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 would take more than four horses with ropes tied to saddle-horns to budge the building, although his little window had burst under the strain.

It was the thought that these scoundrels believed he was in the house, and that they were putting over a great joke on him by upsetting and exposing him in his confusion like a bug under a rock, that put the torch to his resentment and wrath. He jumped from his concealment with a yell, throwing a shot toward the bunch as he came into the clear.

Whether his shot cut one of the ropes, or whether it broke at that exact moment, Rawlins had no way of knowing, but a rope parted at any rate, letting the straining horse down so suddenly it rolled over, throwing its rider clear. The man watching the door pitched a shot at Rawlins, which went wild on account of the shooter's trouble with his horse. It was plunging to break and run, frightened out of its wits by the horse that had fallen and come rolling toward it in a scramble of legs and dust.

There was confusion among the three whose ropes were still attached to the house, their horses threatening disastrous complications with legs and lines. Between trying to cast off the ropes from their saddles and preventing the excited horses getting their legs snared in them, these fellows had no hands for their guns. The battle was left for the moment to the one who appeared to be the leader, and he was doing a lot of shooting for one man, it seemed to Rawlins as he hopped and dodged from bush to bush, cracking away at the whirl of dust, horses and men beside his little house.

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 The one who had been thrown made a flying tackle for his horse's neck as the animal scrambled to its feet. Rawlins had a fantastic glimpse of him, spread against the animal's side, one hand on its mane, one heel over the saddle, as it dashed wildly around the house and out of sight.

Much to Rawlins' satisfaction the free horse ridden by the shooting man broke away to follow it, but only to appear on the farther side of the confused bunch in a moment, its rider to go right on shooting with the same mean persistency as before.

Two of the men emerged from the tangle now, leaving the third hung up at the end of his lariat, which he seemed unable to untie or cut. They began to shoot, nothing more substantial between them and Rawlins than a little greasewood bush about shoulder high and not wide enough to hide a post. Lucky for Rawlins their horses were out of hand, pitching and dashing around, wild to be away out of there. The man who had stood at the door rode in and cut the rope that held, freeing all hands to the unequal fight.

It was time to get back to cover. Rawlins realized that when the four of them began to shoot, spreading out to encircle him, their purpose deflected from the destruction of his property to himself. He crouched behind the bush, holding his fire while he figured the chance of dashing back to the buffalo wallow.

He had come too far in his first hot charge to get back to that shelter. They were getting mean, their bullets were cutting close, for the horses were steadying down to control, the dust settling, giving them a clear drive. The haystacks were too far off to do him

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 any good, the creek bank where Graball stood saddled and ready to go was behind him nearly a hundred yards, the way to it blocked by bushes, the ground rough for a man to make his get-away across on foot. Besides that, he was not ready to retreat; he would not be ready to retreat until he could no longer pump a cartridge into his gun.

To the left of him a little way, roughly estimated forty feet, there was a clump of sage, ancient and grey, with the dead wood of many years in the center of its slowly spreading ring. After the manner of this grim, deep-rooted desert shrub the soil had heaped around it as snow drifts around a shock of corn. Here it held in a little hummock against the attrition of wind and water, the solemn plant fortifying itself to withstand drought and fire in its island by clinging to every particle of soil whisked to it on the desert winds.

Rawlins drove back the two who pressed in nearest with a few quick shots not intended to knock anybody off his horse, for he did not want to hurt a man of them if they could be dispersed without it. He hoped to cut their horses from under them, knowing very well from the way they rode and slung their guns with little snapping jerks, elbows against their ribs, that they would be as helpless as worms on foot. They were range men; panic would defeat them when they saw their horses begin to go.

As Rawlins dropped behind the clump of sage after 'a breathless spurt to reach it, a bullet spread a fan of dust before his face. He thought they had him, blinded a moment by the dust, but the bullet must have struck after he hit the ground. It was only dust in the

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 eyes, but that was bad enough for a man with a fight against good gunmen like those fellows on his hands.

Rawlins gasped and rubbed, able presently to make out his assailants in watery contortion where they were bunched over near the haystacks, looking in his direction questioningly, holding up on their shooting as if they believed they had disposed of that annoying incidental of their day's business, but would wait a little while to make sure before going on with the rest.

Considering it a very good move to encourage this belief, Rawlins lay flat, a copious outpouring of tears washing the dirt in some measure out of his eyes, his vision improving momentarily. Two of them had their rifles out, keen for the first motion of life behind the sage-mound. The other two had ridden up to the wire fence around the haystacks, where one of them dismounted, hesitatingly doubtfully before making a dive through it, which he did presently, disappearing from sight.

Rawlins did not believe they intended to burn the hay. Hewitt would want that. There were several tons, worth a considerable sum, but there was no way of stopping them now if they had changed their minds or got their orders wrong. He could live without the hay; it wasn't worth killing a man over, or getting killed to save.

They were not going to burn the hay; they only wanted an armful of it to kindle the house. The man came to the fence with a big armload, which he threw over, crawling after it. He tried to kick the door in, the hay in his arms, appealing to his companions for

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 help when he failed, for it was a strong hand-made door of vertical planks, hung on heavy strap hinges.

The boss of the outfit told him to push it through the broken window and throw a match on it. One of them rode up and kicked in the sash.

The man who had carried the hay was striking a match when Rawlins fired. The fellow turned from the window, the burning match in his fingers, running toward his horse as if he had snatched a brand from the fire and rushed out in the night to light his way. He ran with such desperate eagerness, hand holding the blazing match extended as if he hurried to save the precious flame, that Rawlins believed he had missed.

The others evidently shared this belief. After they had made a quick scurry to get behind the stacks, Rawlins heard them laughing at their friend's ridiculous efforts to save the match. As the man made a sweeping reach for his saddle, he fell.

The others rode out and looked at him, where he lay stretched full-length and still, his face to the ground. None of them dismounted to inquire into his condition, all hurrying off behind the house as if to consult over this unexpected, and perhaps unprecedented, resistance from the homesteader. Fearing they would set fire to the house from that side, Rawlins left his hole again, edging around the fringe of his little clearing, keeping out of sight as well as he could behind the sparse bushes.

Two were riding out from behind the house to draw a long encircling movement and get back where they supposed him to be; the third was whittling a shingle torn from the eaves, preparing to make a fire in the

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 roof. The man nearest Rawlins let out a yell when he discovered him, pulling up short, cutting loose with his rifle, a one-handed shot. Rawlins felt the breath of the bullet in his face.

After that, things mounted to a turmoil in which Rawlins felt himself a shaving driven before a flame. He had a confused sense of dodging from sage-clump to sage-clump, doubling, firing; oppressed by a suffocating desperation, a wild hopelessness. He did not know whether he was wounded or whole, for his body seemed a thing apart, a sort of dumb ally who handled the hot rifle, above whom his frantic mind fluttered like a mother bird which screams at sight of a serpent at her nest.

It ended with Rawlins standing in the open not far from the corner of his house. How he got there, moved by what intention, he did not know. A horse was down by the wire fence around the stacks. The man who had ridden it had taken the riderless horse and gone off with the other two—there they were, galloping off down the creek, bending low, trying to make themselves small in the sight of this most unreasonable person that ever took up a homestead in the Dry Wood country.

The one who had gone running with the match was lying there, his hat a little way ahead of him, stretched out as if he had reached with his last strength to stop the closing door of life. His right arm was extended, the wasted match-end lying close by his finger-tips.

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walked around the place in a dumb, cold daze. His hat was lost, his clothing was dusty and disheveled as if he had striven for his life hand to hand. It did not come into his thoughts to inquire whether he had passed through the fight unwounded; it was enough in his dumb state that he was not conscious of any pain.

It seemed to him that a profound silence had settled over his lonely homestead; that the three men riding like thieves in all haste down the creek had snatched something away from him, neither the nature nor value of which he was fully conscious of, leaving him altogether unlike what he had been only a little while before.

How long before? How long had that battle lasted? Not a great while, scarcely more than a few minutes, he calculated, looking up for his measurement of time to the spreading morning. It was daylight when they woke him in their efforts to pull his house down; the sun was only making a far-off candle-flare on the horizon now. It would be almost an hour yet until sunrise. And he had killed a man.

It gave him a shocking start to think of it that way: the sun an hour away yet, and he had killed a man. What connection there was in the peculiarly divided

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 thought he did not know, nor trouble to adjust. There was a great stillness over the grassy-valley, a growing fear in his breast. Could he justify the killing of that man to authority when it came to inquire? Could he justify it to himself?

There was a sickening feeling of revulsion for the whole unfortunate adventure. The pitiful things which he had there to defend were not worth the life of any man, were not worth the upbraidings of conscience, the years of regret this morning's hot-headed work would cost. It had taken this tragedy to adjust his sense of values. Before the fight he had believed his position unassailable by the most exacting moralist among mankind. Now it looked as if the whole project had been founded on a wrong conception. What was the homestead worth to him, now he had shed blood to defend it? How far would public opinion in that one-man country support him in his defence?

It was a troublesome thing, an appalling thing, to rise up and confront a man. He had reasoned, in a feeling of security—false security, specious reasoning, he feared—that the United States Government would stand behind him in the defence of his rights. Would it do so? What was the United States Government but an oligarchy of influence? The isolated individual, especially in a strange place, had no claim of kinship that he could enforce if the influential were bent on his destruction.

Rawlins withdrew a distance from the trampled scene of his dooryard, and sat down on a little rise behind the house. He was beginning to sweat and palpitate in the heat of doubt and fear that his dis-

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 turbed imagination generated. The raiders had disappeared in the hills, heading for the nearest camp, he believed, to gather reinforcements and come back. It would not be their way to give it up.

In case they came back, what should he do? Would it be wiser to jump his horse when he saw them coming, and leave it to them, or stand and fight as he had begun? There was no answer to it forthcoming at that moment. He thought he'd better look around and find his hat.

