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 "They don't invite to such affairs, just spread the news and they come. Yes, the open season for such rags will soon be on. Yes, I could go to a dance with Dale, and make love to him a little."

"No, no! no love-making anywhere! we'll draw the line at that."

Barrett discovered considerable alarm. At which Alma, looking very demure, nodded sagely.

"You'll make love to Cattle Kate," she said.

"Not on your life!" in great fervor of denial. "I'm not out to have any lady cuttin' notches in my ears with a gun."

"Oh well, then," said she.

"I know it wouldn't be a very pleasant thing for you, Alma, but all you've got to do is give Cattle Kate the slightest excuse to nail him for his frivolity. She'll do the rest."

"Dale used to want me to go to the dances with him, but he hasn't asked me lately. He used to be very mushy over me, it was a regular programme of his to ask me to marry him every two weeks."

"The devil it was!" said Barrett, looking so miserable that Alma laughed to cheer him up a bit.

"But nothing ever came of it," she sighed.

"I should hope not!" said he.

"I haven't been to one of the ranch dances for a long time, three or four years," she said, dropping her teasing and going back to the serious business in hand. "That was over at Four Corners, seven or eight miles back of where you boys are cutting hay."

"I've heard Dan mention it. Sort of community


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 dance house, isn't it?"

"Built where two main roads cross, just like they build schoolhouses in places where they need them. People drive as far as sixty miles to attend the dances there, the belles and beaux sabreurs of the range. I wouldn't mind going once more."

"I think I'd kind of like it myself."

"You might take Cattle Kate," she suggested.

"I beg to be excused. I suppose," doubtfully, "it would be all right for you to go over there with that man?"

"Of course. He couldn't very well carry me off on the horn of his saddle—he wouldn't ever think of it, anyway—there isn't romance enough in Dale Findlay for that. No, seriously, Ed, I believe it's a great scheme. If we can get Kate after him like a hornet, she'll skin him alive."

"Yes, but we're overlooking something, Alma. Findlay isn't likely to feel very friendly to you after taking that shot at him up there at the hay-ranch."

"Don't worry over that—Dale isn't one of your onion-skinned men. He's been friendlier than in a long time, I seem to have advanced in his estimation considerably. The provoking part of it is, the wretch persists in it that I only interrupted another of his little jokes."

"If that man gets any funnier somebody will have to speak to him about it," said Barrett. "Has he been around here very much since then?"

"Nearly every day. But not to see me, just. That old sneak Thomson is nearly always with him now. There's some new scheme they're working out between

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 them, pressing Uncle Hal, driving him to the wall. We've got to work fast, Ed, or it will be too late."

There in the sunny patio, the red and amber leaves falling around them, they worked out the best, the most promising plan they could devise for coming at Hal Nearing's secret, in all kindness and fidelity to him. But Barrett suspected, although he did not know, that in baring the secret which Nearing covered so jealously in his breast, they might multiply his sorrows and their own. Yet it were better that the patient die in the quick agony of the operation, than linger on in the sapping torture of an incurable disease.


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URING the three weeks that Barrett had lain a forced recipient of Hal Nearing's hospitality, he had seen but little of the cattle baron, scarcely more of his wife. But such as he saw of them only set deeper an opinion formed on the night of Nearing's attempt upon his life: that Mrs. Nearing was fully cognizant of her husband's vassalage to Findlay, and of his wild desire to rid himself of the scoundrel's oppression. She knew that Nearing rode day by day like a man pursuing a phantom, hoping to lodge a shot that would set him free.

The marvel of it was that Findlay came and went at the ranch-house with such freedom and apparent unconcern. But Glass always attended the superintendent, Alma had said; very often three men rode with him. The man must have a pleasure in plaguing Nearing, or held the cattleman's desire to have his life in almost admirable contempt.

Nearing was not at home the morning following the formation of the working partnership between Alma and Barrett, when Barrett, confident of his complete recovery, took horse to return to his friends at the hay-ranch. Mrs. Nearing came to the porch to bid him adieu and wish him well, which she did with all the genial grace that gave her such a charm.

Barrett saw in her a woman much changed since his


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 arrival at the ranch to go adventuring upon discoveries which began to show such dangerous development. Her hair was no whiter, for few unfrosted strands remained, but her face was lined deeper, her figure seemed thinner, a sadness had settled in her eyes. It would be merciful to her to put an end to the suspense that swung over her hour by hour. No revelation, no attendant disgrace that might come to Nearing, could rack and torture her more than this.

Dan and Fred Grubb welcomed Barrett back again with loud acclaim. Dan attempted to say something in the contrition of his soul for having failed his friend, only to be shut up by Barrett with the assurance that it was all perfectly understood, and nothing ever had been figured up against him to be discharged.

Dan was greatly relieved by this, for admission of fault goes hard with youth, great as the sense of duty may be that impels its utterance. He had many humorous experiences to relate of himself and Fred, their adventures in breaking the mowing machine and rake. That they had succeeded in the end was plain in the denuded appearance of the meadows, where many ricks of hay rose in imposing mounds.

The cabin had suffered no damage in the fire that destroyed the wagon, hay-rack and load of hay. Alma had appeared before the ruffians had backed the blazing load quite against the door, hitched a cow rope to the tongue and pulled the wagon a safe distance away. When Dan and Fred spoke of her work that day, they lowered their voices in the compelling immensity of their respect.


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 The hay was all cut, nearly all stacked. Barrett told his partners in the enterprise that he was to be counted out of it, but that he wanted to live with them if they would allow. To this renunciation of interest they would not hear. They returned lofty and contemptuous words in discount of it, and swore at him, threatening great bodily damage if he ever spoke of it again. As to living there, if he ever attempted to live anywhere else as long as there remained a shingle on the roof or a log in the walls, he'd have to stand up and make explanation of his infidelity. So the matter was put out of all minds, and closed.

Fred had entered one piece of land, which he found was all he could contrive. The others would have to go to Saunders in their own time and attend to this for themselves. Barrett pressed Dan to go at once, refusing to compromise on the remaining claim under fence. He would take up the piece immediately adjoining Dan's claim, and fence it in the spring, he said.

Fred Grubb praised this course. It was a wise thing for a man to make a home for himself while he was young, he said. Ten years would see that country all specked over with farm houses; the ones that got in first and had the pick of the land would be fixed for life.

"For as fur as your money in the Diamond Tail goes, Ed, you'd just as well stand on a hill somewheres and wave it a long farewell. It's gone. I thought maybe you might head off some of it at first, but since old Charley Thomson's got in the game no man's dollar'll ever come back home to set and hatch out dimes."


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 They were sitting with backs against the logs of the cabin wall, outside the door, facing the road, when Fred delivered this opinion in finance. In a row the three of them sat, legs stretched out before them, as if they had been stood against the wall earlier in the day and shot, and had collapsed in that position. They were taking no chance on surprise; each man had his gun on him, and Fred Grubb was further fortified by his shotgun, which lay along his leg.

Dan twisted his head in profound expression of assent to his partner's opinion of the Diamond Tail affairs. His hat was on the ground beside him, his fair hair, freshly barbered by the versatile poet, was combed down in a cow-lick over his left eye in the approved cowpuncher style.

"Them two fellers they're ridin? Hal Nearing like a witch horse," Fred declared, "break-neck for the jumpin' off place. Yes, and they'll come to it before long, the way it looks to a man up a tree."

"I believe you're right, Fred," Barrett agreed. "That lawyer and Findlay are hanging around the ranch like a couple of buzzards."

"Nearing's gambled the money off, my opinion, and they've got him in a hole," said Dan. "Wall Street; that's what hits these cattle barons between the eyes."

"Something's hit him between the eyes, he's got the blind staggers worse than any man I ever saw," Barrett said. "He's put on twenty years since you brought me out to the ranch, Dan."

"They're honin' him away, them two; there won't be nothing left of him but the handle in a month, and


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 it'll be too short to pull him back out of the fire by," said Dan.

Fred Grubb sat smoking his thin cigarette, which he crooked to bind the paper, after the Mexican fashion, instead of licking it with his tongue. He seemed to be leading off by himself on some intricate branch of the matter, his brow gathered in deep meditation.

The other two said no more. Together the trio sat, their weapons beside them, as if waiting some event that fate plotted against them in the hovering dusk. Fred Grubb shifted his back against the logs presently, and still keeping his cast of meditation, rolled and crushed the fire out of the low-burned stub of his cigarette.

"Of course, a man's got to be sound, his gun arm's got to be studdy, before he goes out to check up his business with any two-leggid wolf that roams the range," he said.

It appeared to be an observation entirely irrelevant to anything under discussion, as indeed it was. Yet it bore acutely on the thing that ran through the minds of all of them: the vengeance that Barrett must go out to claim, as a man among men, from Dale Findlay very soon. Barrett was thinking of it, as he had thought of little else, since he came out of the delirium of fever. His pact with Alma Nearing, as he looked back on it that evening, was but an incidental subterfuge to put her aside and quiet her fears. Nothing could come of a scheme like that. Before they could stage their little interlude of jealousy, some new tragedy would develop to darken that melancholy house.

More than that, and first of all, he did not want


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 Alma to talk with Dale Findlay; he didn't want her to go to a dance with him at Four Corners, or any corner of the earth at all, far or near. It was too much to pay for anything they might learn. He knew a shorter cut to the desired end. He had come to the hay-ranch that day for no other purpose than to lay his plans and follow them to a speedy conclusion.

Now Fred Grubb had put the key into the lock, opening the subject that brooded in his breast.

"It doesn't take a man long to harden," Barrett said.

"You don't want to show up too soon, old feller," Dan advised. "Let that shoulder of yours limber up, practice up on your shootin' a little. A man gets off mighty fast when he's laid up in bed a while."

"He sure does," said Fred.

"Take a week or two, and lay low," Dan counseled. "When you're ready we'll all go over to Bonita some night and clean 'em up. You can lay hands on him over at Cattle Kate's any Saturday night."

