll—not—tell me anything more unless I do what you ask?"

"You got it right."

Kate's nerves and self-control gave way as a taut string snaps. In the center of a black disc she saw only the mocking eyes and evil face of Mullendore.

"I'm going to kill you, Pete! I'm—going—to choke you—to death! You—shan't torment me—any more!"

Her strong hands were close to his throat while he shrank from the white fury in her face. Suddenly her arms dropped to her sides. Such a feeling of physical repulsion swept over her that she could not touch him even in her rage.

"Lost your nerve?" he mocked. "Old Pete wins again, eh, Kate?"

She did not answer but stepped out on the wagon tongue that the cool rain might patter in her face. Her knees were shaking beneath her and she felt nauseated—sick with a feeling of absolute defeat.



CHAPTER XXIII

WHEN THE BLACK SPOT HIT

Teeters moved in a mysterious way his wonders to perform.

Outwardly, there would seem to be no possible connection between his presence in the living room at Happy Wigwam making himself even more than ordinarily agreeable, and the confession he desired to wring from the murderer of Mormon Joe.

Years of "Duding," however, had given Teeters a confidence in himself and his diplomacy which would seem to be justified, for, as he rightly argued, "A man who can handle dudes can do anything."

Now, he knew that if he had come to Mrs. Taylor and bluntly asked the use of her supernatural gifts in Kate's behalf she would have refused him.

Kate had gone to Teeters in despair after her failure with Mullendore, hoping that he might have something to suggest which had not occurred to her. She had told him all that had happened, and among other things, that she knew now that the "breed" had negro blood in him.

"It probably accounts for his secret belief in an old-fashioned, brimstone hell," she had added. "He denies it, of course, but I'm sure it's the one thing he's really afraid of."

The information had impressed Teeters.

"You go back and keep the varmit alive until I git there," he had advised her. "I got a black speck in my brain, and every time it hits the top of my head I get an idea—I think it's goin' to strike directly."

The present visit was evidence that it had done so. The situation was one which demanded all his subtlety, but what possible bearing the deep interest with which he was eying the garment Mrs. Taylor was repairing could have upon it, the most astute would have found it difficult to imagine.

The bifurcated article of wearing apparel was of outing flannel, roomy where amplitude was most needed, gathered at the waist with a drawstring, confined at the ankle by a deep ruffle—a garment of amazing ugliness.

"I suppose," Teeters ventured guilelessly, "them things is handier than skirts to git over fences and do chores in?" Then, with an anticipatory air, he waited.

He was not disappointed. Mrs. Taylor laid down her work and, throwing back her head, burst into laughter that was ringing, Homeric, reverberating through the house like some one shouting in a canyon. It continued until Teeters was alarmed lest he had overdone matters.

She subsided finally and, wiping her streaming eyes on a ruffle, shook a playful finger at him:

"Clarence, you are killing—simply killing!"

Teeters did not deny it. He had not yet recovered from the fear that he might be. But he had accomplished what he had intended—he had furnished Mrs. Taylor with the "one good laugh a day" which she declared her health and temperament demanded.

After a pensive silence Teeters looked up wistfully:

"I wonder if you and Miss Maggie would sing somethin'. I git a reg'lar cravin' to hear good music."

Mrs. Taylor laid down her work with a pleased expression.

"Certainly, Clarence. Is there anything in particular?"

"If it ain't too much trouble, I'd like, 'Oh, Think of the Home Over There.'"

"I'm delighted that your mind sometimes turns in that direction. I've sometimes feared, Clarence, that you were not religious."

Mr. Teeters looked pained at the suggestion.

"I don't talk about religion much," he replied earnestly, "but there's somethin' come up the last few days that set me thinkin' pretty serious."

Mrs. Taylor looked her curiosity.

"It's a turrible thing," Teeters wagged his head solemnly, "to see a feller layin' on his death-bed denyin' they's a Hereafter."

"Why, how dreadful! Who is it?"

"A sheepherder. He says they ain't no hell—nor nothin'."