As he turned to go about this errand, so trivial in the grim business of that day, Rawlins saw somebody approaching, riding hard. Edith Stone. There was no doubt about it. He knew her manner of riding, and he knew the horse. He went to meet her, running in his desire to stop her before she came in sight of the dead man lying in that stretched, straining posture, his face against the ground.

Edith arrived in a flurry of dust, leaning eagerly as she came on, to pull up beside him panting as if she had run the five miles from the ranch on foot. She was pale and frightened; there was a fearful look in her eyes.

"Oh, they didn't, they didn't!" she gasped, catching her breath with open mouth, the sound of it like a sob.

"No," said Rawlins stupidly.

He was standing with the rifle under his arm, pale, and dazed-looking as if he had fallen from a great height to a marvelous preservation.

"I saw them up there—I saw them through the field-glasses!" she shuddered.

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 "Yes," he seemed to agree, clogged and heavy in his understanding.

"What happened to you, Ned? Are you hurt?"

She flung out of the saddle, confronting him in fresh concern.

"No, not hurt."

"What happened, Ned? What did they do?"

"They tried to drag my house down, and I shot a man. He's up there; he's dead. I shot him."

"Oh, well," she said, looking at him curiously, "what could they expect? They came here huntin' trouble, didn't they?"

"You must not go up there," he said in terrible earnestness. "You must go back home."

"You don't want to let 'em get your nerve that way, Ned," she admonished, her own composure regained. "Come on down to the creek and wash your face—you'll feel better then."

She took him by the arm and led him down to the water's edge, her horse following. The animal sprawled its forelegs and drank gratefully from the shallow stream, while Edith took the rifle and Rawlins bent down to refresh himself according to her counsel.

"Didn't you meet them?" he asked, with a start as if the thought had frightened him, the water wasting through his cupped hands.

"They turned off into the hills. Go ahead and wash."

He obeyed in a spiritless way, as if nothing mattered, now he had killed a man. One might as well wash as do anything else under the distressing circumstances.

"You knew you might have to shoot some of them if you held your own," she said gently, yet with a little

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 hardness of accusation or censure, as if to say he had failed in her expectations of him in not standing up under it like a man.

"It isn't so much a question of right as of values," he said, looking up gravely, water streaming from his face.

This was puzzling to her, and vexing because she did not understand. She flushed, frowning her displeasure.

"Did you know any of them? Was Hewitt there?"

"No, Hewitt wasn't with them, but I thought I recognized the man we had trouble with that day at the fence."

"Yes, he was apt to have a hand in it. Were you in the house when they came?"

"I'd been on the watch for them two, nights, outside. I must have dozed off—they were at their devilment when I first saw them."

Rawlins pulled a deep sigh, shaking his head sorrowfully, the weight of his tragedy still pressing him down, making his senses blunt.

"They came huntin' trouble," she repeated, "they got what was comin' to them. You act like you're sorry."

"It's an awful thing to kill a man over an outcast chunk of ground like this!" he said.

"I don't suppose they tried to kill you, I don't suppose they even took a quiet little shot or two at you to scare you off!"

"He was going to burn the house, he'd just struck a match when I—he'd just struck a match."

"What did you want to spoil his innocent little joke

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 for if it's going to make you feel so sick?" she asked, out of patience with his shocked and shaken state. "Didn't they shoot at you?"

"I expect maybe they did, Edith," he replied dully.

"You expect maybe they did!" she said with scornful reproach. "Look here!"

She took hold of his shirt-sleeve, on the side towards his body, near the arm-pit, showing him a bullet hole, her manner as sternly corrective as if she had convicted him on suppressed evidence of some grave offence.

Rawlins looked at the place curiously, and tucked it under his arm to hide it, apparently ashamed to have his past peril known. He muttered something that she did not understand, holding his arm tight against his side as if to deny her any further exploration. His attitude nettled her, it seemed so sulky and petulant. It was as if he resented her producing evidence to justify him in the deed for which he had such remorseful qualms.

"Two or three inches over and it would have been your heart instead of your sleeve," she said. "And you stand there like you wanted to apologize for them! You make me sick, whinin' around here because you happened to kill a man that was tryin' to burn your house. What are you goin' to do when they come back with Hewitt to wipe you off the earth?"

There was an insolent challenge in her demand, a flaunting of open scorn.

"Come back with Hewitt?" he repeated, stretching his eyes as if the thing had an astonishing sound. His face darkened with a rush of hot blood; he stood feet

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 wide apart, clenching his fists till he trembled in the vehemence of his sudden passion. "Damn them! I'll fight them to a finish!"

"You're all right now, honey," she said, a tremor in her voice, a dimness of tears in her eyes. She looked at him, smiling, a twisted little smile that hovered over an outbreak of downright tears.

"It's my property, it's my home, even if it don't amount to much. I'll defend it down to the last kick there is in me!"

He stepped over briskly and picked up his gun, scraping the trickling drops of his late ablution from his cheek with the rim of his hand.

"Yes, I knew you would," she said. "I'd like to stick around and help you, Ned, if you'll let me."

"You can help me more, Edith, if you'll cut across to Lost Cabin and send the sheriff and coroner over here," he said. "They had a double turn of rope around my shack—" indignantly, pounding the air in denunciation of the outrage—"with four horses hitched to it, trying to drag it down. It's there yet—the sheriff can see—right there yet!"

"If you think I'd better go, Ned," she consented.

"Somebody'll have to go, and I can't leave it to them to come back here and finish it off. Have you got anything to cut the wire?"

"I always carry something to cut the wire."

"Bring the sheriff in the short way—if he's got the nerve to come."

She nodded, starting up the bank for her horse. He caught her arm.

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 "Ride around the house," he said, giving her a straight, meaning look. She nodded again, going on.

Rawlins went up the creek to unsaddle Graball and turn him out in a hobble, seeing no remote exigency that would impel him to desert his homestead now. He was exhilarated by his recovery from his dazed oppression of spirits. He looked back from new altitudes at the numbed, shocked man who had usurped his proper place for a little while, thinking there was nothing to equal cold water to right a man up when staggering around from a nervous jolt like that. If he had been entirely himself, judging another in a fix like his own, he would have said that water was very good in its way, but it was nothing compared to the sharp prod of a woman's scorn.

That was a pretty decent sort of sheriff, a sheepman kind of sheriff. Whatever influence Senator Galloway had in politics generally around there, his foot must have slipped in the election of that man. So Rawlins thought that morning, when the sheriff arrived in quick time after Edith's summons, the coroner coming along more deliberately with a proper conveyance for carrying off the wreckage of the fight.

That was about all there was to it, the sheriff said, looking with keen interest at the double rope around the house, with the outrunning lariats lying as they had been cast off. If a gang of cusses came to shoot a man's home up he'd be a damn fool if he didn't shoot back. Rawlins had done a man's job, and that was about all there was to it, as far as the sheriff could see.

All of which was a great relief and cheer to Rawlins.

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 The world expanded again, with sunshine, hope and ambition warming it, making it a desirable place.

The coroner arrived in due time, bringing with him a jury of sheepmen, being an expedient man and determined to have the case investigated and disposed of on the ground. The inquest was held over the slain man where he lay on the ground with the half-burned match beside his fingers. The whole proceeding did not occupy more than ten minutes, the jury not only finding Rawlins justified, but commending him warmly for his defence of his rights, which was, they said, in no small measure the defence of the public rights, to a long defied in the Dry Wood country.

The inquest over, these sheepmen cast their calculative eyes around the country, knowing themselves safe in their official position, taking advantage of the event to do a little locating against some future day. They spoke admiringly of Rawlins' fine location for sheep, looked at his hay, pulled handfuls of it out of the stacks and smelt it, their faces almost beatific in the satisfaction of its sweet scent.

Edith hung back out of the proceedings until they had lifted the body into the wagon and covered it with a sheep-herder's tent. Then she came over to shake hands with Rawlins, as the rest of the sheepmen had done, and do the best she could to make it appear that killing a man under the proper circumstances was nothing to worry over or remember with remorse.

The sheepmen all knew Edith, for fifty or sixty miles was a small matter between neighbors in Dry Wood in those times. It is just about the same even to-day. They talked about the drought, and kicked the ground

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 judiciously, turning up the soil to note its qualities, and chewed pieces of hay from Rawlins' stacks, making quite a neighborly reunion out of it. The dead man in the wagon was the smallest part of their thoughts.

Not so with Rawlins after the coroner, the jurymen and the sheriff had gone back to Lost Cabin, taking the short cut across Galloway's land for the first time in their lives; and Edith had ridden away to the ranch to relieve whatever anxiety her aunt might feel over her unexplained absence. It was a grim and disturbing thing to stand before him, even with the question of justification smoothed away. It would take a long time to wear the hideous accusation from his own conscience, that upbraiding that it might have been avoided, that weighing of values in which his end of the balance seemed to rise so emptily.

An unworthy man, an outlawed man, a vicious and murderous villain. Yet he had been human, worth more at his basest evaluation than the little oblong of semi-arid land that a perverse infatuation had urged this sheep-mad stranger from afar to enter upon in peril and attempt to hold in strife.

There would not be much in that life, hiding out of a night that way like a cat, to wake soon or late with the bold challenge of fire in his eyes. This resistance, this first success, would only embitter them, lending vengeance to their other grievances, fancied or contrived.

So Rawlins reasoned as he made his bed in the buffalo wallow that night. Not in the intention of standing sentinel over his possessions again, for he was weary to the bone. Let them come when they would

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 and do what they might if he could not wake in time to stop them. If it came to a battle again he would stick to his hole and give them the best he had. Even the sheepmen, who plainly expected much of him, could not demand more.