"When me and Dan goes anywhere we go together these times," said Fred. "We ain't a takin' no chances. After this we'll make it three."

"I sure appreciate it," Barrett said.

"If we happen to run into'm on the road, it'll be three to four," Dan figured, "not such long chances for us. They run in fours now, right along."

"It's generous of you boys to come into this scrap with me, but I've got no right to let you do it. It's my fight, boys; he was only after me."

"Your fight!" Dan discounted, cutting Barrett's


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 share of it off to a very small corner, indeed. "Didn't they shoot nine holes through that door? Didn't they burn a load of this company's hay?"

"And a wagon, and a pair of double-trees, and a hay-rack we've got to pay for?" Fred came in with his bill.

"Didn't they try to burn this company's house, and didn't they shoot a member of this firm through the lights?" Dan demanded, glaring severely at the member in question.

"They sure did!" said Fred, a solemn and impressive chorus.

Barrett did not attempt to deny any of the particulars in this bill of indictment against Findlay and his followers. But he made no reply at once, only looked away into the dusky distances, as he had seen Alma Nearing gaze when things rose in her soul that words could not express. Then:

"We'll go to Bonita next Saturday night," he said.

They smoked in silence a little spell after that, the slow night creeping into the world around them. Dan got up after a little, beat his hat against his leg to knock the dust out of it, put it on exactly, to avoid disarranging his hair.

"The quicker the sooner," he said.

Fred started, leaped to his feet with a suddenness rather alarming.

"I clean forgot about goin' down to the ranch this evenin'," he said. "Manuel was goin' to fetch my things down from Eagle Rock camp, my wardrobe and my face powder, and curlin' irons and things."

"What did you do with that gunnysack full of


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 poetry you used to have?" Dan inquired.

"That's what I want more than anything," Fred admitted. "If them works gits lost I'm in a hell of a fix! I've been savin' up them poems for twenty-seven years. Suppose that fat old Teresa took 'em to start her fire with!"

Without wasting any further time in words, the three of them saddled and set out on the rescue of the poems. Dan protested mildly when Fred mounted with the shotgun in his hand.

"Yes, I'm goin' to take it," said Fred, with admirable firmness for a poet, "and I'm a goin' to use it if we meet a pack of wolves. I'm a granger, I ain't no fightin' man; the rules don't bind me. Maybe a shotgun ain't regular, but it's purty dam' sure."

"Oh well, if it's wolves you're lookin' for," Dan yielded.

The moon came up, yellow as a candle flame, its benignant face suffused in the mists which hovered on the horizon edge. It was two or three days past the full, its under edge beginning to show a break in the circle. From the way Fred Grubb gazed at it as he rode, Barrett expected some tribute in verse to spill at any moment.

"That there moon makes me, think of an old flat grindin' stone I used to have to turn when I was a boy," said Fred. "Every time it come around to the flat place with my paw bearin' down on the scythe-blade, it made me hump my back and grunt."

This was so unexpected, and at such ridiculous distance from what he had primed his ear to hear, that


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 Barrett laughed.

"What a break about the moon to come from a poet!" he said.

Fred laughed with him, seeing the incongruity of the simile, enjoying it fully, for he was one of the most practical of poets that ever lived. That little pleasantry, and the ramifications of banter and chaffing that grew out of it, cleared the brooding thought of vengeance out of Barrett's mind for a little while. The three rode as merrily as cavaliers bound for some gay rout, the moonlight whitening over the gray sageland, through which the road ran as straight as the surveyor's transit could draw it.

They were within two miles of the ranch when Dan announced that somebody was riding to meet them. Fred made immediate examination of his shotgun. Not satisfied with that alone, he exchanged the cartridges in the breech for others from his pocket. The levity and light words were hushed in a breath.

"Two of 'em," said Fred. "It ain't him."

"We'll wait for 'em here," said Dan, halting in a little dip in the land, from which the two approaching figures were not visible, and would not be again till they made the top of the little rise beyond. "I think one of 'em's him."

"Spread out," said Barrett. "Let them start it."

The two riders appeared at the top of the hill, not more than a hundred yards away.

"They don't see us, they must be ridin' in their sleep," said Dan.

"Must be," said Fred.


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 The poet took his post in the middle of the road, his gun held ready. The other two drew off to the roadside into the low sage and soap-weed clumps which grew sparsely there, a space of three or four yards between them. The riders were approaching leisurely, not in the suspicious, watchful manner of those who travel the road at night in guilty conscience, or bound upon deeds of violence and treachery. Now they discovered the three posted across the road ahead of them, and drew sudden rein.

"Let them start it," Barrett admonished again.

Barrett heard low voices exchange quick words; the click of bridle trappings when one of the horses shook its head impatiently.

"Don't shoot, Fred!"

Fred Grubb started, seemed to grow a foot taller as he stiffened with surprise. He leaned to look, his gun-barrel between his horse's ears.

"That you, Alma?" he hailed in suspicious voice.

"Yes. May we come on?"

"Pass by!" said Fred, drawing out of the road.

The two came on. Dan was right in his identification; the man was Findlay. He rode with his head up, passing the three at the roadside as if unaware of their presence, although Alma hailed them with friendly salutation, calling each by name.

"Fine night for a ride," she said, turning to call back to them.

"Yes, and fine company to be ridin' in!" said Fred, but in a low muttered voice of disapproval that could not reach her ears.


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 "Say!" said Dan, too greatly astonished for another word.

Barrett's sensation was far apart from surprise. It was more of a sinking of the heart such as weakens a man when he hears of a sore and heavy loss. He had not believed Alma would do this, readily as he had gone into the planning of it with her only a day before. It seemed to Barrett, sitting there on his horse stupidly gazing after her, that Alma was not alone riding away with Dale Findlay, but that she was riding away from him. What if she cared for the man, what if she had jumped at this pretext—absurd, foolish, he said, abusing himself for harboring the thought. Alma was doing only what she believed to be the best, but they had played with fire in a haystack, like the two foolish children they were, when they plotted that thing.

"Say!" said Dan Gustin again, "he's lookin' up in the world, ain't he? I never thought she'd be caught dead with that man."

"That little lady of mine!" Fred Grubb lamented. "Do you reckon they're workin' her into their sink-hole that's suckin' Hal Nearing down to hell and damnation?"

"No!" Barrett declared sharply. "She's only ridin' with him, just as any lady rides out with a groom."

"That's what they call a horse wrangler in high society. I've heard of them groomers," said Fred.

"Sure," Barrett returned, lighter in word than in heart.

The three of them had turned as if to follow the pair they had given passage through their line. They sat


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 silently looking after them now as they rode on in the whitening moonlight.

"Well, he's ridin' safe, anyway," said Dan.

"But how about her?" Fred wanted to know. "Well, if she was my girl, or if I was a young feller that maybe's held her hand and kissed her a time or two, I wouldn't let her ride a mile in that man's company—not for all the gold of Gopher!"

"We'd better go on to the ranch," said Barrett, a little crossly. "She can take care of herself."

They rode on. The buildings of the ranch were in sight, the cedars by the roadside a dark line denying the trespass of the desert. Dan was the first to speak, breaking a long silence. He burst out suddenly, one hand on the high cantle of his Mexican saddle, to look back along the white road, upon which the two riders long since had disappeared.

"I'd give a purty if they went to Bonita and Cattle Kate saw 'em!" he said.

There was an eagerness in his voice as of a hope expressed with all the fervency of his heart.

"Shucks!" said Fred Grubb, covering whatever his sentiments were in that rather meaningless word.


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AN GUSTIN objected again, loudly and in picturesque terms, against Fred Grubb carrying his shotgun to Bonita when they saddled up for that excursion on Saturday evening. He employed sarcasm, even ridicule, in his good-natured way, but was unable to shake the poet the width of a hair.

"You can tell 'em I'm a granger, I ain't no fightin' man," Fred said. "If them fellers don't like my tools, let 'em walk wide when they see me in the road."

Dan was a little ashamed of his company, but Fred had his way. They planned to get supper at Cattle Kate's, but there was very little anticipation, very little said among them, each man busy with his own thoughts as they rode away from the squat little cabin in the meadows.

Barrett had not seen Alma since the evening she rode abroad with Findlay. He knew that if she had anything to communicate she would seek him at the hay-ranch. He was better pleased that she had not come. This grim business upon which he was setting forth had wrapped about him as bindweed enfolds and smothers the life of growing grain.

He was eager to be about the work of ridding the world of a man so envenomed with villainy and spite, a treacherous scoundrel who held a coward's advantage and played it to insatiable ends. There was no doubt


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 in the young adventurer's mind of the issue between him and Findlay; he could admit no possibility of disastrous conclusion to himself. This doubtless was only desire, stressed so long and passionately as to assume the deceptive face of truth, a phantom that has led many a brave man to a bitter end.

There was considerable activity at Cattle Kate's hotel when they arrived shortly after dusk, that being the biggest night of the week for the institutions of Bonita. Fred Grubb marched into the dining-room with his shotgun under his arm, easy and unconcerned, but his quick eye explored the face of every man in the room before he had gone a dozen feet. Cattle Kate looked on the strange weapon with unfriendly eye as she waited the coming of the three men at the table she had chosen for them.

Kate seemed to be out of humor. She had only a ghost of a smile for Dan when she shook hands with him. To Barrett her face appeared whiter than before, with a wan worriment about her mouth.

"You been rabbit-huntin', Fred?" she inquired, as the poet disposed the gun carefully beside his chair on the floor.

"Wolves," Fred replied shortly, his eye on the door.

Kate employed an Indian girl from the mission school to help her serve her guests, but she elected to wait on the three friends herself. It was the custom of that country in those times to serve everything at once, the pie coming on with the potatoes. Kate was silent as she spread the dishes of food, shaking her head or nodding in reply to Dan's attempts at conversation.


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 When she placed Fred Grubb's pie over on the corner of the table at his left hand, her foot struck the shotgun. She shot its owner a hot, contemptuous look.