"The po-oo-or soul! Is there any way I could talk to him?"

"I was hopin' you'd say that, but I didn't like to ask you, seein' as he's a sheepherder."

"They're human beings, Clarence," reproved Mrs. Taylor.

"I've heerd that questioned," declared Teeters, "but anyhow, a person with a heart in him no bigger than a bullet would have to be sorry to see this feller goin' to his everlasting punishment without repentin'. He's done murder."

"Murder!"

"I'll tell you about it to-morrow on the way over."

"Where is he?"

"At Kate Prentice's—at headquarters."

Mrs. Taylor stiffened.

"I shouldn't care to go there, Clarence." Seeing that his face clouded, she added: "Of course, if your heart is set upon it—the woman wouldn't construe it as a 'call' and return it, would she?"

"I hardly think so," replied Teeters dryly.

* * * * *

As a result of this conversation, the following morning Kate saw Teeters driving up Bitter Creek with a second person on the seat beside him. She had just come down from Burnt Basin and was not in too good a humor. Bowers, who was staying with Mullendore, came out of the wagon when he heard her and asked:

"How was it lookin'?"

"The spring was trampled to a bog," she said in an exasperated voice, "and the range is covered with bare spots where that dry-farmer has salted his cattle. I'll throw two bands of sheep in there, and when I take 'em off there won't be roots enough left to grow grass for five years. If it's fight he wants, I'll give him all he's looking for." Her brow cleared as she added:

"Teeters is coming up the road and bringing some one with him." She nodded towards the wagon, "How is he?"

"I doubt if he lasts the day out."

Kate frowned when she recognized Mrs. Taylor. They passed occasionally on the road to Prouty, but always without speaking. Kate never had forgiven the affront at the Prouty House, while Mrs. Taylor preserved her uncompromising attitude towards "rough characters."

Mrs. Taylor looked like a grenadier in a long snuff-brown coat and jaunty sailor hat as she descended from the buckboard without using the step. The benign cow-like complacency of her face always had irritated Kate, and now, as she advanced with the air of a great lady slumming, Kate felt herself tingling.

"How do you do, my dear?" She extended a large hand with a brown cotton glove upon it.

Kate's hand remained at her side, as she said coldly:

"How do you do, Mrs. Taylor?"

Mrs. Taylor's manner said that it was the gracious act of an unsullied woman extending a hand to a fallen sister when she laid her brown cotton paw upon Kate's arm and quavered pityingly:

"You po-oo-or soul!"

"You stupid woman!" Kate's eyes at the moment looked like steel points emitting sparks.

Mrs. Taylor drew herself up haughtily and was about to retort, but thought better of it. Instead, she declared with noble magnanimity:

"I am not angery. I have not been angery in thirty years. You are very rude, but I can rise above it and forgive you, because I realize you've had no raising."

"I hope," said Kate hotly, "that you realize also that you are not here by my invitation."

Mrs. Taylor looked as if she was not only about to forget that she was a saint but a lady, while Teeters had a sensation of being rent by feline claws.

It seemed like a direct intervention of Providence when Bowers hung out of the door of the wagon and called excitedly:

"I believe he's goin'!"

The exigencies of the moment, and curiosity, combined to make Mrs. Taylor overlook temporarily that she had been insulted, and she hastened with Teeters to the dying man's side.

Emaciated, yellow, Mullendore was lying with closed eyes when they entered.

"Say, feller—" said Teeters, hoping to rouse him.

Only Mullendore's faint breathing told them that he was living.

Mrs. Taylor laid her hand upon his damp forehead and withdrew it quickly.

"The po-oo-or soul! I'll sing something."

"It might help to git ong rapport with the sperrits," agreed Teeters.

As Mrs. Taylor droned a familiar camp-meeting hymn, Mullendore opened his eyes and looked at her dully:

"Who are you?" he whispered.

Mrs. Taylor quavered, "I've come to bring the Truth to you."

Mullendore looked at her, uncomprehending.