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the gleam of fire on his eyeballs nor the sound of guns in his ears that woke Rawlins when morning was breaking grey over the sheeplands. He heaved himself up suddenly when the sound of it struck through his heavy slumber, bewildered for a moment, sleep-cloyed, as one commonly feels on waking in strange surroundings, believing for a little while that it was the continuation of a dream.

Sheep. The tremulous, pleading, helpless babble of a band of sheep.

Rawlins took a cautious peep through the fringe of his hiding-place, seeing nothing of the complaining creatures which seemed to be near at hand in large numbers. There was a fog in the valley, or a skim of fog, which pressed close to the ground, common to that valley in the early morning. Rawlins often had seen it before, so shallow that the tops of the taller cottonwoods along the creek protruded above it. The sheep were bleating out of it beyond the creek; none of them was to be seen.

He came out of his hole cautiously, relieved to see his house and haystacks still there. He wondered whether this was a new scheme of Galloway's men, running their flocks over to his valley, hoping to drown

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 him in sheep, or whether the herders had acted on orders predicated on the certainty that he would be ousted by that time. It was a trespass, any way they had worked it, for the sheep were on his land. He intended to send them out of there in short order. He wasn't going to have sheep in there ruining his hay crop.

Making a stealthy circuit of his premises, Rawlins encountered the sheep under the creek bank where he had tied his horse the day before. Along there the bank was high on one side of the stream only, the other being a pebbly slope which high water covered. At its present low stage the stream pressed against this high bank, only three or four yards wide, the pebbly shore making a sort of sheltered nook very good for a bedding-ground. Here the shepherds had brought their sheep while he slept, either ignorant of their proximity to his house or assured in their belief that all was safe.

What puzzled Rawlins was that no shepherd was in sight, no smell of his breakfast fire on the air. It is a law among sheep-herders of the north-west that flocks must be moved from the bedding-ground at dawn, faced into the wind and spread to graze while the dew is on the herbage. By careful attention to this rule of the craft, a flock is able to subsist for many days without water. It saves the shepherd labor, and the sheep flesh in long drives to tanks and streams.

There was no voice of sheep-herder rising in the age-old cry that marshaled the sheep forth from the bedding-ground; there was no shepherd to be seen. Not even a dog to bristle and give the alarm of the peering

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 stranger's presence. It was mystifying to Rawlins, who did not care to push his investigations too far.

He would wait until the fog cleared, as it would with the first spears of sunlight lancing over the hills. It was lucky the sheep had not come into his uncut grass, which stood knee-high, ready for the scythe. They would have done great damage trampling there, for it was a middling big band, a thousand or more, from what he could see. There was nothing to do but wait, and act according to what should be revealed.

Rawlins went back to the house, which he had not examined for intruders, thinking the herder or herders might have taken possession and be sleeping late on account of the unaccustomed luxury of a bed beneath a roof. There was nobody in the house; it remained just as he had left it yesterday, the hay on the floor where the incendiary had thrown it, the broken glass from the window littering the ground. He had not thought it worth while, in his uncertain state, to right things up around the place. There might be something bigger to come off around there yet which would muss things up worse than they were.

It was assuring, at any rate, to find things undisturbed. Uneasy as he was over the presence of the sheep, he was strongly tempted to make a fire in the stove and get breakfast, having slighted the matter of sustenance the day before. He pushed the temptation on ahead of him and returned to the creek, where he sat down overlooking the sheep to wait the breaking of the fog.

The sheep were huddling and crying below him, lambs nuzzling their breakfast, not much concerned

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 over the delay in the day's proceedings. A wind began to stir, moving the shallow layer of dense fog, making rifts in it here and there, opening momentary vistas. Rawlins had a glimpse of a dog through one of these rifts, sitting in stolid patience on the farther rim of the flock. It was a big, white-breasted animal, morose in its pose, implacable in its delegated authority, holding the restless flock like a stone wall.

Rawlins got up, a creepiness of apprehension crinkling over him. It was not a stray flock, as he had begun to believe; the herder was somewhere near, tired from his labor of the night in bringing the band into the disputed pasture. As he turned and peered, the quickening wind came with a rush down the creek, dispersing the fog in a breath, revealing what he sought.

The herder was lying beyond the dog, ridiculously covered across the middle part of his body by a blanket and the canvas of his little tent, as if he had struggled against phantoms in his sleep and worked both extremities of his body out of the cover. His arms were thrown out as if he had been staked down; one long leg was drawn up, the bony knee sharp as a stake.

Rawlins' first amazement gave way to humor. He chuckled as he hastened down the creek bank and struck across the shallow stream. For there was not a double of that long figure in the Dry Wood country. It was the romantic form of Dowell Peck.

The dog backed off, bristling, silent, menacing, as Rawlins approached the sleeping keeper of the flock. It retreated within a few yards of its master, where it crouched, ready to repel any intrusion on his weary

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 slumber. Rawlins did not care to test the creature's fidelity any farther. He stood where he was and let out a whoop that brought Peck up in a comical tangle of blanket and tent.

Peck had a gun hung on him; he was making a twohanded effort to haul it out of the scabbard when Rawlins yelled to him not to shoot.

"It's Rawlins," he called. "Don't you know me?"

Peck's long hair was over his eyes, his long moustache drooped in dejection like a wet rooster's tail. He cleared his countenance of the fog-damp locks, one hand still distrustfully on his gun.

"Oh, all right, Rawlins," he said, his voice hoarse and rough-edged from sleep. "Come on over."

Rawlins went up the gravelly strand, opening a way through the flock, water overflowing his boots. He was carrying his rifle, a pistol buckled on him, for he had crawled out of the buffalo wallow expecting a fight. Peck kicked the encumbering covers aside with a gay leg, capering joyously.

"I was headin' for you, and I hit you," Peck called over the diminishing distance. "Purty dang good for a greenhorn in the night, I'll say!"

"Good? Darned good, I call it," Rawlins shouted back over the confusion of the sheep. "But what the devil does it mean? How did you get here—where are you going?"

"Right here," Peck replied, sticking out his long arm in greeting. "I started for right where I'm at and I got here."

"You certainly did," Rawlins marveled. "But how did you do it? What's the object?"

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 "Well, I tell you, Rawlins, them dan sheep they're more to blame than me, in the first place. If they hadn't started it I never would 'a' thought of it, or if I had thought of it that'd been the end of it, I guess. They run away a couple of days ago, and I couldn't stop oem. They was wild-eyed for a drink, I guess, they hadn't had one for two or three weeks."

"Oh, they bolted on you, did they?"

"They sure did. I couldn't no more stop 'em than I could a freight train. We struck a hole in that dang fence, where you come in at, I guess, and I shot 'em through. I saw your house from the top of a hill out there, and I said there's where I'd break away from the old woman and take a little stake along with me. We hit that hole about sundown, and I kep' them dang stews on the trot till midnight. I'll bet you a bottle of pop they've got enough of runnin' off from yours truly! I'll bet you the drinks they'll think it over a long time before they try a dodge like that on me any more."

"Peck, you're a wonder!" Rawlins commended him in genuine praise. "But how did you know you'd hit my place? You couldn't see it from this side of the creek."

"I knew you'd be on a crick, all sheepmen's nutty about cricks, and when I struck it I stopped. I was goin' to take a look around for you this morning."

"But what possessed you to bring that band of sheep in here, Peck? Don't you know there's a war going on between me and Galloway's gang?"

"Let 'em come," said Peck, with portentous confidence, slapping his gun. "I'm with you."

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 "What will your wife say when she hears you've run that band of sheep in here?"

"I'd like to hear," said Peck, comfortably.

"She'll raise the roof."

"Let her," said Peck, easy in his mind. "There won't be anybody but her for it to fall back on."

"Things are kind of uncertain in here, Peck, mighty uncertain, to tell you the truth. Darned if I know what you're going to do with that big band of sheep."

"I'm going to run 'em around in here and fatten 'em up, then I'll sell 'em and hit the breeze," Peck announced. "I had that all figgered out when I was shootin' 'em through that hole in the fence. The old lady she'll not bother me here, she's a-scairt to set her leg inside of that wire fence. And I tell you right now, Rawlins, I'd ruther stand up and fight seventeen men a day than live around where that woman can get at me."

"Darned if I know what you're going to do with them," Rawlins said, perplexed, apparently oblivious to Peck's vehement announcement of his readiness to fight.

"I'll have to hustle them stews out on the grass," Peck said, with proprietorial air. "I don't want 'em to run on you, Rawlins. Which way'll I head 'em?"

"Keep them on this side of the creek," Rawlins directed, "and you'll be all right with me. I've got a nice patch of hay over on the other side I want to cut."

"Sure," Peck agreed.

He sent his dog to turn the sheep away from the creek, and set up a whooping that could not have been

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 equaled in volume from one end of Dry Wood to the other.

"I want to burn some breakfast off of you, and git you to hold me up a few days till I can put me in some grub," Peck said, putting it up as a proposal between equals, no favor asked and no thought of being denied.

"You're welcome. Right up that bank—you can see the tops of my haystacks over there—when you're ready. I'll go on and get things started."

Peck came to the house in due time, carrying his scanty bedding and scrap of tent. He threw them down with contemptuous air, kicked them into a corner and grunted.

"That's what a man's wife gives him to lay his bones on and put over his head in the night," he said. "Any hired man of hers has got his wagon or his good tent, and plenty of grub brought to him right along. If she ever puts a leg in here I'll stitch her ears to the back of her neck."

"I see she gave you a gun. She must be loosening up a little."

"All the gun she ever give me!" Peck discounted, drawing the weapon from the scabbard, presenting it proudly for inspection. "Yeah, I bought this old he-gun off of Al Clemmons—I give him four stews for it. He'll carry a mile."

"It sure looks like it would," Rawlins agreed, "It's an old war-time Colt—I used to play with one like it when I was a knee-high little shaver back in Kansas."