"Wolves!" she said, with acrid scorn.

Fred was unmoved. He was lifting a forkful of boiled ham to his mouth, and would not have checked the maneuver to answer a queen. He rolled his eyes at her and nodded. Presently he said:

"Sure. They're eatin' a terrible bunch of our hay."

"I'm goin' to make a rule that guests I'll have to leave all guns in the office," Kate announced severely.

"Be a good scheme," Fred agreed.

Dan contrived to get through before the other two, and Kate about the same time found her presence in the office necessary. Fred winked at seeing this handy little turn of events.

"Guess Dale Findlay ain't goin' to be in town tonibulletpittedght," he said.

"Maybe not," Barrett replied. He had pushed back from the table, having eaten lightly, and was waiting for Fred to complete his abundant feeding.

"I don't know how it is with a man that's goin' to be hung," said Fred, "but you two fellers must have the same kind of a feelin'. I tell you, boy, it takes something more than the chance of a fight to make my gizzard weak."

"I see it does," Barrett said, grinning with true good feeling and admiration of the poet's appetite in the face of unknown perils. "Go right on; eat down to the bottom of the bin and lick the boards. I like to see you do it."


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 "Me, if I was goin' to be hung, I don't reckon I'd go very heavy on the ham and eggs that morning. I always thought it was mean and onery of a sheriff to go and set out fried chicken and pie before a man that's got to step out on the gallers in the morning, the way you read about 'em doin'. Seems to me it's bad enough to be hung, without bein' reminded before goin' of all the good eatin' a feller's got to leave behind him in this world."

"That's the hard part of being hung, Fred," Barrett said.

He felt every day his feeling of friendship bind closer about this homely, hard-shelled little man. Here was a philosopher who could see so much in life that many other people with supposedly broader visions missed, and got so much more out of it than nine wiser men in every ten wise ones that could be chosen in the world's traveled ways.

"Dan's pourin' honey in her ear," said Fred, looking through the door into the office, where their partner and Cattle Kate hung over the cigar case, one on either side. "Give that boy rope and he'll wind it around Dale Findlay's legs so tight he'll lose the race. Women can't back away from a boy like Dan. He's got a clean feelin' about him, like a pine tree."

"You've said it like a true poet, Fred. If Cattle Kate's half as wise as she looks to me, she'll know which way to jump."

"Yes, but you never can tell about them women. Sometimes it looks like a man's got one of 'em tamed so she won't stray, and then when he leaves the hobble


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 off some night he wakes up in the morning and finds she's gone off with some other feller. Well, it never happened to me, and it ain't never goin' to happen."

"I should hope not, Fred. Done?"

"All set."

Fred picked up his gun and walked ahead of Barrett as they left the room. After they had adjusted the damage, as Fred called it, Cattle Kate rushed back to the dining-room in her quick come and go way, skirmishing around from table to table to see that the. Indian girl was doing all possible to maintain the reputation of the house. She brought up at a table where two cowpunchers sat who had the look of greenhorns on the range, and remained talking with them.

"Kate's red-headed, hoppin' mad!" said Dan, full of glee that he could not hide.

"You don't seem to be much worried over it," Barrett remarked.

"Me? I'm shoutin', I'm settin' on a log pattin' juber. Dale and Alma rode clean over here the other evenin'—to buy two spools of thread!"

"The—hell—you—say!" said Fred, drawing a longer interval between words as they left his astonished mouth.

"Twenty-four miles for two spools of thread!" Dan chuckled. "Say, do you fellers know they're goin' to have a dance at Four Corners next Tuesday night?"

Neither of them had heard of it. But Fred said he thought it was about time for the fall festivities to begin on the range.

"Alma told Cattle Kate Dale's goin' to take her to


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 the dance," Dan announced, so full of excitement and good feeling that he fairly panted.

It was Barrett's turn to explode now. He came out with it like a veteran.

"The hell she did!" he said.

"Cattle Kate said to tell you, Ed; she thought you might be interested to hear about it."

Dan winked with crafty humor, as much as te say he knew it wasn't through any desire of Kate's to stir a feeling of jealousy in other quarters and maybe head off the excursion.

Barrett was upset by a turmoil in which he floundered with a feeling of panic. When he had suggested the programme to Alma, which she was pursuing with such speed, he had very little notion that she would attempt it, or that she ever would have the opportunity of doing so if inclined to take the hazard. His thought at the time had been that Findlay would be well out of the world before Alma could begin plotting his confusion through the jealousy of Cattle Kate.

He didn't want her going about in Findlay's company, no matter if she might possess herself of all the secrets he had concealed in his black heart. The man breathed villainy; there was pestilence in his presence.

Fred was the only one of the three not so absorbed in this news as to forget that he had come there on a hostile mission. He kept watch on the front door, one eager ear open for the gossip in the room.

"A girl that can stay good in Bonita like Cattle Kate's done is too good a girl for Dale Findlay," said Fred.


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 He went to the door and locked up and down the one-sided street. Some soldiers were hitching their horses in front of the hotel, talking noisily. Fred went out to survey the land beyond.

Cattle Kate's front entrance was built with regard to a horseback-riding country. A platform, or porch, not roofed, projected in front of the door, steps leading to it on either end. This platform was the height of one's foot in the stirrup, and was handy for officers from the post in muddy weather, as well as for inebriate cowpunchers who found difficulty in getting into the saddle from the ground. Once in, no amount of liquor could reel them out.

A woman might dismount upon this platform with ease, and tie her horse to one of the ringbolts set along its outer edge, as the ranch wives and daughters commonly did when business brought them to Cattle Kate's store. These hitching places were dedicated solely to feminine use; this was understood far and near. Let any cowpuncher, cattle baron, or officer from the post transgress at peril of a dressing-down from Cattle Kate that he would not soon forget.

Fred stood on this little vantage point, running his eyes around the town. All of it lay on the side of the road where the hotel stood, as has been explained, due to governmental regulations. The center of the road was the deadline; there the sacred boundary of government property stretched. The moon was well up over this scene, every hous¢ in the town plainly revealed to Fred's eyes. He did not discover anything of hostile appearance, nor any familiar horses along the


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 racks.

Near him on the porch there was the usual Saturday night pile of saddles; he looked over as many as were exposed to examination, finding none that he knew. The poet concluded that they had picked on a poor night for collecting their debt from Findlay and Glass. He turned to rejoin his partners in the office, to find Glass facing him at the other end of the porch, not more than twenty feet between them.

Glass was alone. Whether he had been creeping up from some back way to spy out their numbers, or whether he had been sitting on the steps all the time and had got to his feet only that moment, Grubb did not know. But there he stood, and as Fred waited a moment to gather his intentions, he started to pull his gun.

Grubb's shot brought Barrett and Dan to the door on the jump. Fred had cut loose with both barrels, not a second's interval between. The roar of his big-bore gun startled the dozing horses; they were trampling and snorting in great confusion and dust when Barrett and Dan made their spectacular entry upon what was truly the stage of action.

"What the devil?" Dan asked, bringing up suddenly, gun in his hand, puzzled for an answer.

"I got him, damn him!" Fred cut in, the breech of his gun open, fresh cartridges in his fingers.

"Who? Where's he at?"

Dan peered around as he asked, unmindful of the fact that they stood in the light of the door.

"Down there," Fred pointed.


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 They moved forward cautiously, guns ready. Behind them there was the noise of a stampede from the dining-room forward, to see what was going on, for curiosity always is greater than the sense of danger in those who are not principals in a fight. The three friends stood at the head of the steps and looked at the unoccupied ground at the bottom.

"He was right there!" Fred declared. "He was pullin' his gun on me—right there!"

"Well, he ain't there now," said Dan, a bit sarcastically.

"I must 'a'"

"Get away from here to do your shootin'!"

Cattle Kate spoke from the door. She held her bill-collector in her hand to enforce the order. Up the street there sounded a loud, mocking laugh, followed by a shot.

The three friends, feeling rather foolish, but not so foolish as to abandon caution altogether, rushed out into the cover of darkness in the road.

"That was him! I must 'a'"

Two quick shots from the corner of the saloon, which stood a lean-to against the hotel, left no doubt that Fred had fired at something more than the ghost of a man. Barrett saw Cattle Kate fanning out the lights in the hotel office with a hat; heard the front door shut with a sound of substantiality that promised security for those behind it.

"Scatter out!" Dan called, a note of warning in his voice.

"I must 'a'—" Fred began his explanation that


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 seemed destined to lie on his tongue uncompleted. Dan and Barrett began firing; others came running from the dance hall to the assistance of Glass, summoned by his whooping, shooting as they ran.

The three friends had taken the open side of the road at Cattle Kate's command to get away from the hotel. There was no shelter on that side bigger than a bunch of grass, and the moon, already above the housetops, revealed them sharply against the gray broken ground beyond.

Up the road a hundred yards or more somebody had left a wagon. It looked to Barrett from that distance like a government freight wagon, canvas-topped, heavy. There were no horses near it, apparently it was deserted by whoever owned or drove it. Calling to his comrades, Barrett cut out for this shelter, pegging away at the flashes from the shadows and corners of buildings across the road.

Fred Grubb was first to reach the wagon, passing Barrett on the way almost as if he stood still. Not by fright were these wings lent to the poet's heels, for he no sooner passed behind the wagon than he jumped out into the moonlight again to deliver both barrels of his shotgun toward a bunch of four or five men in front of the dance hall, who were firing on Barrett and Dan.

Fred's unexpected broadside drove them to shelter. The door of the dance hall closed after them, the lights went out.

But from other buildings activities began. It seemed to be the attitude of Bonita to mix whether it was its fight or not; the desire to shoot seemed to be irresistible.


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 Windows were raised, streaks of fire blazed forth. Most of these snipers fired across the road, going on the theory that whoever stood outside of the town and fired at anybody or anything in it must be enemies, therefore to be repulsed and overwhelmed.