Teeters thrust himself in the sick man's line of vision and elucidated:

"Feller, I'm sorry to tell you you ain't goin' to 'make the grade'—they's no possible show fur you—an' Mis' Taylor here, who's a personal friend, you might say, of all the leadin' sperrits in the Sperrit World, has come to kind of prepare you—"

Mullendore's lips moved with an effort:

"There ain't nothin' after this."

"Oh, my!" Teeters ejaculated in a shocked voice. "Don't say heathen things like that! If you'd seen half of what I've saw you couldn't nowise doubt."

"There ain't no hell—there ain't no comin' back." The voice was stronger, and querulous.

Teeters wagged his head in horrified reproach.

"Mis' Taylor, do you think the sperrits are goin' to take holt?"

Turning to the lady who hoped to be his mother-in-law, Teeters's eyes started in his head. He was familiar with weird gyrations of the kitchen table, and messages received through the medium of the ouija board, but he never had seen the mysterious force which Mrs. Taylor referred to as her "control" evidence itself in any such fashion as this.

With her lank six feet sunk upon the side bench and her supine hands lying limply in her lap, Mrs. Taylor's chest was rising and falling in convulsive heaves; the nostrils of her large flat nose were dilated, and her wide mouth, with its loose colorless lips, was slightly agape. Her eyes were open and staring fixedly straight ahead. Mrs. Taylor was in a trance.

Teeters had long since given over trying to explain what he did not understand, but in a vague way he regarded Mrs. Taylor as an unconscious fakir, whose spiritual communications bore the earmarks of something she had learned in a quite ordinary way.

There was, however, nothing of charlatanry in her present state. Teeters was convinced of that. She caught and held the gaze of Mullendore's dull eyes. Suddenly she stiffened out like a corpse galvanized into life by an electric charge, then again sank back, and said thickly between labored breaths:

"It is turgid—dark—all is confusion—spirits are assembling—they are spirits of unrest—there is no peace—no happiness. There is horror in every distorted face—they have met—violent deaths—they want to talk—they clamor to be heard—they—"

"It's a lie!" Mullendore's whisper was shrill, aspirate. "There ain't no other world! There ain't no comin' back!"

"Clouds roll up—" she went on, "clouds of red smoke—they shut the spirits out—new ones come—dim at first—but I can't see—yet. Wait!"

The woman's stare seemed to carry her through and beyond the wagon cover into the invisible world she peopled with the dead. Her body was rigid; her face had the ossified gray look of stone; the labored jerks in which she spoke racked her body with the effort that it cost.

"Now—they're coming! The smoke rolls back a bit—I see—quite plain—Oh! Oh!" A look of horror froze on her gray face, and her voice rose to a shriek. "He says he's Mormon Joe! He cries—Confess! Confess!"

To Mullendore with his inflamed brain and nerves jangling like a network of loose wire, she seemed like a direct emissary from the place of torment, which was as real to him as the wagon in which he lay.

The half-breed had tried to convince himself by saying over and over mechanically: "There ain't no hell—there ain't no comin' back—there ain't nothin' after this,"—but the denial was only of the lips—atavism was stronger than his will. He believed, as much as he believed that on the morrow the sun would rise, in a real and definite hell, filled with the shrieking spirits of the damned. In these final hours it had required all his weakened will to hide his fears and keep his tongue between his teeth. Now, like a man clinging by his finger tips to some small crevice in a cliff, he suddenly gave up. As he relaxed his grip he whispered with the last faint remnant of his strength:

"I own up—I set the gun—I—I—"

Teeters slipped an arm about his shoulders and raised him up.

"Where did you git it, Mullendore?"

His answer was a breath.

"Toomey."

"One thing more—Where does Kate Prentice's father live? His address—quick!" Teeters shook the wasted shoulders in his haste.

The muddy blue-gray iris was divided in half by the closing upper lids. Beneath the glaze there seemed a last malicious spark. Then his tongue clicked as it dropped to the back of his mouth, and Mullendore was dead.