"Yeah, it was a Colt when they branded it," Peck said, rubbing his thumb affectionately over the factory

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 stamp, "but it's a stud-horse now. Say, feller, you orta hear this old boy snort!"

"It's an old-timer, Peck, but it looks like a good one. Can you hit anything with it?"

"Sometimes," Peck confessed ingenuously. "But I'll bet you the pop I can throw a bluff with it as big as any man around here."

"I don't believe it would pay you to try it inside of Galloway's fence, Peck. When you pull your gun here you want to begin to shoot. They're not much on the bluff, I'm afraid. You know, I thought they'd run that band of sheep in on me. I took it so much for granted I never thought to look at the brand."

"You'll see another brand on 'em before long. I'm going to cut me a stencil out of a coal oil can and print capital Peck on the sides of them stews a foot high. I'll let that old woman see who's boss of this gang if she ever throws a leg over that fence."

"Maybe you've got a right to claim 'em, Peck. I don't know much about the law in such matters."

"Sure I have. What belongs to the wife belongs to the husband, but what the husband gits his paws on is his. It's going to be that way in this case, I don't give a dang what the law says."

They sat at breakfast, Rawlins with one leg in the door, his guns at hand, watchful against a surprise. Over across the creek Peck's sheep could be seen, making a cheerful picture in a landscape that Rawlins had found empty to lonesomeness in the days past.

"You've got a nice band of them there," he said.

"Yeah," Peck agreed, with the easy, way of a regular sheepman. "It's a good joke on the old

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 woman, the way she loaded me up with that band of sheep, Rawlins. You know Riley, the feller that had the law books in his wagon? Yeah. I was talkin' to Riley one day about gittin' a divorce off of the old woman, but he said I didn't have much of a show. A man had to watch his step not to give his wife an openin' for a knock-out, Riley said. He let me have a book on divorces; said if I'd read that and study up and walk a straight line I might be able to flop her one of these days. Tippie come by one day and caught me readin' that book."

"I heard about it."

"Yeah. She was red-headed. She come tearin' over to my camp next day spittin' fire like a Chessie cat. She said she married me for keeps, and the only way I'd ever shake her was by goin' under ground. She said she'd put me there if I ever made a move to git a bill off of her, and I believe she meant it, Rawlins. She looked as mean as a fried buzzard. She went over and fired Riley, right off the bat. She split his sheep up among us other hired hands, comin' out ahead one man on the deal, the way she figgered it. I had about four hundred before that; she loaded me up with six or seven hundred more. She said she'd give me something to think about besides divorces; she was goin' to make a sheepman out of me or kill me a-tryin'. Glad she loaded me up with them extra stews now. I'm just that much ahead."

"Darned if I see how you're going to come out on it, Peck, but I wish you luck. I suppose you've got a right to sell the sheep if you want to, but I doubt if anybody around here would buy them from you."

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 "I'm goin' to ship 'em to Kansas City when them lambs grow a little more. I think I'll go over to the bank at Lost Cabin and see if I can't raise a little loan on 'em. If I can, I'll hire some feller to do the work. No sheepman that herds his own sheep ever amounts to anything, Rawlins, no more than any other business man that tries to do it all himself. Look at old Clemmons, look at twenty more of 'em out there like him, dribblin' around with a handful of sheep. That's what keeps 'em down. They ain't got the brains to do the figgerin' and hire somebody to do the work."

"You're not far wrong about it, Peck," Rawlins agreed, knowing that it was true.

"That's where the old woman started off wrong with me. I was workin' at my trade before I come out here, and that ain't no secret, but I had my plans laid to branch out for myself as soon as I got a few hundred more saved up. Well, that's blowed; I busted myself on this dang fool marryin' trip out here. But I'd 'a' made it, all right, if I'd 'a' married Edith instead of that old cow. That little girl and me we'd 'a' went back to St. Joe and started us up a nice little tailorin' and cleanin' and dyein' business. She never would 'a' had to stand behind the counter and wait on the trade, neither; I'd 'a' hired help from the jump. But that's all off. I blowed that chance when I married that old cow."

Rawlins had no comment to nake on the collapsed romance, although he wondered at Peck's perverse stupidity in clinging to the delusion that he could have married Edith at pleasure. He still believed himself

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 an irresistible man, although a less attractive figure scarcely could have been imagined.

Peck was dressed in offcast garments, presumably those of his late predecessor, comprising a faded blue shirt, a brown drilling jumper and overalls of the same material, all much worn and in need of soap. The overalls were too short by many inches, which discrepancy was fully made up in width, Peck's cheap cotton socks running down his thin shanks to the tops of his shoes, displaying a section of briar-scratched, dusty skin between. He was far from the dashing, devilish, perfumed, perky mail-order beau who drove up to the ranch with Smith Phogenphole on a well-remembered day.

"What busted your winder, Rawlins?" Peck inquired, coming alive to his outward surroundings, now that his inner void was filled. "Looks like you'd clean up this shack a little," he went on, not waiting for an answer. "What do you want hay throwin' around on the floor that way for? You been feedin' your horse in here?"

"I mentioned to you a while ago that there's a war going on between me and some of Galloway's men. They came here yesterday morning to tear my house down. They kicked in the window and tried to burn it after they'd failed to upset it with ropes. That accounts for the muss. I haven't had time to clean up."

"What the dickens was you doin' to let 'em bust your winder that way?" Peck wanted to know, with an uncharitable challenge that seemed a reflection on Rawlins' manhood. He got up, walking around the room, peering through the broken window.

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 "I did the best I could, Peck," Rawlins replied, sighing as with a sad regret.

"Did you shoot some of 'em?" Peck inquired eagerly, pointing to the dark splotch in the yard where the dead man had lain waiting the coming of the coroner. "That looks like somebody'd been bleedin'. Did you plug one of 'em, Rawlins?"

"I'm sorry to say it was necessary, Mr. Peck."

"The doodle you did? Was he hurt bad?"

"No," said Rawlins, slowly, reflectively, that note of sadness in his voice; "I don't believe it hurt him much."

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day passed as peacefully as if no question of a homesteader's rights inside the fence ever had been raised. Rawlins was under a heavy strain of expectation, which relaxed in some degree as evening fell and Peck gathered his sheep in a little bowl which seemed to have been ordered by nature to meet this exigency. Peck's bedding-ground was about half a mile beyond the creek, on Rawlins' land, where the new proprietor of the flock spread his canvas over a bush and crawled under it to his repose after smoking an after-supper pipe with Rawlins.

Peck's attitude toward sheep had undergone a radical transformation, such as is common to men when they pass from a situation of journeyman to master, wage-earner to capitalist. It has been noted often how completely the vision warps around to fit the new position. Peck was a capitalist now, at least in his own belief. How far Mrs. Peck would confirm him in that blissful importance Rawlins held little doubt. Peck was in for a sudden and rude disillusionment at no very distant hour, he believed.

As it was, Peck had all the zeal of a proprietor. He handled the sheep as if he had a personal interest in the welfare of the weakest of them, showing a surprising craftiness for his short apprenticeship on the range.

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 He was planning to go to Lost Cabin the next day and see about raising a loan on the flock. Off there to himself inside Galloway's fence, Peck felt that he had put an insurmountable barrier between himself and his wife.

Rawlins did not encourage this proprietary view, nor the flight into finance which Peck proposed to try. He was greatly disturbed by Peck's invasion of his valley with the sheep, and troubled over the prospect of being blamed by Mrs. Peck for harboring her runaway husband, even if she did not charge him with connivance in the entire plot. It would be difficult to convince the lady, with her present low estimate of Peck's initiative and resourcefulness, that he had brought the flock inside Galloway's fence alone.

The wise thing to do, Rawlins concluded after he had seen Peck stowed away under his bush for the night, was to go to the ranch and inform Mrs. Peck of her husband's adventure. While this course might appear treasonable to Peck, for whom Rawlins was beginning to feel a little sympathy and kindness, it was only just to himself.

Aside from putting himself in the way of being blamed by Mrs. Peck, the presence of the sheep at his place would add to his own complications. Galloway would come down on him hard for this apparent publication to all sheepland that the limit was off for sheep in Dry Wood. Rawlins' secret hope was that Mrs. Peck would move in the matter at once and take the sheep home.

Rawlins felt that it was safe to leave things unguarded for a while at night. After Galloway's men

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 had been shown his determination to hold his own there, they would not be likely to risk an assault by night, in which all the advantage would be his. Hewitt had not been along with them; it was likely they were waiting for him to come, or at least instructions from him, before making another move.

So concluding, he saddled Graball and rode to the ranch, hoping, as he went along, to find Tippie there. Tippie could return with him; they could take an early start and have the sheep outside the fence by sunrise.

Edith was at the gate, a saddled horse standing by. The house was dark and silent. As Rawlins rode up and dismounted, Edith flung the gate open eagerly, greeting him in the exuberance of relief.

"I was about to start over there and see if I could find out anything," she said. "I didn't get to go up to the hill to-day. I was worried about you, Ned."

"It's been as quiet as Sunday up there to-day, Edith. I'm beginning to think they're going to let me alone."

The little paring of moon was very bright, cheering the whole sector of the sky where it seemed to hang not much more than the height of a man above the hills. Rawlins could see the anxiety of her face as she shook her head slowly in denial.

"You know they're not going to," she said. Then quickly, as if her words had been waiting: "Give it up, Ned, give it up! It isn't worth another fight, it isn't worth what you've gone through already. Let them have it—give it up!"

"No, I'm not going to give it up," he replied with argumentative briskness. "I did think of doing it, as you know to my disgrace and"

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 "No, no!" she protested, remembering her own scorn in the moments of his remorseful weakness.

"But I've got over all that. After the sheriff had been there, after my talk with him and those sheepmen, I felt all right. I was shaken at first—nearly shaken loose from my grip. There's more at stake for me there than my homestead now, Edith: there's every principle of justice and manhood. I'd be a coward to quit it now."