In this way Bonita was pretty generally involved in the affray inside of two minutes after its beginning. Bullets slapped the dust in the road, plugged through the canvas cover of the wagon, rattled in the woodwork of the wheels.

Men were seen coming out of the darkened dance hall. Barrett gathered from this that the lights had been put out for no other reason than to allow them to slip out in comparative safety. He turned his attention to these reenforcements, which began to cut loose at the wagon from the corner of the house they had left.

"They're comin'!" Dan announced from his station at the rear of the wagon.

Barrett turned, to see a band of men come charging up the road, yelling as they broke from the shadow of the saloon into the moonlight. They were shooting wildly, as most of the old school cowpunchers shot when out of the saddle hobbling along on high-heeled boots. The unseen auxiliaries brisked up their assault from windows and side doors, and Barrett, calling Dan and Grubb to his side, suggested that they hold fire until the rush came within good shotgun range.

Fred either misunderstood the suggestion or was unable to contain himself in face of this defiant charge. He jumped from behind the wagon, ran a rod or two down the road to meet the oncoming whooping, shoot-


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 ing gang, and gave them both barrels. Barrett and Dan went out to cover Fred's retreat, only to see the poet, standing calmly in his tracks, break his gun and start reloading.

Fred's charge of buckshot stopped the rush, Barrett and Dan turned it into immediate and precipitate flight. One man in the fleeing bunch stumbled, fell; the others ran on. Under the urge of lead behind them they made for their horses, mounted and rode out of town.

Fred Grubb stood in the road putting buckshot into windows and doors from which the townspeople were having their safe little part in the noisy fray. Barrett and Gustin left him engaged in this manner while they went to see who had fallen in the road, and whether he was in need of, or beyond, help. At their approach the fellow sprang to his feet like a fish breaking water, and ran as if a bullet never had been within a mile of him. He was so eager to make a good beginning in this race, doubtless mistaking the intention of the two men advancing, that he ran face to face with a five-wire fence surrounding the hotel corral. He saw it in time to gather himself for a jump, and cleared it like a deer. As he went over, his hat flew off. Dan went on and picked it up.

The shooting from windows and dark places of safety stopped suddenly when Grubb began to pour his argument against this method of dealing. The poet stood in the road, a fair mark for anybody that had hand steady enough, and gun with carrying capacity to reach him, loading and shooting with calm regularity. The sound of his gun was the only one that rose out of the sudden


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 quiet of the town.

Dan hurried to him, took him by the arm as he was lifting his piece to fire again.

"It's all over, Fred," he said.

The poet's two friends had a laugh at his bloodthirsty eagerness to clean up the town, and a laugh at themselves when it came to take stock of the results of the battle. None of them had a scratch; so far as they knew, none of the other side was hit. Judging from the way that man got up out of the road and jumped the fence, Dan said he must have dropped down there to take a rock out of his boot.

"Whose hat is it, do you know?" Barrett inquired.

Fred Grubb went behind the wagon, out of caution, to strike a match and look over the one trophy of the noisy battle.

"Yes, it's his'n," he said.

"Findlay's?"

"No," disgustedly, "that darn rattlesnake of a Glass!"

There was little said between the three as they mounted and started home. They must have gone three miles when Dan spoke.

"Great shootin'!" he said.

"Finest a bunch of men ever pulled off," Barrett agreed.

On again, a mile or two more, nothing said. Then Fred:

"Well, I must 'a'? missed him," he sighed.


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T THE Four Corners community dance house, the rule was that every man must leave his arms, both shooting and cutting, at the door. All feuds stopped at the threshold of that place of pleasure; a man might enter there among his blood enemies and enjoy himself in peace. Of course, there was no guaranty against what might happen to him on the way home.

The dance house at Four Corners was a house, not a hall. That distinction maintained everywhere when it was mentioned, for in that word lay the difference, understood and expressed, between a place of the highest respectability and one of low diversions.

The building was made of short-length pine logs, pegged together into a solid wall. It was a large structure, larger than a schoolhouse in that country would have been in those days, for there were far more inhabitants of the dancing age than the student age. It was a sort of primitive recognition of the need of social diversion in a socially barren land, a first step toward meeting the question of how to keep the girls on the ranch.

One dance house in all that immense empty country did not go far toward making life attractive to youth, but it broke the long stretches of lonesome days, and perhaps held more than one girl on the ranch against


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 the lure of becoming waitresses in the railroad eating-houses, simply by anticipation of its long-spaced pleasures. Once a girl was held on the range until she was married, she was anchored there for life.

There was no church in the range country where the Diamond Tail ranch spread its far boundaries, no ministers to cure the souls of any, no matter how spiritually sick. But there was a notable fiddler who went about from ranch to ranch like a troubadour of old, and who, with his lone hand, supplied the music for the dances at Four Corners, as well as other social gatherings in public and private places where his skill might be required.

This fiddler, known all over the inter-mountain range country as Banjo Gibson, because of his proficiency with that merry instrument, was making the night joyous at Four Corners dance house on the night of the first ball of the season. For one lone fiddler he was making considerable noise, as one fiddler must make who worked against the competition of Fred Grubb calling the numbers of the quadrille.

Fred stood on the little rostrum, lifted about a foot above the ballroom floor, where the fiddler sat, singing the tune as Banjo Gibson played it, singing the figures of the dance to it, changing tunes with as much facility as the fiddler himself. Fred was as famous for his calling-off as he was for his jewsharp playing, two accomplishments which carried him farther on the range than all the poetry he ever hatched.

The tune was The Girl I Left Behind Me, and Fred's adaptation of it to the occasion was like this:


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and so on, with such swinging as made the girls' skirts stand out as if they wore hoops, and left the world reeling when they came at last to the triumphant, high-flung "Promenade you-all, to your seats!"

The dancers were so greatly pleased by Fred's originality and long-drawn performance that they cheered him heartily, touching the poet in his tender spot. He knew what they wanted, and forthwith produced his jewsharp, which he carried in his hip pocket tied to a little block of wood. Slowly, and with that artistic whetting of the expectation Fred knew so well how to manage, the poet began to unwind the great length of string from his little steel-tongued instrument.

At last the jewsharp was free. Cheers greeted its appearance from the mesh of protecting cord. Fred deliberately rewound the string about the block, holding the treat at arm's length, it might be said, and Banjo Gibson, knowing just when his part came in, reached behind him for his banjo, This auxiliary was also cheered.

Fixing the jewsharp io his lips, Fred threw his weight on his left leg, his right thrust forward a little in truly musical pose, his foot free to pat time. Those


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 who knew of the founts of something more than music which well-ed in Fred's mouth when he whanged this little lyre, moved back.

Dan Gustin, standing his turn as gun-taker at the door, cheered his old comrade louder than anybody in the house when he finished his selection, Banjo Gibson coming along softly with the second. Dan was in high spirits; he felt as if he could fold up his feet and soar. Music never had sounded so good to him, girls never had looked so pretty, married women so refined and graceful, in spite of their rough red cheeks and large necks. It was his night of all nights; Cattle Kate had come with him to the dance.

Even that moment Cattle Kate stood beside him, like a bride at the door with her beloved welcoming guests to her marriage feast. Only she was helping the women with their hats, stacking them on a table which stood next to the gun repository; and she was not as merry as a bride should be, nor flushed over with a glow of sweet confusion. Her smile was not wanting, in truth, but it was slow to break and quick to vanish, as a weak light one strikes on a wet night, which glows for a moment in the protecting palm, and sinks and dies away.

During the encore which the dancers demanded of Fred, while Dan, engrossed in the captivating drone of the jewsharp, was patting time with his foot, Cattle Kate went to the door, where she stood looking out into the dark. The moon was not up; in the northwest the Great Dipper reached down to the hills, as if it swept to scoop the river that ran beyond them into


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 its bowl. Cattle Kate looked long into the night, and turned away from it with a sigh.

"Somebody comin'?" Dan inquired.

He hoped it might be Dale Findlay, from whom he would have the pleasure of taking his gun; who would see Cattle Kate there beside him, and then might draw conclusions as to where his own chances stood.

For the three partners expected Findlay to bring Alma Nearing to the dance. Cattle Kate expected it; other people who had heard that Alma was coming, expected it. They had not come. Banjo Gibson was tuning his fiddle; he struck the notes of The Waltz.

That was the way people on the range covered by Banjo Gibson's orbit always spoke of that tune: The Waltz. It was the only waltz that Banjo Gibson knew; the only waltz, of a consequence, that any of them knew. Likewise The Schottische. Banjo knew just one schottische, and everybody knew that it was. The Captain with His Whiskers; but when they spoke of it they said The Schottische. Some of the older ones always hummed it, the words almost under their breath, when Banjo played it:

You will remember how it goes.

Ed Barrett approached the table bearing the banquet of arms, and waved Cattle Kate and Dan away into the dance.

"They said for me to keep the door," he explained,


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 and smiled, well pleased to see Dan so happy as they whirled into The Waltz.

Cattle Kate's gipsy ringlets brushed Dan's shoulder as they skated through the throng, pretty good dancers for that long-forgotten place; her pale cheek was near his, which was far from pale. But Barrett could see that her soul was away under the stars somewhere, seeking along a trail for a figure that her heart missed as the blood that visited it. For her the dance house was empty; for her the music did not sound.

Kate begged off from the next dance, which was. The Schottische, on some plea that Barrett did not hear, although she stood near him. She smiled as she sent Dan off with another girl, and turned softly again, with a little guilty look back, to peer out into the night.

Barrett watched the door almost as anxiously as Cattle Kate, but with a different feeling in his breast. The hour was growing late, even the stragglers had stopped coming, the last of the distant riders was already there. But Alma had not come.

Barrett believed she had been wiser at the last moment and decided not to venture it. He knew, and Alma must have realized by this, that they could not get anything out of Cattle Kate, granting that she knew anything to tell. As she stood at the door now, eyes searching in that pathetic longing, Barrett knew that she would die for Dale Findlay, and the secrets which she shared with him. He felt lighter in heart than he had felt for days. Alma was not coming. Perhaps Cattle Kate would have her wish; Findlay might come alone.