CHAPTER XXIV

TOOMEY GOES INTO SOMETHING

Few in Prouty denied that there were forty-eight hours in the day that began about six o'clock on Saturday night and lasted until the same hour Monday morning. If there had been some way of taking a mild anesthetic to have carried them through this period, many no doubt would have resorted to it, for oblivion was preferable to consciousness during a Sunday in Prouty.

It could not, strictly, be called a Day of Rest, because there was not sufficient business during the week to make any one tired enough to need it.

When the church bells tinkled, the Episcopalians bowed patronizingly to the Presbyterians, the Presbyterians condescendingly recognized the Methodists, the Methodists, by a slight inclination of the head, acknowledged the existence of the Catholics. This done, the excitement of the day was over.

The footsteps of a chance pedestrian echoed in Main Street like some one walking in a tunnel. Children flattened their noses against the panes and looked out wistfully upon a world that had no joy in it.

The gloom of financial depression hung over Prouty like a crepe veil. If Prouty spent Sunday waiting for Monday, it spent the rest of the week waiting for something to happen. Prouty's attitude was one of halfhearted expectancy—like a shipwrecked sailor knowing himself outside the line of travel, yet unable to resist watching the horizon for succor.

The Boosters Club still went on boosting, but its schemes for self-advertisement resembled a defective pin-wheel, which, after the first whiz, lacks the motive powers to turn further. The motive power in this instance was money. Prouty wanted money with the same degree of intensity that the parched Lazarus wanted water.

Real estate owners in Prouty regarded their property without enthusiasm, for there were few residences not ornamented with a "plaster" in the form of a mortgage. Abram Pantin's boast that he never "held the sack" was heard but seldom, for there was more than a reasonable doubt that he was able to collect the interest on his farm mortgages, to say nothing of the principal.

The town was at a stage when merely to eat and go on wearing clothes was cause for self-congratulation. It was conceded that a person who could exist in Prouty could live anywhere. Its citizens seemed to partake of the nature of the cactus that, grubbed up and left for dead, always manages somehow to get its roots down again.

The Prouty Grit still called the attention of the world to the country's natural resources, but Mr. Butefish's editorials had a hollow ring, like the "spiel" of the sideshow barker, who talks in anticipation of a swift kick from a dissatisfied patron.

Major Prouty, who had hoped to die in his boots, picturesquely, had passed away quietly in his bed with acute indigestion from eating sour-dough sinkers of his own manufacture. It was cold the day he was buried, so not many went to the funeral, and the board which had been put up to mark his grave, until the town could afford a suitable monument, had blown over. A "freighter" had repaired his brake block with a portion of the marker, so no one except the grave digger was sure where the Major lay.

Jasper Toomey at this period of his career was engaged in the real estate business. About ninety per cent of Prouty's residences were listed with him. In the beginning, while taking descriptions of the properties and making a confidential note of the lowest possible sums which would be accepted, he was busy and optimistic. But, this completed, business subsided suddenly. His few inquiries for properties came from buyers who had no cash available. The breath he expended in "working up deals" which came to nothing when the critical point was reached would have floated a balloon.

Toomey had no office, but conducted his affairs in winter from the chair by the radiator in the southwest corner of the Prouty House. In summer, he moved to the northeast corner of the veranda. To borrow five dollars nowadays was a distinct achievement, and his sallow face had taken on the habitual expression of a hungry wolf waiting for strays and weaklings. Mrs. Toomey still anticipated the day when "Jap would get into something."

As much worse as was Sunday than Monday, just so much worse was winter than summer in Prouty. Winter meant more coal, warmer clothes, high-priced food, and a period of hibernating until it was over. So it was in a kind of panic that Prouty suddenly realized that fall had come and another winter would soon be upon them. Thus, in a mood of desperation, the officers of the Boosters Club sent out notice of an important meeting to its members. It was urged most earnestly that each should come prepared to offer a new suggestion for the improvement of financial conditions in Prouty. The fact that the need was thus publicly admitted evidenced the urgency of the situation.