"I urged you on," she said repentantly. "I was always blowin' about a man that would come along some day with nerve enough to open that country. I was proud of you when you went in, but I didn't think you'd ever have to kill anybody, I didn't think they'd crowd you that far. Now they'll kill you to even it up. They're not the kind to let it drop now."

"I'm not worrying about that so much, Edith, as I am about my hay," he said, trying to lighten it with alaugh. "I've got fifty tons or more to cut yet. I've been hoping all day they'd drop it, so I could take the team in again and get a mower. I could make some money out of that hay next winter."

"I was going over to see you," she said, with a manner of dull insistence, as if her long anxiety had stunned her.

"It's all right, and it's going to keep on being all right," he assured her. He took her hand, chafing it, consoling it by his caress, as one comforts a child for a hurt.

There never had been any eye-making between these two, no sentimental passages, no courting, in the sense that that homely word is generally understood. Raw-

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 lins did not know just what his feeling toward Edith was. At the best a sort of hopeful, perhaps a bit wistful, friendship, very like his feeling towards that country where he had taken up his claim. There was something big to be done before he could call it his own.

Youth has its way of adjusting these things without many words. It is only when the eye begins to grow flat, the waistline to expand, that the lover has need of sonnets. Youth does not require pretty sayings, lengthy presentations of its case in sentimental speech. It arrives at the contest fully equipped.

In that way the case stood without words between Rawlins and Edith Stone. There was something big to be accomplished before he could think of her in nearer terms. Maybe with Edith it was different. The woman leaps on to her conclusion without so much as barking her shins on the roughest obstacles which lie between the now of reality and the then of her desire.

Only when Peck talked of Edith in that loosetongued, regretful way, Rawlins felt his interest in her to be something more than remotely friendly. Perhaps that was only the resentment of youth for the man's boorish familiarity.

"It's going to be all right," Rawlins repeated, rubbing it in her hand like a liniment; "everything's going to be all right. Has your aunt gone to bed?"

"No, she's not here. We've had a sensation of our own here to-day, Ned. What do you think? Peck's run away again, and not only run away, but taken a band of eleven or twelve hundred sheep along with him. Aunt Lila's out on the range hunting them now

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 —especially the sheep. I was with her all day, but we didn't find a trace of them."

"That's what I've come over about," Rawlins said, the shake of a laugh in his words.

"Have you seen him?"

"I left him not an hour ago. He's over there with me."

"Peck?"

"Sure enough. Peck, sheep, dog, and all."

"Peck, of all men! Taking a band of sheep into that country—Peck!"

"To Peck, and nobody else, the honor belongs. Well, the sheep must be given some credit for initiating the movement, I must admit. Peck says they ran away from him, or with him, and came to the hole in the wire, when he shot 'em through and headed for my place. He'd spotted it from the hills."

"Peck! And he's in there?"

"He seems to be easy, and very much at home. He says he'd rather fight men every day than face his wife once in a while. He's got a gun a yard long hanging on him."

"Peck?"

"The surest thing you know. He says he can hit things with it sometimes, and I believe him so well I'd want to be back of something thick when he turns it loose."

"It knocks me cold!" said Edith, backing up against the fence for support. Then that irrepressible spirit of laughter laid hold of her. She jerked off her hat, slapped her thigh with it, doubled over and whooped.

"It's no laughing matter, young lady," he said, with

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 pretence of great severity. "If you had him on your hands"

"That's what Aunt Lila says."

"If you had him on your hands with twelve hundred sheep, more or less, you wouldn't laugh. I've got troubles enough of my own without your dear old Uncle Dowell. I don't want him and his sheep around there."

"And he won't leave. The poor man wants to stay there where he can fight his way in peace, and not have to study divorce books and have his moustache pulled."

Edith struck her well-known high key of wild, abandoned laughter with that thought, rocking back and forth, hitting the fence as she swayed one way, threatening to pitch into Rawlins' arms when she swayed the other. He stood grinning, ready to catch her if she should collapse at last, worn out by the excess of merriment due to Peck's unprecedented adventure. But Edith did not pitch forward into his ready arms. She seemed as well-rooted to that spot as a young aspen, and as supple.

"You unfeeling little rascal?" said Rawlins, hand on her shoulder in affectionate chastisement. He went a little farther in the daring of his chiding; he embraced her quivering shoulders, and drew her close, and pressed her as if to compress the laughter out of her and set her up in a straight and reasonable mood.

Edith hunched her shoulders and ducked her head, face averted, the laughter shut off as completely as if his reproof were serious. This defensive shrinking was as effective with Rawlins as a kick. He didn't

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 press his advantage, taking for granted the show of reluctance that a more sophisticated man would have known for an invitational bluff. He let her go, feeling scared and confused, afraid he had gone too far.

They were both sobered. Edith found an urgent business in putting back her hair, hat under her elbow; Rawlins making pretence, in a foolish subterfuge, that he must get hold of Graball's bridle reins and hook them over his arm.

"Is Elmer out hunting Peck, too?" he asked, his voice a little shaky in the uncertainty of his standing.

His trepidation was unwarrantable; Edith was as placid as the moon. She gave her hair a twist and a stab, put her hat on precisely, laughing at his inquiry.

"Can you imagine Elmer trailing around after Peck? He's in the mountains."

"I hoped I might get him to go back with me and start that band of sheep out of there at daylight."

"What if Uncle Dowell pulled his gun and said 'No'?"

"He might do it, too. He's got his plans made away ahead for that bunch of sheep. Do you know what he calls them? Stews."

"Aunt Lila told me. She takes it like a reflection on her own dignity. I'm afraid that St. Joe brand of humor failed to make a great big hit with her."

"The question is, will she go after him?"

"I wonder. She's always had a mortal terror of that fence. That's why I had to stop cuttin' it. She used to sweat agony every time I went after the mail."

"My worry is that she'll implicate me in Peck's break for liberty, especially as I'm harboring him. But I was

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 as much surprised to see him as she'll be to hear he's there."

"I don't think she'll blame you, Ned. But it certainly will jolt her when she finds out where he's gone."

"She said she'd glory in a man of hers standing up to them inside that fence with a gun. Do you remember, Edith?"

"Yes, I know she said it, but she wasn't figurin' on him havin' ten or twelve hundred of her sheep along. A man's one thing in Aunt Lila's life, and sheep are something else."

"Peck isn't planning to come out of there in a hurry, at least not back to this range. I don't know what I'm going to do about it, unless I shove him out on his own resources entirely."

"What kind of plans is he making for the sheep, Ned?"

"I'm afraid they're all disloyal to the hand that married him and took his pencil-striped pants away from him. He's says he's going to put a mortgage on them, for one thing, to raise money for hiring somebody to do the work while he does the thinking. I'm afraid Mr. Peck hinted darkly that he intended to drive them out and ship them to Kansas City as soon as the lambs were a little heavier, but I think we'd just as well keep that between us. It wouldn't contribute to harmony between Mr. and Mrs. Peck if she recaptures him, which I feel she's bound to do."

"You wouldn't think that darned old worm had sense enough to plan it all out that way, like a regular man, would you?" Edith said. "I'm beginning to think there's hope for Uncle Dowey after all."

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 "He's developing sheepmanly traits right along. I was surprised to see it, but it's true. Maybe the gun's got something to do with it."

"Of course she'll get him if he ever breaks out of there, and he'll have to come out when you leave, Ned."

"When I leave? If he stays till I leave he'll be a mighty old man."

There was not very much faith indicated in Edith's voice when she spoke of him leaving. Even in her first almost passionate request that he give it up, Rawlins could read an undertone of reservation, he believed, as if she kept the secret hope that he would refuse while the plea was on her tongue.

He believed now he understood Edith's position in the business. Her conscience was pleading, like an attorney appointed by the court to defend a malefactor for whose case he had not the slightest sympathy. She felt a responsibility for his adventure against such odds, and her conscience argued for acquittal while her honest desire was that he stick to it and show the sheep world, and especially her, that he was indeed a man.

That was his intention, With that friendly sheriff only a few miles away, and those eager sheepmen around Lost Cabin waiting the hour to come in, Rawlins no longer felt himself unsupported and alone. Those sheepmen were ready to jump the day they felt it a little less than half-way safe; Rawlins had seen that sticking out of them like pumpkins in a sack when they sat as jurors in the coroner's inquest. A little while, if he could hold on, and there would be neighbors enough to carry everything inside the fence.

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 "I wish I was a man," Edith sighed.

"I'm glad wishing can't make you one," Rawlins told her, so seriously it amounted to a rebuke for her profane desire.

"Well, I do," she insisted stubbornly. "But maybe I can help you anyway."

Whatever opportunity this offered for saying something gallant, Rawlins allowed to pass untouched, for sincerity has a slow tongue.

"Do you expect Mrs. Peck home to-night?" he asked, after the chance for saying something that he knew should have been said, and was expected to be said, had fallen as flat as a cake prematurely taken from the oven.

"She was headin' for Clemmons' range when I left her. If she don't hear anything of her sheep down there—and of course she'll not—I expect she'll turn back home. It may be morning before she gets here."

They discussed the probability of Mrs. Peck's invasion of the forbidden territory, Edith being of the opinon that the chances were all in Peck's favor. It was impossible for her to see anything tragic shaping up in the situation for Peck, the comedy outweighing everything else.

The moon was touching the hills when Rawlins left her, lighter of heart and stronger of hope than when he came. Danger was drawing away from him, he believed; peace was about to descend on his valley, where the price it had cost him already was marked by the brown splotch in the white earth before his door.

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was up at daylight next morning, whooping in high and exultant voice as he spread his sheep to graze in due and ancient form. He was in high feather when he came to the house for breakfast to find that his industry surpassed Rawlins', if early rising was to be taken as a measure. He found the homesteader sitting on the edge of his cot, yawning away the dregs of sleep.