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 Kate left the door at the sound of somebody approaching. Barrett wondered what bucko could be arriving so late as he moved a hat or two to make room for the expected weapons. In a moment his question was answered; old Manuel, wrangler and man of all tasks from the ranch, was blinking in the light of the door.

The old man leaned, one bony hand braced against the doorpost, the thong of his dangling quirt about his wrist. His thin dark face wore a troubled look as he drew his eyes small to focus them to the light. When he discovered Barrett he lifted a finger in expressive signal, and disappeared in the dark.

Barrett followed immediately, stepping aside quickly out of the beam of light that fell a little way outside the door from the hanging lamp that swung with the dancers' tread.

"Manuel!" he called softly.

"Here," the old man answered from the corner of the house.

"Did you want to see me?" Barrett asked as he went toward the shadowy figure.

"Come this way a little," the old man requested. He went around the corner of the house; Barrett followed.

At that moment Cattle Kate, scarcely breathing as she stood in the door listening, stepped quietly out after Barrett, and followed silently, guiding herself in the sudden blindness of the dark with one hand against the wall.

"What's the matter, Manuel?" Barrett inquired, a cold sense of looming trouble over him. "Did Miss


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 Nearing"

"I went to your house; you were not there," the old man said, something severely chiding in his tone. "While you dance, they rob you."

"They rob me whether I dance or stand still," Barrett replied testily, losing patience with the old man's reticent, roundabout way. "If you've got anything to say, say it. What's the matter?"

"They rob you not alone of your cattle, but of your bride," said Manuel, slowly, solemnly, giving Barrett time to weigh every word as it was spoken.

"My bride? Hell! I never had a bride," said Barrett in the explosive way of the range. "What do you mean—my bride?"

"They will marry her; maybe by this time she is married to another man."

"Alma?" Barrett demanded, prickling with a thousand points of fire.

He stepped close to Manuel in his eagerness to have the instant truth, and laid hold roughly of his arm.

"Alma," Manuel repeated, with expressive accent of confirmation.

"Who's going to marry her, Manuel? They can't marry her unless she's willing, man!"

"It is the price Nearing pays for silence. I heard them when my ear was on the grass."

"Findlay? You mean Findlay?"

"It is his price."

"When? You don't mean tonight?"

"Tonight. They are waiting for the old lawyer. When he comes. But maybe if you ride fast"


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 Barrett jumped for the door to get his hat and gun. Cattle Kate stood just outside, as if she had come out for a breath of fresh air. Another quadrille was under way, Fred Grubb singing the figures in his musical high voice.

"You're not leavin', Ed?" said Cattle Kate, as Barrett came out again, buckling on his gun.

"Yes. Will you please tell Dan?"

Manuel was already in the saddle, holding Barrett's horse. It was then past nine o'clock; fifteen miles lay between them and the ranch. In his eagerness to cover the distance Barrett stood in his stirrups, forgetting the drilling of Fred Grubb, the gentle sarcasm of Dan Gustin.

It seemed an impossibly melodramatic situation, almost a foolish one to spend so much care and anxiety upon, Barrett thought as he rode beside Manuel swiftly through the night. If there had not been the probability of Nearing's cowardly appeal, perhaps command, to save his own precious honor, Barrett would have dismissed Manuel's news at a word. It might be that Findlay and Nearing, with the dark connivance of Thomson, had reached some agreement in which Alma was to be the price of the cattleman's future immunity. With Findlay in the family, the cattle baron would be safe from the sting of his tongue.

Even in the light of this probability it seemed incredible that a high-blooded girl like Alma would consent to any such disgraceful compact. There must be force behind Nearing's act. Alma might throw her youth, happiness, life, away on Findlay to save that white


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 haired woman, who had been mother to her all those years, the pangs of disgrace; Barrett hardly believed she would go that far for Nearing.

The fact that Thomson, that lugubrious old fox, was mixed in the affair was another consideration to arouse the keenest anxiety. For weeks that rogue had been putting his head to Findlay's, two brands of iniquity which could produce no other result than an unholy fire. What his interest in the affairs of Nearing and Findlay could be, Barrett never had been able to even guess. That he was sharing the spoils of the Diamond Tail herds, at some angle of the steal, was certain; that he was an ally of Findlay seemed to go without a doubt.

Now they were waiting for this morose, conscienceless scoundrel at the ranch, with what sweat of cowardly fear, what cold hopelessness and sinking of the soul, no man could measure who had not felt the terror of on-creeping disgrace, the misery of overhanging shame.

How was he to prevent this sacrifice of youth and comeliness? Barrett asked of himself. Perhaps his interference might be resented. Alma might be the last one to countenance his interposition, in the great fear they must have roused in her, or the great compassion that had led her to such step. He stopped suddenly, shot by a thought that had not troubled him before.

"Did Alma send you?" he asked.

"No, I did not wait. My Teresa heard them through the window in the patio. I came to call the master of the house to guard his own."

Barrett spurred on again, settling down in the saddle, remembering Fred Grubb's admonition to sit tight


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 and spare the horse when a long ride lay ahead. He clasped the galloping beast's sides hard with his knees, as if he would lift it and soar in pace with his onrushing, turbulent desire.


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EARING had come home after dark that evening, harassed as Alma never had seen him before. He labored under a wild constraint that bordered on insanity, his courage completely crushed. Supper had been waiting for him; Alma was already dressed for the ball at Four Corners, to which she intended to ride with Findlay, according to her promise.

Ordinarily, Nearing had a cheerful word, even & bantering passage or two, for his niece, who watched for him and sprang to greet his coming always as eagerly as a daughter might have done. But this evening he had no cheer in his gloomy heart, no welcome, no gladness, in his wild, fearful eyes. He had gone at once to his room, whence the issue of voices presently, told that his wife had joined him.

Alma heard the drone of his distressed voice, and wailing exclamations of despair from her Aunt Hope, such anguished sounds as if their souls had been thrown into the mill of the inexorable gods and were being shredded from their living hearts.

It had come the time of the year when the herds were being shifted down from the higher mesas to the fattening grass in the valleys, many cattle being now on the range near the ranch. As a consequence of this activity, men were quartered again in the long bunkhouse,


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 their singing and laughter at night making the place lively after its summer months of quiet.

Tonight several men were going to the dance, from which they would ride in the waning hours of the night only to change into their working clothes and to the backs of other horses. The memory of the night's pleasures would refresh them as no amount of sleep could do.

Now, as Nearing groaned under the load that galled his heart, pouring forth Alma knew not what story to bring fresh trouble to his already burdened wife, these carefree cowpunchers were singing in the bunkhouse as they went about shaving and slicking up for the dance. There were honest young fellows among Findlay's crew, to whom the indictment laid by Alma before Barrett on the evening of his first arrival at the ranch did not reach. Not all of them were reckless, drinking, swearing social outlaws, although it must be admitted that, taking them the range over, from the Rio Grande to the Little Missouri, they were an unholy band.

But some of them were as clean of thought and deed as the best of men, and the lives they led in the open places gave them graces of body and heart lacking in large measure in those more fortunately assigned. Alma had looked forward with anticipation of pleasure to the dance, where she expected to renew old acquaintances and foot off many a quadrille with these supple, simple men.

This consideration was not all that lay behind her desire to go to the dance, although she confessed a plain, girlish, human desire for a dash of unusual pleasure, a bit wilder and rougher than she was accus-


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 tomed to. She had given up the hope of getting at Findlay's secret by the strategy of jealousy; she was sorry for Cattle Kate, regretful of the pain she had given her already by appearing before her in Findlay's company, but she had another plan.

More than that, she had seen at one glance on that occasion, when the riving pang of jealousy tore poor, simple Kate's breast, that Kate's rage was not likely to be vented on Findlay if it should be goaded to the breaking point. Kate would take her gun and shoot whoever stood in her way, perhaps; but she would die, if necessity ever called for that sacrifice, before she would betray that evil, dark-hearted man by a word.

Alma had meant to ride to the hay-ranch to tell Barrett that they could not hope to do anything through Kate's jealousy, but had deferred it from day to day. Not so much out of consideration of convention, as a timid shrinking from seeking one whom her heart had begun to hunger after with a disturbing unrest. It is but a foolish, shallow woman, let her be never so good, who discovers to the author of her heart's disquietude the sickness that he alone can cure.

Alma was not of that shallow kind in whom a passion flares and falls like the caprice of a day. Her regard for Barrett had grown slowly, against her own conviction, from a rather indifferent liking, a wholly indifferent attitude of caring not at all whether he remained on the range or went his way. She had not taken the trouble at the beginning to sound him, and find whether he was molded around a hollow core, or contained the substance of a true man.


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 The revelation had come, after her arraignment of him, her fiery scorn, on the night Nearing drew his weapon to shoot Barrett down at the gate. Following that revelation of the young sailor's true manliness, Findlay's attempt on his life had supplied the opportunity of closer association. She had found him neither simple nor saintly as she went on exploring during the days of his convalescence; but she had found in him the admirable balance of an amiable spirit and an honest heart. Where men were to be counted, there he would be found.

There was an unusual coming and going of people about the place that evening, of passing and repassing through the patio, all of which could not be due, Alma knew, to the activities of Manuel and Teresa. She resented this trespass upon what always had been held peculiarly her private ground, even as she wondered if her uncle's unusual perturbation could have any connection with the stir. She wondered if something had happened; if Nearing at last had accomplished the thing he rode the range like a baffled avenger to do, and if it had brought down the tottering arch of that house's fortunes in some unexpected way.

Findlay had not appeared to take her to the dance, although it was past the hour set for them to start. Even though he still rode in his arrogance, safe in the unremitting watchfulness of his friends, she felt that she could not go with him now, and leave those two broken people alone with their shame and sorrow that night.