It seemed as though every plan that human ingenuity could devise had been already discussed, and shelved for the very excellent reason that there never was any capital with which to give the projects a try-out. While the members subscribed with glad and openhanded generosity, to collect the subscriptions was another matter.

Heretofore suggestions had come sporadically; now it was believed that as the concentrated wills of powerful minds are alleged to have moved inanimate objects, somewhat in the same fashion concerted effort on the part of the Boosters Club might result in something tangible.

The meeting was called for Monday night, and with only twenty-four hours in which to think of something for Prouty's salvation, the heads of households taxed their brains diligently for an original idea to offer.

No such perturbation obtained in the Toomey family, however, where Mr. and Mrs. Toomey chattered in gay excitement, the like of which they had not experienced since their memorable trip to Chicago. With his hands thrust deep in his trousers pockets, Toomey swaggered, resembling nothing so much as a pheasant strutting and drumming on a log for his mate's edification, and, not unlike the female bird of sober coloring, Mrs. Toomey looked and listened with a return of much of her old-time admiration, though the cause for Toomey's present state of exultation was, in its inception, due to her own suggestion.

"I'll show these pinheads something," Toomey boasted. "The day'll come," he levelled at his wife an impressive finger, "when they'll nudge each either and say, 'There goes Toomey's Dog!'"

Mrs. Toomey sighed happily, "It's like a story!"

"Nothing comes to you unless you go after it," Toomey declared, in the voice of a man who has succeeded and is giving the benefit of his experience to the less fortunate.

"I wish you could be there when I spring it," he chortled.

Yet the occasion for this rare exuberance in the Toomey family was merely a few courteous lines signed "John Prentiss," inside the businesslike blue-gray envelope resting conspicuously on top of the clock on the mantelpiece. They had read and re-read it, extracting from it the last ounce of encouragement possible.

Mrs. Toomey had come across John Prentiss's card in a drawer she was cleaning and the thought had come to her that therein lay a possibility which never had been tested. After all these years it might not be possible to reach him, and when he was found it might not be possible to derive any benefit from the scant acquaintance, but it was worth trying, and if there was a way, Jap would find it, so she had shown him the card and he had joined her in marveling at their negligence.

After due reflection, Toomey had written to Prentiss recalling the circumstances of their meeting and the fact that he had evidenced an interest in their country, and renewing his invitation for a visit. He went at some length into the details of the defunct irrigation project at Prouty, which if properly completed and managed was a sure and big winner. He had options on stock which gave him the controlling interest, he stated, and had little doubt that the remainder could be acquired easily. He urged Prentiss to come at his earliest convenience and look it over.

Toomey sent the letter to the hotel in Chicago which Prentiss had given as one of his permanent addresses and it was duly forwarded. After the lapse of a reasonable time, the answer had come from Denver. It had contained proper expressions of appreciation for the invitation, a wish to be remembered cordially to Mrs. Toomey, and concluded with the statement that his desire to see that section of the country had in no wise abated and, if possible, he would do so in the early winter, at which time he would be glad to look into the merits of the irrigation project.

Noncommittal, but friendly, the letter sent the blood racing through Toomey's veins like a stiff drink of brandy. It stimulated his imagination like strong coffee and evoked the roseate dreams of hasheesh. Even Mrs. Toomey, cautious and conservative as she was by nature and through many disappointments, could not resist the contagion of her husband's enthusiasm.

To say that Toomey looked forward with eagerness to this meeting of the Boosters Club is to express it inadequately. He counted the hours when he should be reinstated in the position which he had occupied when he first came to Prouty. Unexpressed, but none the less present, was a desire to show his teeth at those who had humiliated him by lending him money.

The Boosters Club now occupied a storeroom which it had rent free until such time as its owner should acquire a tenant. This privilege had been granted some three years previous, and there seemed no imminent danger of the club being obliged to vacate.