Rawlins had chanced a surprise by sleeping in the house, going on the argument by which he had convinced himself last night that they were due to leave him alone. The peaceful morning, Peck's cheerful countenance in the door, the feeling of eagerness to be up and at it, all contributed to strengthen the belief that untroubled days were before him. He set Peck to making a fire in the sheet-iron stove while he assembled biscuit materials, designing to begin that felicitous morning with the first good meal in two days.

Peck stood on his knees before the little stove, regulating the damper to control the roaring fire he had made, chuckling to himself in what Rawlins took to be the excess of spirits in his unaccustomed liberty.—

"I was just a-thinkin', Rawlins," Peck said, twisting his long, spiny, dirty neck to look round, hand on the check-draft of the. "I fired you one time, didn't I?"

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 "You bet you did, Peck."

"Yeah. That was one thing I made stick with the old woman. But I was a new rattle to her then, the paint was shiny on me. Well, I tell you, Rawlins, I'm goin' to be a feller that can hire 'em and fire 'em as fast as they come in the future days to come. I'm done with that woman. She ain't got money enough stacked up to coax one leg back to that ranch."

It was best not to say anything to Peck about his wife's hot hunt for him on the range, or the mystery his disappearance had been to everybody outside. Peck would be better off for knowing nothing of the trip to the ranch last night; at least he would be easier in his mind.

"I was just a-thinkin', Rawlins, where I'd 'a' been if I hadn't fired you that time. And where you'd 'a' been, too. I give you a start by firin' you, and made a place for myself to light when I come to the jump-off. I'm darned glad I fired you that time, Rawlins."

"It does look like it was for the best, all around, doesn't it? Well, I never held it against you. I wasn't very much struck on working as a herder for your wife, or anybody else."

"Yes, it was best for me and good for you, as the song says. That bunch ought to clean me up thirty-five hundred, maybe four thousand, freight and everything paid. That'll put in as nice a line of suitings as you can find west of St. Louis, and I can pull in the business as fast as I can handle it, for I've got style to my garments, Rawlins. I give 'em personality."

"You do if you give them the same touch you put in your own, Peck. I saw a pair of your pants hanging

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 on the line down at the ranch one day, and it was hard to believe you weren't inside of them."

"You did, Rawlins? Was it that pencil-striped pair?" Peck inquired wistfully, a tender look in his goggling eyes.

"I don't remember the pattern, but it looked like somebody had cut you in two and your legs kept right on going. You've got more than personality in your clothes, Peck; more than individuality. I think you might advertise it as spirituality. I never saw so much soul in a pair of pants in my life. There was a coat of yours hanging on Tippie's hook behind the kitchen door"

"Was it a light-blue worsted, shaped to the waist, full silk-lined, roll?"

Rawlins shook his head solemnly, his hands spread on the biscuit dough as he paused an impressive moment in patting it out.

"I didn't notice the color, Peck; I was so struck by the resemblance to you I didn't have an eye for anything else. You take off more and leave it inside your clothes than any man I ever met. I think your wife feels your essence in your garments, too, from the loving look she turned on that coat every little while."

"Yeah, she was thinkin' how she'd like to have me inside of it to slam around with a bed slat, I'll bet you, Rawlins. Any time that old girl takes her heart out of the moth balls for the man she's married to you can straddle the Missouri River."

"My opinion is you've got her sized up altogether wrong, Peck."

"What the doo—devil do you know about it?" Peck

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 challenged, the heat of anger on having his authority questioned giving a ripe tint to the sheepmanly tan his weeks on the open range had spread on him. "You never got a thump on the side of your head with a five-pound law book, you never had her grab both hands a-hold of your moustache and pull you down and spit in your face. I tell you, Rawlins, you don't know what you're talkin' about."

"I guess not, Peck. I yield the floor; the argument's yours. How'll you have your beans—with grease, or plain?"

"I like 'em floatin' in it. That's all the inside dope a single man's got on this marriage business," Peck went on, carrying on his complaint. "He sees 'em when they've got company, he don't know nothing about the sessions they have off on the side. Well, a man can't kill 'em off; he can't go that fur to shake 'em, Rawlins. Arsneck and strickenine wouldn't have no more effect on that old girl than powdered sugar, anyhow. I don't believe there ever was a pizen made that'd fase her, but if she ever throws a leg over that fence to foller me in here, I'll stitch"

They both broke for the door, Rawlins dropping his breakfast preparations as Peck dropped his threats against the peace and dignity of his wife. There was a burst of shooting, an outbreak of yells, across the creek in the direction of Peck's sheep. Peck made it into the open first, where he turned, his face white, his crawfish eyes wild.

"It's them fence fellers—they're killin' my sheep! Git your gun and come on!"

Peck streaked away like a hound with the last word,

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 never looking back to see whether Rawlins was going to support him in the battle or leave him to the defence of his flock alone. He was out of sight under the creek bank when Rawlins came out with his rifle.

Four men were stirring confusion among the sheep, the witless animals contributing to their own destruction by crowding together in bunches. Rawlins believed these were the four men whom he had repulsed two days ago, come back to adjust the account. He hurried on to overtake Peck, not so much because he counted on him to be of any use, but to keep him from making a rash exposure of himself and getting killed the first rattle out of the box.

Peck was across the creek, loping up the gravelly shore where he had bedded his flock the night he arrived. The fence-riders who were clubbing and shooting the sheep had not seen Peck, although he was making no effort at all to conceal himself, tearing towards his abused flock, gun out, his concern for his property so great he had no thought of danger.

Rawlins paused on the high bank, where he had a vantage from which he could have worked great and sudden damage among the slaughterers of the flock, holding his fire on account of Peck. The new flockmaster, suddenly grown valiant in his liberty and property rights, was at least a hundred yards in the lead, but still far more than a pistol-shot distant from the nearest rider working havoc among the sheep. Rawlins knew the raiders carried rifles; it would be a small matter to knock Peck flat at that distance with one well-put shot.

Down the bank, through the shallow stream and

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 after Peck the homesteader charged, heavy with the water that filled his boots, sagged down by the ammunition he had loaded every available pocket with, yelling to Peck to lie down and wait. If Peck heard, he didn't even look back. Straight toward his abused flock he went charging, his long legs straddling sageclumps or taking them in clean leaps, at least sense enough in control above his roused and boiling anger to know he couldn't do any damage with his gun that far away.

When Peck came within what he calculated as shooting range, he stopped, braced himself with legs straddled wide, lifted his gun, gripping it in both hands, and cut loose. The roar of that ancient rim-fire forty-five drew the first notice of the fence-riders to the defenders of the flock. If they had seen Peck and Rawlins before that moment they evidently had thought them still too far away to be taken into account. They had been clubbing and shooting, and riding into the huddling little bunches of sheep as if bound to do as much destruction in the flock as possible before turning their attention to whoever was responsible for this insolent invasion.

They probably had concluded that Rawlins, or whoever was herding the sheep, had cut for safety at their approach. It was likely they had not counted on anybody but Rawlins having the effrontery to bring sheep inside the fence. A homesteader who would shoot a man exercising the feudal prerogative of burning his shanty might do something else equally dishonorable, even to driving a band of sheep inside the long-respected limit.

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 At the sound of Peck's gun the man at whom he had fired whirled around from his atrocious slaughter, yelling warning to his friends. He threw down the club he had been mauling the sheep with, jerked his rifle from the scabbard under his leg, pinged a bullet so near Peck's head that Rawlins saw him jerk it, and duck as if a hornet had come at him.

That only appeared to make Peck hotter. On he went, slinging his long legs over brush and gully, waving his gun, yelling in high-pitched, rage-shaken voice: "Let them sheep alone! Dan your hides, let them sheep alone!"

Rawlins tore along after him, going with more caution and considerably less speed, crouching like an Indian as he dodged from bush to bush, ready to pitch in a shot the moment he saw he could do any good. The others began to peg away at Peck, who stopped again, legs braced wide as before, gun steadied in both hands, head to one side a little as he deliberately squinted and aimed.

To the surprise of Rawlins, and no doubt to the astonishment of the other side—for it was a long pistol-shot—Peck's careful aim was good. The man who was pushing forward in a bearing of contemptuous security, rifle raised to throw down in a one-handed shot, jerked back in the saddle as if he had ridden into a rope stretched across his way. He rode on that way a little distance, rifle and reins dropped, slumped off to one side, and fell.

Peck's pause had brought Rawlins up within a few yards of him. He made a spring and came alongside as Peck was throwing his feet for another charge.

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 Rawlins made a grab and caught the back of his jumper.

"Get behind something, Peck! Here—down with you—quick!"

Rawlins was down on elbows and knees behind a clump of sage, with its little wart of earth heaped and held around its deep-striking, wide-spread roots. Old Peck stood looking down at him curiously, both hands gripping his gun, as if he did not understand the reason for a man whose valor he never had doubted up to that moment being in such a sweat to get something between himself and trouble.

The three sheep-killers were charging up, well spread out, their shots cutting the bushes over Rawlins' head. He pulled Peck's leg, wasting valuable time to get the old rascal, brave in a simpleton's ignorance of his danger, down out of that buzzing hot stream of lead.

While Rawlins' hand was still gripping Peck's bony shin, Peck's legs gave way as if he had been hamstrung. He sank down in a dazed, groping way to his knees, still holding to his gun with one hand; settled slowly, without a word or groan, and lay in a huddled bunch close beside Rawlins behind the little knuckle of earth.

Rawlins did not know whether Peck was killed or seriously wounded. There was no blood. He had heard the bullet strike Peck with a spat almost equal to hitting a stump with an axe. There was no time to investigate, or give Peck the assistance upon which his life, if life there was in him, might depend. The sheep-killers were standing off not above fifty yards, their guns quiet since Peck's disaster, spying cautiously

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 around for sight of Rawlins, who had not fired a shot. It was likely they thought they had got him, too.

Now they came ahead, cautiously, to close in and finish it if anything remained to be done. Rawlins flattened down, and fired. They gave it back to him, hot and fast.

There was a confusion of striking bullets around him, an obscuration of dust, and smoke from his own gun. At the next sight he had, the middle saddle was empty. The horse was charging on straight toward him; it passed in terrified stampede, so near the earth flung up by its hoofs showered him where he lay.

The two remaining of the band had no intention of giving up the fight, for Hewitt was one of them, Rawlins saw. He had come to-day to close the matter; there would be no running away before a single man of the homesteader breed again.

They separated wider still, to flank him and drive him out. Rawlins shifted as the bullets began to cut in from the side, snaking himself on elbows, reserving something for the rush. He worked himself a few feet away from Peck, hoping the poor fellow might escape any further damage if there was an ember of life in him still.

Hewitt was on the right; he came pushing in with steady determination, holding his restive horse down to a slow walk. Rawlins resented his mean persistence. He slewed around, threw his gun across Peck's body, and fired. With the jump of his gun Hewitt threw in a shot that got Rawlins between elbow and wrist, twirling the rifle out of his hands.

Rawlins scrambled for Peck's pistol, Hewitt shout-

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 ing to his companion, both of them rushing in for the finish. Rawlins was rising to his feet, Peck's gun in his left hand, to have it out in a whirlwind close, the chances all against him, as he knew too well. He was dazed; his right arm was numb and unresponsive. It was a bad corner for a man to be caught in; it was the end.

Hewitt was not twenty feet away, pistol lifted to throw down for the last shot, when a diversion was set up in the rear. Somebody began to shoot; somebody was riding in headlong charge through tall greasewood and sage, with a wild, high whoop that raised the hair to hear. Rawlins took a left-handed chance shot at Hewitt as he whirled his horse and galloped away.

Whoever it was that had charged in that desperate moment went on after the sheep-killers, the strident challenge, sharp as a steam siren, cutting over the noise of quick shooting. Rawlins stood on the little hump of earth to see what there was to be seen. The sheep-killers were hitting it up in a panic to get out of there. The one in pursuit pulled up and looked around, as if to see if there were any more.

Rawlins came down from the mound in amazement, which became double amazement on beholding Peck sitting up, looking very pale and sick, but far from a dead man yet. Peck was staring with the biggest eyes Rawlins ever had seen in a human head, hands pressed to his belly, breathing in sharp little puffs.

"It's your wife!" Rawlins said, wildly excited. "PeckPeck! I tell you it's your wife!"

He shook Peck, as if to wake him. Peck looked up weakly.

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 "She shot me!" Peck gasped. "She shot me through the guts!"

"No, no, Peck. She saved us—she saved us, I tell you. It's your wife!"

Peck had no time for comment or question, if he had the capacity or the interest for either. Mrs. Peck came tearing up, flinging herself from the saddle before the horse had answered her hard hand on the rein. She was on her knees beside Peck in a moment, his dazed head gathered against her pillowy bosom, groaning over him, tears streaming down her rangechafed face.

"Oh, Dowey darlin', you're all shot to slithers!" she moaned. "Oh, why didn't I git here sooner! Why—didn't—I git here—sooner!"

There was such a note of remorse and accusation in her wail as to verify Rawlins in the belief he had held all the time: that she was fond of Peck, and her harshness was only the rigor of her kind intention, her loving effort to reshape him to fit a place of honor in the land of sheep.

"Where are you shot, honey?" she asked, reclining Peck tenderly, his head on her lap.

"Here," said Peck, pressing his bread-basket, rolling his head from side to side as if the agony of his wound was beginning to make itself felt.

Mrs. Peck began to explore with tender hand, a doleful look of pity in her fat face.

"Why, there ain't no hole in you there, Dowey," she said gently, greater relief than surprise in her voice.

"Slammed clean through me—right there," Peck insisted, pulling his breath with a rattling sound.

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 Mrs. Peck began to lay his anatomy bare in her anxious explorations. Rawlins, partly through delicacy, mainly on account of the blood he was losing and the pain of his own wound, turned aside. He began making such repairs as a handkerchief would provide, relieved to see no artery was cut, although one bone was broken.

This gave him great concern, involving the probability, as it did, of losing part of his arm. His anxiety over Peck was subsiding as that notable's strength increased, and Mrs. Peck declared there was no bullet hole in any part of his body between neck and crotch. Peck resented this, declaring he knew very well he was shot through the place to which his hand returned with solicitous hovering. He closed his eyes and lay with his mouth open, groaning, making a noise with every intake of breath like an old hinge.

Mrs. Peck removed the brooding hand after a gentle struggle, and bent over for a closer inspection of the spot.

"There is a bruise there, honey—it's turnin' purple and blue over a place as big as my hand!" she said. "Wherever in the world could that bullet 'a' went to? What made it flatten out agin you, honey, do you suppose? I never heard of one doin' that before. You've got a charmed life, Dowey—sure as you're born you've got a charmed life."

"What did you have in the pocket of your jumper, Peck?" Rawlins inquired, managing to grin, although his arm hurt him as if it was under a wagon wheel.

"Did you have a rock or something in your pocket, honey?" Mrs. Peck asked with gentle solicitation.

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 Peck made a remarkable recovery when the investigation turned to the contents of his pocket. He sat up with a jerk, a red rush of resentment coming into his thin-edged face. He put his wife's hand away rudely.

"None of your dang business what I got in that pocket, or any other pocket," he said. "I'm my own man; I'm goin' to carry whatever I dang please in my pockets from now on."

"Why, of course you can, Dowey darlin'," Mrs. Peck said soothingly, looking at him with anxious uncertainty in her eyes.

"If anybody goes monkeyin' around my pockets hereafter in the future I'll stand 'em on their heads!" Peck threatened, his confidence in his position growing as he enlarged his articles of independence.

"Of course you will, Dowey, and you'll serve 'em right," said Mrs. Peck.

Peck glowered around, red veins in his big glassy eyes, looking savage and mean.

"Where in the hell's my gun, Rawlins?" he asked.

"There—your hat's on it, Peck."

"I'm goin' over to find that feller I shot," Peck announced, grabbing his gun, getting up with as much iron in his legs as he ever had. "If he ain't dead I'll finish him—comin' in here killin' off my sheep!"

Mrs. Peck looked at him with beaming admiration. She got up, proud of her husband's new importance, proud of the second place she had taken in that team.

"I'll go with you, darlin'," she proposed.

"You'll stay where you're at till you're called for, old lady," Peck put her in her place severely, turning

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 on her as if he might begin a regimen of manual correction at any moment. "I'm goin' to stir my own kittle of mush from now on."

"All right, Dowey," she yielded meekly, happy in his mastery, Rawlins knew.

Peck went on about his vengeful business, Mrs. Peck turning to Rawlins as if to share her admiration, discovering his plight.

"Why, Ned, you're bleedin' all over the place!" she said. "Here—let me see your arm."

Rawlins told her there was nothing more to be done for temporary relief than what he had contrived already, but that he would be grateful if she would allow him to ride her horse to Lost Cabin to have the doctor attend his hurt, to which Mrs. Peck heartily agreed.

She brought the animal up, took the holster with her two efficient pistols from the saddle, and urged him to go at once. She was dressed as Rawlins never had seen her before, in complete male attire, her brown duck coat strained over her large back, a turn of more than a foot taken in the bottoms of her wide overalls.

Rawlins paused before mounting to thank her for her assistance in the moment of his extremity.

"It would have been all over with us in a minute more," he said.

"I'm sorry I didn't come sooner," she replied, with the modesty of true valor. "Edith left me a note that Mr. Peck was over here with you, but I didn't find it till after breakfast. I guess she went out lookin' for me, I guess she was worried when I was gone all night. Did he"—hesitantly, her eyes raised with a timid

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 eagerness he never had seen in them before—"did he shoot one of them fellers, Ned?"

"He certainly did! He went after them like a hornet, left me so far behind I thought I'd never catch him. You've got a man now, Mrs. Peck; a man right down to the backbone."

"Yes," said Mrs. Peck serenely, sighing happily. "I've got a man at last!"

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returned from Lost Cabin before noon, attended by the sheriff and coroner, the latter official bringing with him the identical set of sheepmen jurors that had served a few days previously over the first victim of the homesteader's war.

The coroner found a double job cut out for him this time. The raider who fell before Rawlins' rifle in that morning's battle was not dead, although shot through the body. He was a virile scoundrel, with the snake's tenacity of life in him, and if the coroner was disappointed in having the fellow as a subject for his official investigation, he was compensated by getting him as a patient. Peck had made a clean job of it. There was nothing left for the doctor side of the coroner to do in his case.

That was undoubtedly the most enthusiastic verdict ever returned by a coroner's jury in the Dry Wood country. It sounded much like a resolution by a chamber of commerce welcoming some new and important industry. The presence of these two handy men holding their own against great and vicious odds inside Senator Galloway's fence; that big band of sheep grazing peacefully, the morning's terrifying visitation quite forgotten, opened the gate of possibility to a new and prolific range.

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 They made short work of that inquest, passing jokes over the subject as he lay on his back in the spot where Peck's big gun had brought him down. They loaded him into the coroner's wagon and hauled him away like so much refuse, the wounded man beside him on no higher plane of respect or valuation. They were liegemen of the oppressor, brought low in their arrogance, and nobody was sorry for their plight.

As before, the sheriff had nothing but praise for Rawlins, enlarged this time to include Peck, whom he surveyed with a perplexed look of questioning surprise. There was something like reservation of credulity in his attitude toward Peck, as if somebody had told him a tale of being bitten by a sheep, and pointed out that one as the animal responsible for the unexampled assault. But he was a discreet sheriff, with complete control over his tongue, no matter what his thoughts. He cast his eye around the country in sheepmanly appraisement, evidently not without plans of his own.