This Alma regretted, for it had been her great hope,


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 a hope that had come to her like an inspiration, that she might soften Findlay on that long ride and influence him to lift his oppressive hand. This had been her great hope when she promised Findlay to go to the dance with him; all consideration of pleasure was secondary and small.

She had meant to try if this cattle thief, who masked his widespread operations under the cover of a respectable, responsible connection, had any pity left alive in his breast, and, if she could discover never so small a grain, to water it with the softening plea of mercy until it might expand and fill his heart.

She had determined to plead with him to quit the range, go away with whatever gain had been his from the long and extensive plundering of the Diamond Tail properties, carrying his dread secret with him. She would not ask him to disclose that secret; she felt now that she did not want to know. Let the two old people—for they were old, the past few weeks had aged them cruelly—close their days in such peace as they might gather out of the ruin of their hopes that he had made.

Findlay was not a common man who never had known the refinements of living. It was said he came of a good family, and that he had been university bred. In such a man there must remain some chord that the plea of simple justice, or compassion, if justice should prove too stern, could reach and waken, as her fingers caressed to melody her harpstrings in the dark.

The dining table was spread, late roses, which bloomed abundantly until frost in the warm patio, giving it a cheerful, even festive air. Teresa, soft of tread


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 as a panther, came anxiously from the kitchen to survey the setting, a troubled look in her dark face, and went dolefully back to her carefully cooked dishes again.

Alma went to her room, which looked out on the patio opposite the one in which Barrett had been imprisoned by his wound but a little while past. There was no ray of moonlight among the foliage of the little court, where the fountain tinkled in its basin, overflowing among the ferns. And in the girl's heart there was a gathering of darkness as deep and oppressive, in which there was not even the cheer of one sweet sound of hope.

She heard somebody cross the patio softly, the sound retreating from her window, as she entered the room. She went to the open window, leaned out and called, softly:

"Manuel!"

There was no reply, but the smoke of a cigarette came blowing on the wind, as if the trespasser insolently challenged her to discover him if she could.

Alma felt that she was being drawn into this heart-crushing trouble that hung over her uncle's house. By what means of involution she was being hurried on to participation in the sombre tragedy that was coming rapidly to its climax, she did not know; but she could feel it with every nerve of her body. That step in the patio, that whiff of defiant, insolent smoke, had some part in the shaping event, the shadow of which fell cold upon her heart.

She sat on the low stool beside her harp, drew the instrument down to her shoulder, ran her fingers over


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 the strings. There seemed to rush into her heart with the sound a great sorrow, a vast, poignant longing for some precious thing taken away forever. It was as if night had brought a sorrow which day could not again purge away. Tears burst from her eyes in copious overflowing; a sob rose clamoring for utterance, like a wail for the dead.

Nearing was knocking at her door. In wheedling, ingratiating, humble tones of one who had given offense and craved forgiveness which he neither merited nor expected, he asked to see her. She sprang up, shocked by the strange quality of his voice, and opened the door.

"Uncle Hal! For heaven's sake tell me what has happened!" she appealed.

"Now, now! It's all right, it's all right," he said, with fatuous soothing. "It's nothing but a little matter of business, Alma."

He seemed weak, unsteady on his feet, which he shuffled like a very old man. She took his arm, smitten to the heart with a feeling of compassion that outweighed all the blame she could find in her conscience to charge to this wreck of the strong, handsome man she once knew.

"Wait till I make a light, Uncle Hal, it's so dark tonight."

"Dark tonight—God! Dark!" he muttered. Then, rousing as a drowning man plucks resolution to fight the current that is sweeping him away: "No, don't make a light, we'll not need a light. Just a little matter of business we can discuss in the dark."


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 His hand trembled on her arm; it was damp with the sweat of an agony she could not fathom as she took it to guide him to a chair.

"Sit by the window—it seems close in here tonight."

"I feel an oppression in the air," said he. "It seems heavy, as if a storm might be gathering."

He sat by the open window, silent for a little while, as a weary man come home to his repose. A gust of wind, little more than a breath, rustled the leaves, and shook down a shower of them from the maple and aspen boughs with sound as melancholy as his own sighs.

"The business is going badly, Alma," Nearing said at last, catching himself in his drifting, it seemed, coming back by sheer force to the subject he had sought her to discuss.

"But that's not news, Uncle Hal. The business has been going badly a long time, hasn't it?"

"A long time. Now it's rushing to a fall, I'll be overwhelmed, buried in the ruins that will drag all of us down. You are the only one that can stop this avalanche—I've come to appeal to you."

"I stop it?" she asked, amazed. "Why, Uncle Hal"

"Your interest as a stockholder"

"Oh!" she stopped him impatiently. "I forgot, long ago, that I was a stockholder, I threw my chips in with yours, I count my little inheritance swallowed up in the loss you've stood. You've repaid me, a thousand times over, Uncle Hal. As a stockholder, don't count me in."


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 "It can't be done that way," he said, wearily insistent, "I'm honor bound to account to you for every dollar of your patrimony, as well as every dollar the other stockholders have in the business. But I'm on the edge of the precipice now. Tomorrow morning will see me drawn over, dashed to ruin—unless you put out your hand to save me."

"Why, Uncle Hal," she said, her voice trembling with generous emotion, tears rushing into her eyes, "I'll do anything humanly possible to help you. Don't you know that without asking me?"

"I thought I knew," he said, seeking her hand, pressing it with warm gratitude, a lifting of eager hope in his voice. "But love, even, is slow to sacrifice. I have found human support a vain and fickle thing in my day, Alma. So I hesitate."

"We can't get anywhere by beating around the bush," she said.

"No, Alma." Then, suddenly, eagerly, driving himself headlong, it seemed: "Dale wants to marry you."

"What a strange digression, Uncle Hal!" Alma chided him, shocked more by that unaccountable turn in his talk than by the revelation made, it seemed.

"It's the only way," he said, with the stress of utmost gravity, not taking into account, it seemed, that he had overleaped the most vital portion of his explanation. But he was not to be spared.

"The only way?" Alma repeated, incredulous, baffled. "Why, you haven't even given me any insight into Dale's connection with your business crisis. What's he got to do with it? A hired man on this ranch!"


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 入 yap tones: the solitary instance is found in the word cockroach which is pronounced 曱 ꜀k'a-ts'at꜇ (instead of 曱甴 kát꜇-tsát꜇, as in Cantonese) without the t to the first character.

Differences in words used.

As instances of words that differ in the Höng Shán from the Cantonese, we may cite the following:—耕仔 ꜀káng ꜂tsaí for farm labourers; to engage such is 請耕仔 ꜁tsy'eng꜁ts'yeng [sic] ꜀káng ꜂tsaí or 請耕 ꜁tsyeng꜁ts'yeng [sic] ꜀káng. 'A married woman is called a 夫娘 ꜀hú ꜁nöng, (this word is used in the Tung Kwún district and it is also used by the Hakkas). The Kwong Tung San Yü says that this term is a rather ancient one. A bride or daughter-in-law is not called a 新 (or 心) 抱 ꜀san (or ꜀sam) ꜃p'o but a 新娘 ꜀san ꜁nöng. This latter word is used in Cantonese also; but it is employed much more extensively in Höng Shán, and is the common word there. ꜃t'om is not used for a pit but 氹 ꜁t'am. This comes perhaps more under the heading of a different pronunciation than of a difference in words. 𫬀 ꜀tö is not used for the sound of a trumpet but 嘟 ꜀tú is employed instead. A bunch of keys is called a 抽 ꜀ts'aú and not a 唥 ꜀lang as in Canton. 𢆡 ꜀nín is not a word for milk in Höng Shán but ꜀ne is the word employed, and to suckle is 食 shak꜇ ꜀ne. This 上 平 shöng p'ing is a little lower than the ordinary 上平 in the Höng Shán. 砦 ꜂cháí (or rather ꜂tsáí) is seldom used for brothels in the villages in the Höng Shán district; but 老舉寮 ꜂lò ꜂kü ꜁líú takes its place generally; book words are used, however, in Macao and Shek-k'éí.

A place, spot, or the word 'here' is represented by naí, as:—he lives at his place (i.e. his house, &c.) 佢在佢住 ꜃kü tsôí꜄ ꜃k'ü ꜀naí chü꜄, not here 唔 在 ꜁m tsôí꜄ ꜀naí, sometimes is here 愛 時在 cí꜄ ꜁shí tsôí꜄ ꜀naí; so ꜀naí equals 處 shü꜄ in the Cantonese.

The classifiers are the same as in Canton, and used with the same words, and in the same way, with the single exception of 笪 tát꜇ which is not used in the villages as a classifier of them, the more bookish word 處 ch'ü being used in its stead. But in the large centres of trade 笪 tát꜇ is in use, as the inhabitants of such places have learned it from Cantonese traders. This single instance will show how a standard dialect exerts a dominant influence which tends to eliminate the peculiarities of other dialects in use in its vicinity. Examples of this same tendency towards copying the standard, as heard in Canton city, are to be seen in the approximation of the district city (Shek-k'éi) in its pronunciation of words to that of Canton. No doubt with the increasing facilities of intercourse, in the use of steam now being employed pretty well throughout the delta of the Canton River in the way of steam-launches as tow-boats for the native passage-boats, this tendency will make itself felt more and more until, with the advent of railways or even some more rapid method of intercommunication, it will have fulfilled one part of its mission by assisting in the development of a more uniform speech amongst those who are comparatively neighbours.

The sign of the genitive or possessive is not 嘅 ke꜄ as in Cantonese, but 個 ko꜄, as:—mine 我個 ꜂ngo ko꜄; ours 我哋 個 ꜂ngo tí꜄ ko꜄, and so on, the 嘅 ke꜄ not being used at all in Höng Shán; hence it may be said once for all that, where 嘅 ke꜄ is used in Cantonese, it is superseded by 個 ko꜄, whether following nouns or verbs or other parts of speech.

One of the most noticeable features in the


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 "Everything!" with bitter emphasis. "At least much," floundering to retrieve the admission, "much that I can't explain now, that is really beside the main question. Dale is a man of character, a man"

"You don't say what kind of character! Well, I know all about Dale Findlay, the man that's been robbing us for years and nobody able to stop him. What is it this man holds over you, Uncle Hal? Is he threatening a foreclosure on his security unless I pay the price?"

"Whatever there is between him and me, if anything at all, is between him and me," Nearing returned, with an attempt at the dignity and severity once so fittingly his own. He seemed to forget that he had come a suppliant.

"All right," said Alma, scorning the poor attempt. "Let him go to the devil to cash in on his secrets, whatever they are! I'm not paying that kind of debts for this family!"

"Will it be enough to tell you, then, that this man can ruin me with a word?" Nearing demanded, his voice steady and severe.

He rose from his chair as he spoke, standing outlined against the dim light of the window. Alma could see that he leaned toward her, as if in menace for her defiance.

"No, it is not enough," she told him, with cold bluntness.

There rose in her a feeling of immeasurable contempt for this man, who had, by some rash deed of his past, betrayed himself so completely into another's hands.


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 "Where are your guns? what has become of your manhood?" she asked him. "There's a man's way out of a thing like this, without coming to a woman to drag you out!"

"Will it be enough, if that much doesn't suffice you, to tell you that he can bring sorrow and disgrace to us all? Woe and desolation he can bring upon us, and you, least of all, can escape it! Is that enough?"

Nearing came toward her as she drew away from him, so passionate in his half confession of some terrible thing, some crime, some transgression, she knew not what name to give it, that had bound him in such despicable servitude.

"No," she said; "no, no!"

"If duty, if compassion, if the thought of me and mine, my name, my honorable past"

"Honorable past!" she mocked him, like a taunting echo.

"If the misery of your Aunt Hope, if the earnest appeal that I make to you, I, a man that has stood equal to and above princes and potentates—if all this is not enough"

"It is not enough! Until you're man enough to tell me what it is this thief knows, and leave me to judge for myself, I'll"

"I can't tell you!" Nearing groaned, sinking again to his chair. "Alma, I can't tell you!" Then, stiffening in a moment, shored by the memory of his past consequence, "You are not my confessor, I'm under no obligation to reveal my—business affairs to you!"

"No, you are under no obligation to me at all,"


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 coldly, leaving her chair, starting toward the door.

"Alma!" he appealed.

"There's no more to be said between us, Uncle Hal. When you come to yourself, when you're a man again"

"I can't tell you, I can't tell you!" he said, frantic from the barbs which were galling him from every side. "Sit down again, Alma, hear me for a little while. You don't seem to understand the seriousness of this situation."

"Serious for you alone. You've forgotten how to talk to a man—where are your guns? You didn't have them on when you came home. Has he stripped them from you along with your honor?"

"You do Findlay an injustice to blame him for everything," Nearing made a weak defense. "He loves you, tenderly, passionately. He has told you so a hundred times."

"He's had his answer a hundred times. And what he couldn't win honestly for himself, he drives a bargain for through you! Where are your guns?"

"You raised the poor fellow's hopes lately, you renewed"

"I renewed nothing. There never was anything between us but contempt on my side, whatever was on his. I've talked with him lately, I've taken two or three little rides; I was going to Four Corners with him tonight to the dance, but not because I wanted to marry him. Uncle Hal, I was only working on a plan to help to free you."

"Free me? You can do it with a word!" Nearing


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 spoke eagerly as a thirsty man hastens to water.

"We—I was scheming to find out what that thief's hold over you is, and break it."

"You and that young pup! You and that young pup!"

"It must be a dreadful thing when you'd kill a man at your own door to cover it up," she said.

"He's a liar!" Nearing sprang to his feet, striding menacingly toward her, his foot striking the pedestal of her harp, making the strings groan.

"He lied like the gentleman that he is—only to conceal the truth," she said.

"Trouble increased a hundred-fold the day he came to this range. Would to God his ship had gone down in the sea!"

"If you would be frank with him, with me!" she appealed, standing near him, her white arms outstretched in beseeching.

"Whatever it is I'm keeping from you, Alma, I am doing so for your own peace," he assured her, his voice sombre, steady. "And whatever this—this—hold, as you have called it, may be, it will be broken, I will be free to go on with my business plans and the redemption of my word to my trusting friends, the moment you marry Dale. It isn't—it isn't—a—a hard fate. Dale's a gentleman by birth and breeding, he's a man among"

"Thieves! No, If I can't have your confidence, you can't have mime. In the morning I'll leave this house, Uncle Hal. You and Dale Findlay can stand or fall together, as you deserve. Oh, poor old Uncle Hal!


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 What a hole you must be in!"

"By God! I am in a hole!" he said, so fiercely desperate that she drew away from him as if she had seen him lift his hand to strike her. "I'm in such a hole, by God! that you're not going to stand in the light of my only way out. Will you, or will you not, do as I command you?"

"Command me!" She shrank from him to the corner beside the door, her heart sinking, her cheeks cold. "Command me!" she repeated, the words slow and fearful on her numb lips.

"Marry him tonight! I have given my word."

"No!" she answered, a sudden fire fusing the ice of her fear. "Not if he can drag you—all of us—down to worse than ruin!"

"Since you choose to fight, then we'll fight," he returned, cold and unfeeling in his desperation. "Marrying him isn't a matter of living with him. I'll carry out my part of the agreement; I'll give you to him. It's for you to decide afterwards whether you'll live with him or not. His mouth will be shut."

"You contemptible coward!" she assailed him, too furious to give utterance to all that rose in her.

"Charley Thomson will be here in an hour or two, he is on his way. He is a notarial officer, empowered in extraordinary cases to perform the marriage rite. Be ready to come when you're wanted."

Nearing turned after opening the door, closed it again, drew close to where Alma sat overwhelmed by humiliation and shame, yet on fire with a dangerous resentment.


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 "There'll be no use in your trying to leave us, Alma," he informed her. "You'd be stopped, humiliated, I expect, and carried back. You'd better stay quietly here and see it through."

"You can't force me into a marriage!" she defied him.

"It might not stand the test of law," he admitted. "But I'll do my part."

"The part of a scoundrel!"

"It's only a form; you don't need to let it go any farther."

"It never will go that far!" she told him, vibrant in her rage.

Nearing had become indifferent to her scorn. It touched him no deeper than her angry arraignment and rebellious rage.

"Dale is a man who will know how to take care of you, anyhow," he said.

"He's robbed you of everything, even your manhood. Even if I were fool enough to let you force me into such a disgraceful thing, what do you suppose you'd gain in honor by it before the world?"

"It is not for you to pass judgment on my acts and purposes—only to do as you are commanded. His mouth will be shut, I tell you, his mouth will be shut!"

Nearing left her, closing the door after him gently, as if he shut it on one who had fallen asleep in a sickness, after a long struggle with a delirium that racked the foundations of life.


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T SEEMED to Alma that some appalling cataclysm had overwhelmed the world. An hour ago she could not have been convinced that Nearing was a man so base as he had shown himself in that room, where his words seemed to sound still in repetition of his craven, unmanly demand. His attempt on Barrett's life had done no more than weaken in a slight degree her belief in the man who had stood in her veneration equal to a father for so many years.

She always had excused Nearing in her conscience; she always had held him the innocent victim of crafty contriving. She even could have justified him in taking a man's life, under stress of desperation, weariness and goading, to protect his name from the public disgrace that might grow out of some ill-advised act of the past. But his cruel cowardice of this night convicted him. He stood revealed, loathsome in his degradation.

Whatever he had done must have been independent of any connection with Findlay, to give that saturnine devil such a grip upon him. The crimes of the range were not so diversified as those of more civilized places; theft, arson, murder, covered them, as far as men counted them grave enough for punishment. It had come to the point now where passive submission to robbery no longer satisfied the master demon of this ridden coward's mind.


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 It seemed incredible that Findlay would be so foolish as to believe a marriage by violence could be consummated, no matter for the ruffians he had stationed around the house. They might easily break down her door, drag her from the room and stand her beside Findlay, but they could not compel her tongue.

Alma stood at the open window, flaming and throbbing with resentful fire. And through it all there rose, slowly, the cold spectre of fear.

She began to realize her danger. Men as desperate as those who surrounded her would find a way to work their will. What would it matter to Findlay whether she spoke the marriage vows, whether her lips remained silent or assented?

One thought, one name, had leaped into her heart at Nearing's broaching of his shameful scheme—Barrett. She must get word to Barrett; by some means she must summon him. This necessity now clamored in her heart again, urging, intensified. Barrett, Barrett—she must get word to Barrett!

She thought of stealing from the house, but dismissed it in a breath. Men were on guard at the farther end of the patio, not fifty feet from where she stood. Others were in the kitchen, rough cattle thieves who would stop at nothing. She had heard Teresa ordering them out, and their loud laughter at her rage. As the realization of the danger that encompassed and drew in upon her spread its chill, Alma sat down in her weakness, her eyes staring wildly in the dark.

Findlay did not mean for her to escape from that house before they could carry out their plot against


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 her; he did not intend that she should steal away afterwards. He would carry her off to some lonely camp, after which, he knew, she would be only too thankful for the desolation of nature, in which she could hide her shame.

Then a succession of confidence, lighting her dark moment like the dawn. Aunt Hope would not be a party to this outrage! Weak as she was in her sickness, her spirit broken by anxiety and straining, she could not remain passive while such a barbarous thing was being done in her house. Alma hastened to her, to implore her protection and help.

In the hall she paused at the sound of Nearing's voice. He appeared to be moving about the dining-room. It seemed a one-sided conversation, such as always went on with a certain man who confined himself generally to monosyllables, and spoke in low voice, as one speaks who has the fear in him that the sound may discover the villainy of his heart.

Mrs. Nearing lay on her bed, asleep. A lamp burned low in the room; the poor, broken creature's white hair was spread in disorder over the pillow, as if she had tossed in pain before sleep relieved her. Alma paused a terrified moment in the door, aware that appeal for protection would be hopeless there.

Of late she had seen Mrs. Nearing in this state before; for weeks she had been drugging a persistent headache and general nervous discord with laudaawn. Whatever Nearing had told her of his plans for that night must have aggravated her suffering to suck unbearable degree that she had taken almost a lethal dose


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 of the drug.

Alma stole softly along the hall and looked into the dining-room. Nearing was standing at his place, hand on the back of his chair; at his left hand Dale Findlay stood, darkly handsome in his black coat. Teresa was leaving the room, tray in hand.

"Tell Miss Nearing that dinner is waiting."

Teresa started at her master's word and hurried from the room. Alma retreated hurriedly along the hall ahead of her, waiting in her door. Teresa came breathlessly, noiseless as a shadow.

"Manuel hag gone for him!" she whispered.

"Gone for him?" Alma repeated, her heart jumping with a high, glad leap.

"Meester Barrett. Don't be afraid, my poor little dove!"

"How long has he been gone, Teresa?"

"Five-ten minutes."

"Good old Manuel!" Alma blessed him, tears of gratitude, of hope, rising hot to her eyes.

"What must I tell him?" Teresa asked, moving her head toward the dining-room door.

"Tell them," Alma answered, a swelling triumph in her heart, "that Miss Nearing is fasting for her soul."

Teresa returned to Alma's door in a little while, her breath audible from excitement as if she had run around the leaguered house.

"Nobody can be married without a priest!" she said, exulting in her disclosure as if it might be original. "There is no priest here, and there can be no marriage without a priest!"


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 "Manuel must be half way there by now," said Alma, counting off the time as if the thread of it were being drawn through her heart.

"Without a priest, I tell you—oh, I'd laugh in their faces without a priest!"

"It will take him thirty minutes, at the fastest he can ride, to come here from the hay-ranch," Alma said.

"He will strike them down like the thunder!" Teresa said. "Five men are in my kitchen, five thieves. Wait till the hot water hits them when I begin to throw it out of the boiler—when Meester Barrett comes!"

"Teresa!" Alma drew her into the room, whispering, eager.

"Teresa, I'm going to take my gun and walk out of this house! If I can't get a horse I'll run down the road till I meet him. I'll not let him come here to be murdered by this gang!"

"No, no!" Teresa protested. "You couldn't go, unless you had the wings of a dove you couldn't go. They're out there like dogs under the feet, thieves everywhere. But what are they to Meester Barrett? No-thing!"

"He can't fight twenty of them! I must go and meet him—I must go!"

"Manuel will bring him into the house like a spirit that comes through the door when it is shut. No, palomita, you must not go."

Alma clutched the fat Teresa's arm, clinging to her in a new sweep of terror.

"Oh! What if they stopped Manuel? What if he doesn't come?"


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 "Manuel is on his way, palomita. There! they call me. Oh, if I had poison to put in the coffee! If I had a spider, a dried spider, crushed in fine powder, to sprinkle on their cake!"

Teresa went to answer the summons of the bell in the dining-room, expressing her vain desire with hissing breath. Alma gasped at the wish as if it were her own, only that she would apply but half of it. Nearing she would spare, to repent in such contrition as he might be capable of, for the cowardly tyranny of that hour. But if some subtle force could reach that dark scoundrel by his side, she would launch it at his heart.

And there was a way! It came to her in a flash, as an inspiration descends to some hopeless tangle of human striving when all seems lost. If she must sacrifice this night, then sacrifice with heroic hand.

She closed the window, and drew the shades against prying eyes and ears in the patio. How simple, how strange that she had not thought of it before!

The thought of running away from the impending deed of violence was dismissed, her fears were calmed in a moment. Even though the stratagem of Manuel should fail to bring Barrett into the house in time, the cattle thief would not ride away from there with a bride beside him that night. She went softly through the dark to her closet, and ran her hand along the wall to the place where her revolver hung.

Strange, that she had mislaid it. Disturbed now, her heart sinking from its high leaping, she felt among the dresses hanging thick upon the walls. It must have


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 been hung carelessly, and fallen to the floor. Quickly she made a light, scarcely breathing in the suffocation of a great, new fear. The revolver was gone.

"It is the old lawyer with a nose like a mule," said Teresa, coming in softly, closing the door after her with careful hand. "I gave him"

Alma turned from her fruitless search of the closet, her face white, fright in her eyes.

"Did you see my gun when you were straightening up my room, Teresa?"

"Gun? Yes, it was there where it always hangs. Oh, palomita mia, you are not going"

"It's gone! Teresa, it's gone!"

"Oh, palomita, you must have missed it!" Teresa rushed to the closet, pushing things aside to search every spot. "My God! they have robbed it!" she said, turning with wide, scared eyes.

"Some of them sneaked in while I was waiting for Uncle Hal!"

"No, I remember! While they talked, just after he came home, bent and white like a man out of the rain, I heard him command the señora to go quick te your room."

"My aunt? he sent her"

"It is a true word, God save us!"

"Teresa"—eagerly, taking the great, kind creature by the hand, speaking fast—"can you find me another one, out in the hall, anywhere? Any kind of one, just so it's a gun!"

"You have seen a way!" said Teresa.

"I have seen a way. Hurry!"


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 Alma waited at the door, holding it open a little way to admit Teresa when she should come stealing back. She glanced at the little clock on the tall bureau. Manuel would have arrived; Barrett would be running, faithful old Fred Grubb, impetuous Dan Gustin, hastening with him, to saddle and ride.

"There is no gun in the house!" Teresa reported, coming back breathlessly.

"Teresa!"

"Big and little—gone! In the hall where they hung—empty!"

"Teresa! What am I going to do?"

"Wait. Meester Barrett will be on the way by now."

"But they'll not wait. They'll come for me soon, and I haven't got a thing—my hands are empty—I haven't got a thing!"

"They call me! it will be to bring away the meat."

Teresa started to go, duty being slow in her serving mind to come forwafd with an excuse.

"Go on," Alma urged when she paused and turned as for permission. "Hurry back and tell me what they're saying."

Teresa was gone along time. Listening at the door, Alma heard her make several trips between kitchen and dining-room, heard Lawyer Thomson's gruff voice and Hal Nearing's cultured one; heard the sounds of laughter from the kitchen where the five thieves waited, and the movement of the sentries who guarded the patio beneath her very windows. Her heart fell in deeper hopelessness with every sound. Let Manuel come even


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 as a moonbeam through the window pane, he could not enter there unseen. They would rush out like hounds, and kill Barrett at the door.

Teresa returned sweating, panting, exclaiming under her breath. The ruffians in the kitchen had tried to kiss her; she had been forced to use the hot water before its intended time.

"Come in, Teresa!" Alma pulled her by the arm, frantically. "He's coming—he's coming for me!"

Nearing was in the hall. He came slowly to Alma's door, behind which the two women stood in fearful expectancy.

"Alma!" he called, knocking softly.

"Yes, Uncle Hal," she answered, opening immediately.

Teresa hid in the closet among the dresses, where she quaked in fear of discovery, even through the closed door.

"We're ready to proceed, Alma," Nearing announced, with such briskness as he could assume.

"Give me a few minutes, Uncle Hal," she asked, her voice steadier than his own. "I have reconsidered it; I'll do what you ask of me to spare you the ruin and disgrace that you fear more than you value your manhood and humanity."

"I knew when you reflected, I knew when you thought it over!"

"Go back to him, then, and tell him I'll do what you ask me. Tell him to consider me, in this unexpected situation, and be patient a little while."

"Ten minutes?" he suggested, watch in hand.


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 "I'll try to be ready then."

Alma closed the door, dismissing him with that. Teresa came sweating from the closet, lifted her skirt, drew a carving-knife from her garter.

"I slipped it from the dish, for there is no gun!" she said.

Teresa's eyes glittered brighter than the steel; her bosom rose in exultant swell.

Alma started back, shocked, it seemed, by the brutality of the suggestion of that barbarous instrument. Then she took it, and laid it on the bureau close beside the little gilt clock.

"Can we hold them off till Barrett comes?" she wondered, speaking softly, eyes on the little clock.

"I will stand at the door," Teresa said hopefully, "I will say 'She is not dressed yet; in five minutes.' Or, 'She is at her prayers. For the sake of Our Señor, master, let her empty her poor heart!' And then, if all fails, and you must go—the knife!"

"The knife!" said Alma, her eyes still on the clock.

"When he takes your hand, draw the knife from your bosom, where I will hide it as the women of my country know how. He may lean a little, the devil in his eyes, and you must draw him and turn him, gently by the hand, so you can see the buttons of his vest. Count to the third button—it is there that the heart lies in a man—and strike! Drive it through him like the seven swords of Our Mother of Sorrows! Strike for your virginity!"

Teresa struck the blow in the fervency of her passion, sweeping her strong arm at an imaginary bride-


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 groom by her side. "Put out the light!" Alma whispered fearfully. "Let me say a prayer!"


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HEY'VE stopped him, they've killed him on the road!" said Alma, still on her knees beside her bed.

"Oh, Holy Mary! Oh, sweet Virgin Mary!" said Teresa, clasping her hands in agony.

"He would have been here by this time, Teresa—more than half an hour since Manuel got there. They've killed him, Teresa!"

"Oh, sweet Virgin Mary! Oh, Holy Mother of God!" Teresa implored, her clasped hands lifted, her stricken face upturned.

Outside the ruffians were beginning to clamor and curse, and beat on the windows in their impatience to have the thing over and their vigil done. They shouted ribald suggestions through the kitchen door, humorously proposing to come in and help dress the bride. Presently the two trembling women heard a deputation enter by way of the kitchen, and stamp noisily into the library, whither Nearing and the unwelcome guests his galloping fate had thrust upon him had retired to wait the little while Findlay had granted the bride.

Teresa put out the light in the room and went to the door to listen. Alma could hear them cursing, insubordinate wretches that they were even under Findlay's hard, quick-shooting hand. They were willing to go any reasonable length for a friend, they said, but