Behind a fly-specked window an equally fly-specked sheaf of wheat from North Dakota, and an ear of corn of gargantuan proportions from Kansas, proclaimed the Club's belief that similar results might be obtained from the local soil—when it had water. There was a sugar beet of amazing circumference that had been raised in an adjacent county, and a bottle of sand that the Club was certain contained a rare mineral, if it were possible to get an honest assay on it. They exhibited also a can of pulverized gypsum, of which there was a sufficient quantity in sight in the vicinity to polish the brass trimmings of the world's navies, if a "live wire" could be induced to take hold of its development. A miniature monument of rock faintly stained with copper rose in the center of the window, and a buffalo skull lent a note of historic interest.

The walls inside were decorated with the Club's slogan, "Boost for Prouty." The undertaker's chairs were still doing duty, since there was so much truth in that person's plaintive wail that "the climate was so damned healthy that nobody ever died," there was seldom other use for them.

There was a pine table upon a raised platform, behind which Hiram Butefish remained, as before, the Club's honored President.

In the corner was a stove which had been donated by the Methodist minister, because, presumably, of a refractory grate which it was found impossible to operate without profanity.

Into these comfortable and spacious quarters, a goodly number of Prouty's representative citizens came singly and in squads upon the occasion of this important meeting.

Each member had kept his own solution of Prouty's problem closely guarded, so no man knew what his neighbor had to offer until that one's turn came to divulge it. In truth, it had been a long time since a meeting of such piquancy and interest had been called.

After some little preliminary business, Hiram Butefish, with a candor which never before had distinguished his public utterances upon this subject, declared flatly that Prouty was in a precarious, not to say desperate, condition. The county treasury was empty, the town treasury was empty, and the warrants of either had little more value than the stock certificates of an abandoned gold mine. What were they going to do about it? Should they sit quietly and starve like a lost tribe wandering in the desert? Did they wish to see their wives naked and their children hungry? No! Mr. Butefish smote the table until the crack in the water pitcher lengthened. Then by all that was Great and Good, somebody had to think of something!

Mr. Butefish had only said what everybody knew, but his manner of saying it sent a chill over every one present.

"Doc" Fussel, whose sales during the day had been a package of rat poison and a bottle of painkiller, looked like a lemon that has lain too long in the window, when he arose and diffidently offered his suggestion for the relief of Prouty. The doctor's voice when he was frightened had the rich sonorous tones of a mouse squeaking in the wall, and now as he ventured the suggestion that Prouty's hope lay in raising peppermint, his voice was inaudible beyond the fifth row of chairs. In the rear of the room they caught the words "mint" and "still," and were under the impression that he was advocating the manufacture of counterfeit money and moonshine whiskey. As a matter of fact, the doctor advised the purchase of large tracts of land which could be flooded and transformed into bogs. These bogs were to be planted in peppermint, for which, he averred, there was an insatiable demand. The world had yet to have too much peppermint. So long as there were babies there would be colic, and so long as there was colic there would be a need for peppermint; therefore, reasoning along the dotted line from A to Z, there always would be a market. Peppermint was the one industry requiring small capital which had not been overdone. He could go to Illinois and purchase a secondhand still of which he knew, at small cost. A bottling works for preparing and labeling the essence could be established in Prouty, and there was no reason why, in time, Prouty should not become the recognized peppermint center of America.

When the doctor sat down, after giving the back of the chair which he gripped a farewell wring that all but tore it loose from its sockets, Mr. Butefish arose and congratulated him upon the novelty of his suggestion and recommended that it be investigated carefully.

There was excellent reason to believe that Walter Scales, at no remote date, had been handling kerosene and saltfish, for the air in his vicinity was redolent of these commodities as he arose when called upon as the next in order.

Before speaking of the remedy for the present stagnant condition of "the fairest spot that the sun ever shone upon," Mr. Scales stated that he wished to protest thus publicly against the practice which now obtained of pitching horseshoes in the main street of Prouty. There was nothing, he declared vehemently, which made so bad an impression upon a stranger as to see the leading citizens of a community pitching horseshoes in its principal thoroughfare.