Mrs. Peck's pride in her valiant and efficient husband was beyond all measure. Whatever Duke had done to build up the fortunes and consequence of the family before his unromantic end in the creek, it was reduced to a point in comparison with Peck's deeds. Peck had taken sheep beyond sheep limit; he had broken the oppressor's hand and battered down his will.

That was the way Mrs. Peck saw it, at least. Rawlins' part in the venture was not considered or, if taken into account at all, only as a minor force in the historic event of Peck's sweeping invasion. Even the sheep, which had stampeded Peck into this glorious eminence

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 against his power and intention, were not given the smallest word of credit in her glowing praise.

After the coroner's business was settled and the official party had gone away, Mrs. Peck transferred her saddle to Graball's back and returned to the ranch to fetch up a wagon and supplies. She and Peck appeared to have come to a complete understanding during Rawlins' absence. Neither of them had any intention of taking the sheep out of that refreshing pasture. She was puffed up with the red arrogance of a conqueror; all her fears of the fence and its lawless defenders had dissolved. She had a fighting man in the family now, who had made his place in that land of dusty flocks.

Mrs. Peck had put in the morning skinning the sheep killed in the raid. They had found forty-three, Peck said. Several more were crippled so badly they would have to be killed. Cheap, Peck said, echoing his wife's declaration, Rawlins knew. That was a small price to pay for a pasture that would take care of their sheep shut out of the forest reservation by Government restriction, which permitted drovers to pasture but half the number of animals they had run in the reserves in past years.

"I'll order Tippie to bring 'em in," Peck announced, swelling around in the double importance of large proprietor and handy man with a gun.

They were at Rawlins' house, which Peck, from his grand air, appeared to think he had acquired by right of conquest along with the rest of the territory inside Galloway's fence. Rawlins was lying on his cot, feeling pretty well out of the game on account of the pain

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 in his arm; Peck getting dinner ready. The biscuits of the morning had burned up in the oven, and Peck was concentrating his talents on the preparation of a new batch.

"How's your arm?" Peck inquired, turning suddenly from his mixture, hands in the flour, as if it had just struck him to inquire into the misfortunes of a man whose part in that historic encounter had been so unheroic and small.

"Pretty good, Peck."

"You look kind of white around the gills, Rawlins, you'd better take it kind of easy for a while. Leave 'em to me if they come back."

"I'll nearly have to, old man."

"Yeah, that'll be all right. Doctor say he'll have to take any bones out of you, or anything?"

"No, he says he can save my arm. Did you help skin the sheep?"

"Yeah. Me and the old lady thought we might as well save them hides—they're worth six bits apiece. I'll order Tippie to bury them dead ones when he comes, and kill off the cripples and skin 'em. Me and the old lady"

"Did you find that bullet in your pocket, Peck?"

Peck looked around again, leaning on his long bony arms, hands flat in the pan. His face was reproachful, his animated countenance under a cloud of displeasure. But he brightened up in a moment, making the dry, croaking sound in his throat that stood him for a laugh.

"It was there, all right, Rawlins," he confessed. "It was smashed as flat on one end as if it'd struck a rock."

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 "You old iron-bound scoundrel!" said Rawlins, expressive of admiration.

This cheered Peck up. He chuckled, the elbowjoint of his neck working up and down.

"You remember the divorce book Riley lent me, Rawlins? Yeah. The old lady tore it up after she banged me around with it a while, and throwed the pieces in the fire. It didn't burn, though, not much of it. When she was gone I picked out some of the importantest pieces of it. I doubled 'em up and put 'em in my pocket, savin' 'em to have something to read on more than I ever expected it'd ever do me any good in court. Them leaves made a wad two inches thick, I guess. Sleepin' on 'em, you know, and everything, pressed 'em as tight as if you'd put 'em through a steam pants-presser."

"Darned lucky thing for you, old feller."

"Wasn't it? I guess that pocket swung around in front of me when I was holdin' that old gun on 'em. The bullet got me right over my solar complexion. That's what knocked me out. If it hadn't been for them pieces of divorce book it 'd 'a' went clean through me."

"Well, I'll be darned!"

"Yeah. I know how a man in the ring feels when old Fitz puts one there on him, I tell you, Rawlins. It's one of them all-day-and-gone feelin's."

"It looked like all day for us, afl right. If your wife had been a few seconds later you and I'd be gettin' out of the boat on the other side of the river about now. She's a fine woman, Peck. Be good to her, now you've got things coming your way."

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 "That's where you're off, Rawlins; that's where you show you ain't experienced with 'em. I ain't goin' to ease off on her too dan quick. I'm goin' to camp right up here with that little bunch of stews till she comes up with all the cash money I want and gives me back my clothes. You can bet your neck I'm goin' to have a check book of my own, too, and a square break on all the profits of this game, if I hang around here. She's promised me."

"That's only reasonable. She can't expect to keep a man like you out on the range with a band of sheep, in the standing of a hired man around the place. You've shown her you can do some thinking. Keep it up."

"Yeah, and I've showed her I can do some shootin', too. That's what put a crimp in the old girl. That water-melon-faced man she had before me wouldn't fight a snake. I guess I'll show Tippie where he gits off at, too, the first time I see him."

"I believe I'd go kind of slow with Tippie, if I were you," Rawlins suggested, with friendly warning. "Tippie's a man of few words, but you might get a surprise if you stepped on his feet. Why not treat him just as if nothing had ever passed between you? Tippie's a valuable man; you'll need him to do the field work if you're going to sit in the office and think."

"I'll handle him in my own way, Rawlins."

"Go to it, then. I was just suggestin' something for your own profit."

"And if I ever ask him for the change again," Peck said ominously, "I'll git it, or I'll tell him to hit it up out of here."

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 "Well, you're the man of the family at present, anyhow. Don't let your tail-hold slip."

"You watch me, Rawlins."

Peck's mess of biscuits did not turn out very blithesomely. One of them would have served very well in place of the pages from the divorce book, Rawlins thought, finding them about as hard as oysters to open, especially with one hand.

"I guess I left out the bakin' powder, Rawlins," Peck explained, "and I guess maybe I forgot the salt."

"You got in the flour and water, anyhow, Peck. They're all right."

"I've et worse," Peck said, with a sort of vindictive exculpation for his culinary crime. "When I first tried my hand at makin' flopjakes on the range they was tougher than any sheep-hide you ever stuck a knife in. I used to read in story books how them hunters and cowboys cooked their bread by windin' a lump of dough on the end of a stick. Did you ever try it, Rawlins?"

"No, Peck."

"It don't work," said Peck solemnly. He looked across the table, flour on one wing of his moustache, a choking stare of seriousness in his big eyes. "It's a fake; it won't work. No man ever lived that could bake a piece of dough fit to eat on the end of a stick over a fire. It gits ashes on it, Rawlins, and mine got full of ants and bugs."

Peck's recollection of his experiments with a wad of dough on the end of a stick seemed to make him sad. He sat looking at his plate as if he saw the past mar-

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 shaled for review under his eyes like phantoms in a crystal.

"Funny about that divorce book, too," he said, looking up quickly. "I'd been studyin' up on that book like a lawyer, thinkin' it was goin' to be the wedge I'd use one of these days to split me off from the old lady, but it works around the other way on in the end. It made me solid with her by savin' my life. If I'd 'a' been killed this morning, Rawlins, I believe she'd 'a' kicked me into my grave like a cat."

Rawlins shook his head in forceful denial, although he felt that Peck was not so very far off the truth, hollow instrument of understanding that he was.

"I think you've got her sized up wrong, Peck."

"No, I ain't," Peck declared hotly. "You never had her grab her hands in your moustache and try to bat your brains out agin a rock. But I'll forgive her for all her rough work and raw deals if she'll show me she's reformed enough to hand over a bale of that long-green. If she ain't, my first plan goes through. I'll sell them sheep and hit the breeze back to St. Joe. She's got to show me; she's got to hunt Riley up and give him back his job. If it hadn't been for Riley lendin' me that divorce book where'd I 'a' been right now? She'd 'a' been plantin' toadstools on my grave."

Peck went off to attend his sheep after dinner, his gun against his leg, no more troubled over having killed a man than if he had been doing that sort of thing right along. He seemed to take so much satisfaction out of the event, and enlarge himseif to such overspreading importance, that Rawlins wondered whether he was in the way of becoming a killer, as he had heard

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 of trifling and insignificant men turning out in the old days of Dodge City, and other lawless towns of the Kansas frontier. Peck was like a sheep-dog that had tasted the blood of its flock. He would do to watch.

Mrs. Peck drove in when the sun was low, bringing supplies. She reported everything quiet at the fence, nobody in sight, no interference with her passage, which she had been ready to contest with any force, her courage had mounted so high. But she wore a worried look, in spite of her day's triumphs.

Peck was still afield with the sheep; they could hear him singing "After the Ball." He would be starting them to the bedding-ground soon, and was getting himself in tune for the melodious whooping with which he would round out the labors of the day.

Mrs. Peck got down from the high seat of the wagon, her eyebrows pulled together in a black knot. She looked at Rawlins, who had come to the door to greet her, as if she had something to say that concerned him; seemed to reconsider, going about her unloading silently.

"Ned, what do you think?" she said presently, turning to him abruptly. "Edith's run off!"

"Run off?" he repeated in amazement, his heart seeming to fall like a bucket in a well. "What in the world would she want to run off for?"

"You can search me! Unless it's a man. I think maybe she's been writin' to some more of them mail-order fellers, and one of 'em's coaxed her to run off and meet him."

"I don't think she'd do a thing like that."

"She left early this morning—Elmer come in, he

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