Passing on to the purpose for which he had risen, Mr. Scales averred that it was probable that he would be considered an impractical visionary when he made known his proposition; nevertheless, it had been long in his mind and no harm would come from voicing it. To his notion, the thing most needed to revitalize Prouty was an electric car-line. This line should start at the far end of town, somewhere down by the Double Cross Livery Stable, possibly, and end at an artificial lake and amusement park a few miles out in the country—he waved his arm vaguely. A street car whizzing through Prouty would put new life in it, and so hungry were its inhabitants for entertainment that he had no doubt whatever that the amusement park would make ample returns upon the investment.

Mr. Butefish made a note of Mr. Scales's vision, but very much questioned as to whether Prouty was ripe for a street railway, since—he admitted reluctantly—such a project might be a little ahead of the immediate requirements.

Other suggestions followed—among them, the possibility of opening up an outcropping of marble in a canyon sixteen miles from Prouty. The marble, though badly streaked with yellow, would, it was opined, serve excellently for tombstones. Also, there was a clay peculiar to a certain gulch in the vicinity which was believed by the discoverer to contain the necessary qualities for successful brick-making.

Then "Gov'nor" Sudds arose in a flattering silence to give the Club the benefit of his cogitations. Something large always could be expected of the "Gov'nor." Although he lived in three figures, he thought in seven, and not one of the Gov'nor's many projects had been capitalized at less than a million.

Conrad has said that listening to a Russian socialist is much like listening to a highly accomplished parrot—one never can rid himself of the suspicion that he knows what he is talking about. The same, at times, applied to the Gov'nor. He said nothing so convincingly that always it was received with the closest attention.

Now, as Sudds stood up, large, grave and impressive, he looked like a Roman Senator about to address a gathering in the Forum. No one present could dream from his manner that he had that day received a shock, the violence of which could best be likened to a well-planted blow in the pit of the stomach. As a hardy perennial candidate for political office, he had become inured to disappointment, but the present shock had been of such an unexpected nature that for hours Mr. Sudds had been in a state little short of groggy. The maiden aunt of seventy, upon whose liberal remembrance he had built his hopes as the Faithful hug to themselves the promise of heaven, had married a street car conductor and wired for congratulations. He had pulled himself together and staggered to the meeting where, though still with the sinking sensation of a man who has inadvertently stepped through the plastering of the ceiling, he was able to dissemble successfully.

Clearing his throat, the Gov'nor fixed his eyes upon "Hod" Deefendorf, owner of the Double Cross Livery Stable, and demanded:

"Among all the voices of Nature is there a more pleasing or varied sound than that of falling water?"

He paused as though he expected an answer, so "Hod" squirmed and ventured weakly that he "guessed there wasn't."

The Gov'nor continued: "The gentle murmur of the brook, the noisy rumble of rapids, the thundering roar of mighty cataracts—can you beat it?" In a country where the school children giggled at sight of an umbrella, the question seemed irrelevant, so this time no one replied.

"Consider the rivulet as it glints and glistens in ceaseless change, the fairy mists of shimmering cascades, the majestic sweep of waterfalls—has Nature any force more potent for the use of man than falling water? No! None whatever! And I propose that we yoke these racing tumbling forces back there in yon mountains and make them work for us!"

The members exchanged glances—the Gov'nor was living up to their expectations of him.

"That accomplished, I propose," the Governor declared dramatically, "to take nitrogen from the air and sell it to the government!"

He looked triumphantly into the intent upturned faces into which had crept a look of blankness. There were those who thought vaguely that nitrogen was the scientific name for mosquito, while others confused it with nitre, an excellent emergency remedy for horses.

"They've done it in Germany," he continued, "and used it in the manufacture of high explosives. Is there any gentleman present who will tell me that what's been done in Germany, can't be done in Wyoming?"

The applause was tumultuous when he had further elucidated and finished. To get something out of nothing made a strong appeal to Prouty. It was criminal for Sudds to waste his abilities in a small community. They wondered why he did it.

Hiram Butefish, who succeeded the orator, felt a quite natural diffidence in giving to the Club his modest suggestion, but as he talked he warmed to his subject.

"I am convinced," declared Mr. Butefish, "that the future of Prouty lies in fossils."

"Human?" a voice inquired ironically.

"Clams," replied Mr. Butefish with dignity. "Also fish and periwinkles. Locked in Nature's boozem over there in the Bad Lands there's a world of them. I kicked 'em up last year when I was huntin' horses, and realized their value. They'd go off like hot cakes to high schools and collectors. We could get a professor in here cheap—a lunger, maybe—to classify 'em, and then we'd send out our own salesman. We can advertise and create a market.

"Gentlemen," solemnly, "we have not one iota of reason to be discouraged! With thousands of acres available for peppermint; with more air to the square inch than any place else in the world, with an inexhaustible bed of fossils under our very noses, all we need to fulfill the dreams of our city's founder is unity of effort and capital. In other words—MONEY!"

"And the longer you stay in Prouty the more you'll need it!"

The jeering voice from the rear of the room belonged to Toomey.

The Club turned its head and looked at the interrupter in astonishment. He was sitting in the high-headed arrogance with which once upon a time they had all been familiar. Though momentarily disconcerted, Mr. Butefish collected himself and retorted:

"Perhaps you have something better to offer, Toomey."

"If I hadn't I wouldn't offer it," he replied insolently.

The thought that came instantly to every mind was that Toomey must have had a windfall. How else account for this sudden independence? This possibility tempered the asperity of Mr. Butefish's answer, though it still had plenty of spirit:

"We are ready to acknowledge your—er—originality, Mr. Toomey, and will be delighted to listen."

To Toomey it was a rare moment. He enjoyed it so keenly that he wished he might prolong it. Uncoiling his long legs, he surveyed his auditors with a tolerant air of amusement:

"I presume there are no objections to my mentioning a few of the flaws that I see in the schemes which have been outlined?"

"Our time is limited," hinted Mr. Butefish.

"It won't take long to puncture those bubbles," Toomey answered, contemptuously.

Certainly he had made a raise somewhere!

"We will hear your criticisms," replied Mr. Butefish, with the restraint of offended dignity.

"In the first place, everybody knows that the soil in this country sours and alkalies when water stands on it." Toomey spoke as a man who had wide experience. He looked at "Doc" Fussel, who shrivelled with the chagrin that filled him, when Toomey added, "That settles the peppermint bog, doesn't it?

"Take the next proposition: What's the use of car-lines that begin nowhere and end nowhere? A cripple could walk from one end of the town to the other in seven minutes. You couldn't raise enough outside capital to buy the spikes for it.

"Take fossils—a school boy would know that the demand for fossils is limited, and who is sure that the bed is inexhaustible until it's tested. When the government is taking nitrates out of the air in Prouty to make ammunition, you and I will be under the daisies, Governor."

If looks could kill, Toomey would have died standing. But he continued emphatically:

"The salvation of Prouty is water. By water I mean the completion of the irrigation project. Gentlemen—I am here to state unreservedly that I can put that enterprise through, providing the stockholders will give me an option upon fifty-one per cent. of the stock. I must have the controlling interest."

Could he have an option? Could he! Only the restraining hand of a neighbor upon his coat tail prevented Walt Scales from hurdling the intervening chairs to reach Toomey to thrust his shares upon him. Hope and skepticism of the genuineness of his assertions commingled in the faces upon which Toomey looked, while he waited for an answer. He saw the doubt and took Prentiss's letter from his pocket. Shaking it at them, he declared impressively:

"This communication is from a party I have interested—an old friend of mine of wealth and standing, who will finance the project providing it is as represented, and under the condition I have just mentioned." Toomey himself so thoroughly believed what he said that he carried conviction, although nowadays his veracity under oath would have been questioned.

The prospect of unloading his stock made Hiram Butefish as thirsty as if he had eaten herring, and, overlooking the glass in his excitement, he drank long and deep from the water pitcher before he said tremulously: