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 this was a little too much. Here were men enough to watch a herd, keeping windows to prevent the escape of one heifer. Marry, and have it over with, and call them in to kiss the bride, according to their ancient right.

Findlay's answer neither Alma nor Teresa could hear, though he came along the passage toward the kitchen door with his villains. Whatever it was, it seemed to suffice them for the time. They retreated with laughter, spirits high.

"Oh, my little dove!" said Teresa, in new burst of trouble, turning again into the room, closing the door. "The ball at Four Corners! He is at the ball!"

Her confidence in the cunning of Manuel, her senior by thirty years, was so great that she could not admit for more than a passing moment the thought that he had failed. She embraced Alma now in the fervency of this new hope.

"Then we must put them off half an hour longer, and they'll never wait," Alma said.

"You must change your dress," said Teresa." Put on your riding habit, as if you expected to go away with him when the wedding is over. The shirt is loose; it will hide the knife."

Teresa made the light again. She brought a gray wool shirt from the closet, such as cowboys commonly wore, a corduroy riding-skirt, and leather belt. As she stood with them in her hands a step sounded in the hall, a knock on the door.

"Alma!"

It was Nearing again. Alma, crouching in white ter-


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 ror at the foot of her bed, did not answer.

"She is dressing, señor," Teresa answered for her.

"Alma!" Suspiciously, sharply, knocking again.

"Yes, Uncle Hal."

"Come! we can't wait any longer. Mr. Thomson is ready."

"As soon as I change my dress," Alma promised.

"Five minutes?" he said.

"I'll do the best I can, Uncle Hal."

Alma held the tremor of fear out of her voice by a struggle, but with the best she could do it was wild and unnatural. For in the light of the lamp the long knife gleamed on the bureau beside the little clock.

Nearing went away, to come again, and not alone, in less than the allotted time. Teresa answered the knock, opening the door a little way. Alma sat with her abundant hair falling over her shoulders, and down beside her white face like a sorrowing madonna.

"When I fix her hair—I am parting it down the middle like a married woman's," Teresa said.

It was plain to Nearing, and to Findlay, who stood at his shoulder, that this was true. They could see Alma there beside her white bed, seated on a low rocking chair, her dark-red hair around her shoulders. She was dressed as if she meant to mount and ride. Findlay whispered in Nearing's ear.

"Be quick about it, we can't have any more of this delay," Nearing said, plainly repeating an order.

"For the love of Our Señor, give her a little time!" Teresa pleaded.

She closed the door to all but a narrow crack, fear-

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 ing they might see the fearful instrument with which her palomita, her little dove, would strike for her chastity and honor if they must crowd forward the terrible moment.

"We'll wait here. Quick! do it up any way."

Nearing gave the order more to Alma than Teresa, Dale Findlay, like a prompting demon, close behind him.

"You can hurry neither a corpse nor a bride, señor," Teresa answered him, to all outward appearances quite composed. But what a tumult was in her pained bosom, what a straining for the sound of hoofbeats in the night!

"It's almost ten, Alma," Nearing said.

"I'll be only a little while longer, Uncle Hal."

"We'll wait here," he said.

Teresa closed and locked the door. Then she began to plat her dear one's hair, gathering it into a great braid as thick as a ship's hawser.

"They'll break the door down!" Alma whispered.

Teresa let the great rope of hair fall dangling, the ungathered ends of it almost sweeping the floor.

"Here—the knife!" she whispered, bringing it quickly. "We must be ready!"

"Your hair will do, Alma," Nearing called, impatiently. "You can finish it afterwards. Open the door!"

"Here—a little slip of the hand into the bosom, and you are saved!" Teresa whispered, hiding the knife quickly. 'One moment, señor—one little moment to say a prayer!"


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 "Open this door!" Nearing commanded, foot set harshly against the panel.

"Oh, Mother of God! Oh, sweet Virgin Mary!" Teresa murmured, turning her distracted eyes upon Alma.

"Open it," Alma said.

She drew the unfinished braid of hair over her shoulder, and stood while she completed what Teresa had begun. Teresa flung the door wide, as if discovering a triumph to mock them. Alma stood before the glass, winding the braid of hair crown-like around her head. She fastened it with tortoise-shell pins, deliberately, with steady hand, and turned to face them where they stood in the door.

"Go on; I'll come with Teresa," she said.

"With me," Nearing declared, determined to have done with delay.

He motioned Findlay ahead. Alma followed beside her uncle, slowly along the narrow hall.

Charley Thomson was walking back and forth before the library fireplace, hands under the tails of his long black coat, smoking a cigar. The long oaken table bearing the shaded lamp was between him and the door that opened into the broad front hall, through which the strange wedding party entered. Thomson drew up abruptly in his studious pacing to and fro, and stood a moment, hands still under his coat, frowning heavily upon them as if they might be culprits come for sentence before his grim and uncompromising bar.

Findlay arranged himself beside Alma, Nearing falling back to give place to him just within the door.


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 Teresa, her eyes so great they seemed all white, stopped in the door, her hands clasped, her lips silently forming the words of her appeal.

Alma felt as if her bones had turned to marrow, her flesh to snow. She saw everything in the keenest sense of detail, even to the slender stream of blue smoke that rose from the end of Thomson's cigar, and thought that it burned avidly, as if in a hurry to be reduced to ashes and done with his vile mouth. She noted how the books lay on the table, and that certain ones were not where they had been when she waited in that room after Nearing's arrival home, while he talked with Aunt Hope.

She felt her thoughts leap and surge like a confined blaze as she crossed the narrow room at Findlay's side; it seemed as if her soul had taken fire and sought in frantic haste the exit to freedom that it could not find. She did not know, now that the moment had come, whether her heart and hand would fail in the horrible deed she had set for herself to do; she did not know whether it were better to smirch her soul with a thing so foul, or smirch her body in the passive purchase of immunity for the craven man who drove her to this pass.

She was weak, she was cold; her limbs trembled, her heart beat low as in one from whom life stands at the door ready to flee away. Findlay had not spoken a word to her. Perhaps if he would speak, the straining doubt of this moment might resolve into some definite thing.

Must she strike, holding his hand as Teresa had said,


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 or yield like a thing offered and sold? She was to have little time to turn it in the fiery tumult of her thoughts.

Thomson took his bitten, flat cigar from his huge hungry mouth; he disposed it carefully on the metal base of the lamp, and leaned over the table slightly, thumbs hooked under it, fingers spread on the dark wood.

"It is the presumption, when two people appear before a properly authorized person, seeking to be legally married, that they do so of their own free will and accord. I take it that such is the case in the present instance, and without further"

"No!" said Alma, her voice rising strongly over the old scoundrel's droning. "You know I'm forced to do it! You could stop it"

"Without further preliminaries, dismissing the usual formula, we will presume, we do presume," Thomson went on, not heeding her, "that you accept each other as man and wife. Take hands. Take her by the hand, Findlay, damn it! Take her hand!"

Findlay turned to face his unwilling bride, offering his right hand. Coldly she laid her left hand in it, clasping it suddenly, with a force that caused Findlay to fix his eyes on her face in questioning surprise.

"I pronounce"

Thomson's words lingered in his vile mouth as Alma, drawing with the strength of her despair on Findlay's hand, snatched at the hidden knife in her bosom.

"Watch her!" Thomson shouted, falling back from the table as if his own life stood in peril.

The guard of the knife caught her shirt as Alma


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 drew it, impeding the swift movement of her hand.

"Strike!" Nearing shouted, his loud, hoarse voice vibrant with eagerness.

Findlay caught her wrist, holding her hopelessly in his invincible grip. The knife fell to the floor. Alma sobbed as she struggled to tear away, writhing and fighting in the great strength of her baffled rage.

Nearing plunged in to reach the knife; Findlay drove a terrific kick into his stomach, stretching him on the floor.

"Go on—marry us!" Findlay ordered, scowling across at Thomson, who stood well behind his barrier of table, out of the sudden fight.

Findlay held Alma's wrists, one crossed over the other, his fingers hard as oak, it seemed, and hopeless to unclasp. Thomson came forward, lifting his eyebrows as he peered over his glasses, to see that Nearing was not rising with the knife.

"Go on! Marry us, damn you!" Findlay repeated.

In the kitchen a great turmoil of shots and shouting suddenly rose. Teresa rushed into the room as Findlay, still holding his grip on Alma's wrists, turned to see who came so rudely upon his wedding hour.

"Sweet Mother of God!" Teresa cried, spreading her arms to receive her dove, restored to her heart unsullied.

Barrett stood in the door.


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INDLAY had approached this defiled and mocked marriage altar unarmed. Whether he had been prompted to this by some feeling of delicacy and fitness which his years of self-ish living had not entirely erased, or whether from sense of security growing out of the fact that he had taken possession of all the firearms in the house and set a strong guard outside it, no man could have told. But the startling fact rose up to confront him in that moment that he had no weapon within reach of his hand except the carving-knife that lay between him and Alma on the floor.

He fell back a step on Barrett's sudden appearance, throwing his hand out of habit to his hip where his holster would have hung if he had been provided according to his usual caution. He looked swiftly about the room with the quick calculation of a man who could not understand nor accept any possibility of defeat.

"Back into that corner!" Barrett commanded him, indicating the place with his gun.

Findlay had looked into the eyes of men too long to stand on the order of his going. He backed away from Barrett, who seemed unaware of anybody in the room except the man under his eyes. In the kitchen the turmoil had ceased, but in the dooryard there rose shouts of excitement and warning cries, and the quick clatter of spurred horses, and frantic riding away.


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 One rode to the library window, broke the glass with a crash that seemed the note of crisis in that overburdened hour, tore down the windows-shade and shouted to his chief. Barrett threw a quick shot at him. The weapon the fellow had broken the pane with fell into the room as the horse bounded away in the dark.

Teresa stood clasping Alma, exclaiming and exulting over her, although Alma was not in need of the support of any arm. She sprang away from Teresa's happy embrace, snatched up the pistol the rider had dropped from his wounded or dead hand, and turned it upon Charley Thomson.

"Get over with him, you old devil!" she said, driving him along.

Thomson retreated before the fury gathering in her face, holding up his hands before his own precious countenance as if to shield his legal front from any disfigurement through an accidental discharge of the menacing gun.

Nearing had risen sickly to his knees, where he stood unsteadily, not fully conscious of all that had taken place. Findlay, backed into the corner, shot his quick eyes from figure to figure in the group before him, but there was no fear in them, only the sharp, eager seeking for some weapon with which he might strike and vent the passion that raged in him and darkened in his face.

Barrett jerked the silk handkerchief from his neck, tossed it to Teresa.

"Tie that man's hands!"

"Keep off!" Findlay warned, cursing her vilely. He


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 leaned as if he arched his back like a cougar, and settled himself to leap.

"Turn around, hold them out behind you!"

Barrett went a step nearer as he gave the order. Findlay, flashing a look again into the younger man's eyes, turned and put out his hands.

Teresa was beginning her triumphant task when Manuel appeared in the door, a pistol in each hand. Calmly shoving his weapons under his belt, as a man who sees his day's work done puts away his tools, the old man relieved Teresa of her duty, undoing what she had begun, to make the rustler secure beyond a doubt.

"The other one," Barrett directed, nodding to the lawyer.

Thomson began to protest, to threaten proceedings at law, to visit terrible penalties for the outrage against his sacred person. Barrett stopped him.

"You can tell that to the sheriff when he comes for both of you," he said. "You'll stay tied till he comes."

Nearing got to his feet, his eyes staring wildly, his face white with something more than the pain he had suffered from Findlay's cruel kick.

"No, no! For God's sake, Barrett, let them go!" he begged.

"Senator Nearing, your family and friends are through sacrificing for you. You must stand or fall by what you've done. These men are going to jail, if there's any power in this state can put them there."

"Barrett, you don't understand," Nearing argued, falling back on his weak stand of intricacies in his complex life too great for the common mind.


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 "Time will reveal many things that none of us understand," Barrett replied.

"Alma! I'm asking only a little favor of you now. Let them go!"

"No!" said Alma, her face aflame in the thought of the shame this broken coward had brought so near her but a few moments past.

"Send me to jail if you think you've got to, Alma," Findlay said, turning from Barrett as if he scorned him too greatly to spare him even a word of defiance. "And I'll send Hal Nearing to hell on a hangman's rope!"

"Damn you! You'll never speak!" said Nearing, his weakness gone from him as he turned to snatch the pistol from Alma.

"Not here!" she cried, as she struggled against him to retain the weapon.

They were near the window. Before either Barrett or Manuel could reach them, Alma tossed the gun through the broken pane.

"Not here!" she said again, panting and white. "We've been spared blood in this house by almost a miracle tonight. Let it—let it—" she panted, "remain clean, one spot without that curse!"

"Who sounds on the door?" asked Teresa, shrinking in the fear of some new violence.

Whoever it was that made such a loud summons on the front door did not wait to be admitted. They heard the door open as Manuel, drawing both his guns, started to inquire.

Cattle Kate rushed into the room, her head bare, her


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 wild curls flying. She stopped abruptly just inside the door, turning her white face from one to the other of them, as if to account for them all. Then she crossed swiftly to Alma, and caught her sternly by the arm.

"Are you married to him?" she demanded.

"No, Kate—thank God!"

Kate turned to Findlay, a cold white fury in her face.

"You tried to throw me, Dale!" she said, her voice trembling with something that was not all hate. "I played you even—I threw you. The cattlemen are after you! They're not two miles away!"

Findlay's dark face grew pale when the news of Cattle Kate's betrayal struck its terror to his vengeful, wicked heart. The approach of those armed riders, who had left the dance to come swiftly on this errand of justice, meant but one thing to Dale Findlay, safe so long in his place of respectability and trust. Death rode with them. There was no appeal from the decision of that stern court; no connivance of delay. All the craft of old Charley Thomson would avail him nothing there.

"You tried to throw me!" Kate repeated, standing before the silent man, in whom there seemed no faculty of either contrition, tenderness, or shame.

"Throw you hell!" he said. "It was only a joke!"

Cattle Kate turned her head slowly, and looked around the room. Her face was whiter than the bodice under her dark coat, her thin nostrils dilated as she drew her panting breath.

"Well, it was a damn poor one, Dale!" she said.


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 "Nearing, I've got to get out of here!"

Findlay spoke imperiously, his voice pitched to his recustomed hard note of uncompromising command. Nearing turned to Barrett, putting out his hands in wordless appeal.

"He'll have to take his medicine," Barrett said.

Cattle Kate whipped her gun from beneath her long coat and threw it down on Alma.

"I'll kill her if any of you bats an eye!" she threatened. "Cut him loose," she ordered Manuel, keeping her threat over Alma to enforce her will upon them all.

Still the old man hesitated, until Barrett nodded permission for him to obey. There was such a desperate eagerness in Cattle Kate's eyes to serve this cruel master of her heart that hesitation surely would end in tragedy.

Besides, Barrett did not believe it possible for Findlay to escape the cattlemen, to whom his villainies, long suspected but never established before that night, called so insistently for immediate adjustment. Cattle Kate would put her life down there at Findlay's feet, and do it gladly. Having found him unexpectedly free, she had repented her treason as impetuously as she had uttered his betrayal. She hoped now to regain her place in his unworthy breast.

"Hurry, Dale! Take my horse—there, at the front door!" she urged him.

Findlay had his eager eyes on Kate's pistol. Barrett" saw him stiffen to spring and snatch it, and called a warning word. Kate had interposed her body to protect Findlay the moment she drew her gun. Barrett


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 could not fire at him without killing the girl.

"You can't have it, Dale," Kate denied him, putting back her free hand to hold him off. "If there's any shootin' done here, I'll do it. You go!"

"I'll go on my own horse, Kate, when I get good and ready," Findlay told her.

"They're comin', I tell you, Dale! Do you think it's a bluff?"

"No, but let 'em come!"

Kate was pushing him toward the door, shielding him with her body from the two armed people in the room, watching Barrett especially, knowing that he had reason to take Findlay's life where he stood. But Kate held her unfaltering aim on Alma. That she would shoot at the first start, none of them doubted.

Barrett was not keen to take the chance. On the other hand, he lowered his gun, hoping to convince Cattle Kate of his willingness to allow her gallant to pass out to such safety as he could find.

It was Barrett's belief that Findlay was passing out of that house, and withdrawing his evil shadow from it, forever. Even though he might escape the cattlemen, who would throw out scores of riders to comb the range for him before daylight, he would not dare come back. Peace would sit in his place; Nearing would be free of his oppressive hand, to repair the loss and shame of the past. So, Barrett was well enough content to let him go.

That some similar thought agitated Findlay's mind seemed certain from his reluctance to go, to release in one moment the grasp over his victim which he had


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 counted upon not two minutes past to endow him so richly. He paused in the door, Cattle Kate stretching her arm before him, fending him like an eagle her young. It seemed that he would not go and leave that house standing upon a single hope.

"Alma, you and Barrett have been nosin' around to find out something. You wanted to know what I had on Nearing, you thought you could get it out of Kate. It'll be a sweet pill for you to chew on till I come back. I'll tell you."

"Findlay!" Nearing shouted, his voice hoarse in the appeal of terror.

"There's your senator, there's your honorable man!" Findlay mocked, pointing over Kate's shoulder.

"Hurry! don't you hear them comin'?" Kate implored.

"Even if I don't happen to come back, I pass you my word that Nearing swings for the"

"Findlay!" Nearing shouted again, in terrible voice of warning and appeal.

In his vindictive eagerness to make a complete ruin of the man in whose misery he could profit no longer, Findlay came a little from behind Kate's sheltering body to lean and look into the room. Nearing, standing close to Manuel, snatched a pistol from the old man's belt and fired.

Cattle Kate seemed to rise a little from the floor with the flash of Nearing's shot, and reel backward, as if struck a mighty blow. Findlay threw out his arm to stay her fall, and the girl, her face set hard in the grimace of her death-pang, lifted her drooping arm


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 and fired, just as Charley Thomson, his bound arms at his back, leaned and blew out the lamp.

There was a confusion of screams from Alma and Teresa, and the rush of arriving horsemen drawing a line around the house. Barrett called sharply to Manuel to make a light. The old man, answering softly, unshaken in his fateful acceptation of things as they fell, struck a match.

Barrett had a glimpse of Cattle Kate lying crumpled in the door, and of Alma, for whom he feared with a greater terror than he ever had known, standing with horror in her eyes, gazing at something in the shadows beyond the table. Old Manuel deliberately took his handkerchief from his pocket to lift the hot lamp chimney, his body hovering over the match in his hand, cutting off the light.

When the lamp flared again, it discovered armed men crowding into the hall. Findlay was gone; Thomson was gone. But Cattle Kate lay dead in the doorway, and over beyond the long table Senator Nearing stretched straight as if his limbs had been arranged to keep his dignity. His blood was wasting down upon the hearthstones, in the place where a man should be safe, if there is any safety for him against violence and sudden death, amidst the perils of this world.


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HE strand of Nearing's life hung only by a shred. Dan Gustin and Fred Grubb, who had come hot-riding with the cattlemen, helped Barrett carry him to his bed. One pair of hands could do as much as a hundred to stay the parting of this almost severed thread; Barrett saw this at a glance. He waited no longer than to give Manuel some hurried instructions, when he mounted and rode with the cattlemen in what promised to be the greatest roundup of rustlers that ever took place on that range.

So it was that after thirty hours in the saddle the three friends had rounded back to Eagle Rock camp. The posse comitatus was still sweeping the range in search of Findlay.

Worthy Glass, alone of the number who had worked under Findlay's direction in robbing not only the Diamond Tail, but the herds of adjoining ranches, the cattlemen had taken alive. He was lame from a bullet wound in the heel, result of the noisy fight a few days before in Bonita. They hung him to a piñon pine barely tall enough to clear his feet from the ground.

Three other members of Findlay's crew, all of whom had drawn wages as herdsmen on the Diamond Tail, the cattlemen shot from their saddles as they fled. But Findlay they did not find. The cunning rascal


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 had left no more trail behind him when he fled from Nearing's house than if he had walked on water.

After a few hours' sleep Barrett was up again at dawn, eager to resume the hunt. Fred Grubb joined him before he had his boots on; together they had breakfast, Alvino setting it out on the end of the oilcloth-covered table, Barrett's plate laid, either by chance or design, in the boss' place where Dale Findlay commonly sat.

Dan came in, his face fresh from the washpan, the forelock of his fair hair over his eye. Habit of rising before the stars began to fade out of the sky was too strong on him to let him rest in his bunk ten minutes past the usual time. He stood at the glass, which was not big enough to show all of his face at once, arranging his hair with the steel comb that Alvino had anchored beside it on a string.

"Boss man, you're in the right place," he said, combing with one hand, holding down his hair with the other, as particularly as if he prepared to ride to another dance.

"I just happened to light here," Barrett said.

"Manuel told me he saw it in the cards that you'd be the big boss of the Diamond Tail," said Fred, nodding very solemnly.

Barrett said nothing more. The fact was, it had been running through his head all night, awake and asleep, that somebody must step temporarily into Nearing's place. The property of the company, his own property, which he had faced no small peril to salvage, must be guarded. New men must be employed to fill


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 the places of the fifteen or twenty rustlers driven off or removed from the reckoning in other ways. Fred began to talk along this line.

"The old Diamond Tail's short-handed today," he said, "shorter than it's ever been since this company was organized. But them cattle's safer than they've been in many a day. If you was to leave 'em on the range without a man to watch 'em for the next year, Ed, you'd have more in the end than you would if Dale Findlay and that gang was steppin' around."

"I bet you," Barrett assented.

Dan came and sat with them, drumming boyishly on his plate for flapjacks, to which Alvino was treating them as a special favor that morning. The tragedies in other men's lives did not affect Dan's spirits, no matter how near to him the shadows fell.

"What're you goin' to do about puttin' somebody in Nearing's place?" Dan inquired.

"I don't know, Dan. That will have to be taken up with the stockholders; it will take time. I guess you and Fred and the rest of us that are not hung, will have to make a stagger at runnin' things till we get word from the men whose money is in the game."

"Well, ain't you one of 'em?" said Fred.

"I've only got a few chips, boys."

"I thought my wranglin' days was over, but if you need me, Ed," Fred offered.

"We need you, all right. What do you say, Dan?"

"I'm in. And you won't even have to fire that foreman to get me back—they laid him out over on the mesa yesterday. Say, there was a hole through that


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 feller's head you could 'a' strung him on a wire by."

"All right," said Barrett, suddenly determined on his course, "as self-elected representative of the stockholders in this company, I appoint you, Dan, superintendent of this ranch. You'll begin work this morning, and keep it up till further notice. Hire what men you need and can get, fire any you don't want."

"Hell!" said Dan, staring at Barrett in amazement.

"Fred, I want you to go to the ranch with me to see how Nearing is. If Manuel hasn't got the doctor from the post, as I told him to, we'll have to attend to that."

"If I'm goin' to be horse wrangler, Ed"

"You're promoted from horse wrangler. It's a job beneath your dignity."

"Well, what in the seven snakes am I?"

"Guide; my private and personal guide. I couldn't any more get around this range alone than a one-legged duck."

"We'll go ahead short-handed till spring," Dan announced, looking up like a man from his calculations, his way clear before him.

"Give us five years and we'll put fur collars on them stockholders," Fred declared.

There was not a man in Eagle Rock camp for Dan to superintend, save Alvino, the cook. All the honest ones working on the Diamond Tail had joined the pursuit of the thieves, and probably a few of the thieves who hoped to pass in this extremity for honest men until they might slip safely away. Dan, who took his honors soberly and seriously, appeared to have put down the lightness of his youth when he rose from the


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 breakfast table to ride forth on his new duties. Barrett knew that he had not made a blunder in this appointment, no matter for the many others which seemed to strew his way on the range like the bones of faminekilled cattle.

Dan announced that his first work would be to take a census of the Diamond Tail cattle, roughly, as such counts are made on the range, yet generally found remarkably exact when it comes to checking them off head by head. This move Barrett applauded. An inventory would be the first thing asked by the other stockholders, and he would gain their confidence by forestalling the request. Barrett shook hands with Dan as he stood by his horse ready to ride away in an importance greater than the simple-hearted, honest lad ever had dreamed of as being his.

The sun was just reddening on the crags and stunted cedars of Eagle Rock canyon when Barrett and Fred set out for the ranch. They rode silently down the dewy, shadowed canyon, where quail whistled in the tall grass, for there were unhappy memories for both of them within the rocky walls. As the canyon broadened, and the place where Barrett had fought the rustler, leaving his body for Fred Grubb to come and cart away, was passed and left behind, the sun struck over the lower rampart and cheered them on their way. Fred Grubb found his tongue.

"I never did have no funeral poertry in me," he sighed.

"Funeral poetry, Fred? We're not going to a funeral."


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 "It'll turn out to be one," Fred declared. "I wish I could think up a verse or two so I could leave it on Hal Nearing's grave."

"Time enough to think of that when he's dead, old feller."

"He's as good as dead, if he ain't dead already. No man never gits over it when he's shot through the silo that way."

"I was shot through the lung," Barrett reminded him, an inflection of censure in his voice for the poet's gloomy view.

"Yes, but there ain't so much to leak out of a man up there, Ed. You take and shoot a man through the di-gestion that way, and he'd just as well send 'em out to dig his grave. Hal Nearing was a dead man the minute that bullet got him in the waistband of his britches."

They talked of Nearing's chances as they rode up to the mesa out of the canyon, their shadows grotesquely long before them. Unconsciously they passed into speaking of him as a man who had been and was no more.

"And I don't believe I've got erry piece of funeral poertry in that sack," Fred regretted.

"I guess the other poets have written enough of it to last a while," Barrett suggested. "I never could see where a verse on a man's tombstone comforted him very much, anyhow."

"No. I always thought the wind up here on these peraries could sing a man's requisition better 'n me. But it was a disgraceful way for a man to go."


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 "Tough luck, to be shot down in his own home."

"Yes, and by a woman. It wouldn't 'a' been so disgraceful if Dale'd 'a' done it, but to think of that little Cattle Kate drillin' him through the gizzard when she was drawin' her last breath! That girl was a queen, Ed; she was the queen of trumps."

Barrett did not dispute poor Cattle Kate's right to this lowly royalty, nor speak any word of the sad and gloomy things which freighted his heart. However his going might be classed, disgraceful or merely unfortunate, it was best that Nearing should go, and that he should take with him the secret so nearly revealed. So nearly revealed, indeed, that all who had heard Dale Findlay's unfinished accusation could guess the rest. The rest, all but the name. There was no doubt what Nearing's crime had been.

It was as if some subtle current carried Barrett's thought to Fred, who spoke thoughtfully, in the voice of a man moving out of his meditations.

"It was the Englishman," he said.

"It must have been," Barrett agreed.

"I never said so before, but I always had my notion who it was plugged that poor feller down there in the canyon when he was ridin' off singin', I'll bet a dime, the way he always went."

"Poor cuss!" said Barrett, the picture rising before him.

It must have been in the dusk of day, he thought, for in the dusk the tragedies of Eagle Rock canyon commonly fell.

"Well, Hal Nearing had his good points," Fred al-


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 lowed, still speaking as of a man who had finished his allotment of troubles in this life.

"Yes; the same as every man."

"But they was further apart than onl's eyes, Ed. If they'd 'a' been feathers, he'd 'a' been a mighty cold bird."

"I expect he'll need all the good that can be figured for him, the same as you and me."

"Yes, but the Poet Lariat may let him down easy, seein' he was drove by the devil so long. Maybe I can make up a little poertry on him. If I can I'll lay it on his grave like a posy of flowers. Maybe it'd help him out a little."

"They say every good thought helps a man, living or dead. But I don't know; you can search me, Fred."

Fred saved further comment on the mercies which Hal Nearing might stand in need of, whatever his situation might be at that hour. He lapsed into a long silence, from which he started abruptly to inquire:

"What made you rush off so sudden the other night?"

"Rush off?"

"After the shootin' at the ranch. I looked to see you stay a little while and comfort Alma, and pat her hand."

"I haven't got any more right to pat her hand than you have!"

"You ain't?" Fred looked at him in blank surprise, which quickly softened into knowing incredulity. "Who has?"

"You can search me."


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 Fred jogged along a little way, throwing a sly look across at his companion now and then.

"Well, who's goin' to marry her, then?" he wanted to know.

"I expect somebody will step up to fill the bill. She wouldn't consider a feller that muddles and messes everything he touches."

"Oh, you ain't done so bad for a green man on the range," Fred encouraged him.

"Bad! I let that scrub Findlay insult me the first time I met him without knockin' his teeth through the back of his neck. And then I let him shoot me through the bellows, and go and lie around on the sunny side of a haystack instead of goin' right after him and cuttin' his eyelids off."

"Didn't we go after him as soon as you was able to sling a gun? Yes, and before you was able, by rights. It wasn't your fault that he didn't happen to be in Bonita that night we cleaned things up."

"Cleaned things up! Fred, we shot one poor, gangle-shanked cattle rustler in the heel."

"Well, we might 'a' missed him," said Fred, not at all ashamed of the record of that noisy night.

"Yes, and Findlay was at the ranch the other night, and I had him where I wanted him, but I didn't have the nerve to give it to him then. I guess I was afraid I'd spoil the carpet."

"No man wants to shoot a feller before a lady, 'specially a feller that ain't got no gun on him. You done right; you done what any man that is a man would 'a' done in the same compunction. Don't grieve


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 over that, Ed."

"And I'll bet that thief has stood right here laughin' at us all the time—I'll bet any man money he's within forty miles of the ranch right now."

"I wouldn't take you up." Fred admitted. "I've had the same kind of a eachin' in me myself."

"He intends to hide around here till this excitement dies down, then slip out. This business broke too soon for him, away sooner than he expected. He wasn't ready to leave, he wasn't done suckin' Nearing's blood. It's my opinion, Fred, he's got money cached up there in Eagle Rock canyon somewhere."

"I don't know, Ed. Don't you think he's too bright for that? I'd say he's got it salted down in a bank in Denver or Omaha, or some of them towns back East."

"No; he'd want it where he could put his hand on it when it came time for him to hit the trail out of here. He'd never risk his neck in any of the big towns after the cattlemen got after him."

"Maybe he has got a stache up there in the canyon, Ed. Maybe we'd better take a bunch of fellers up there and see if we can tree him."

"It's a one-man game from now on; it's between him and me. I'll go alone."

Fred protested in pantomime, too full of emotions to speak at once.

"You can't go up there after him alone, Ed!" he finally found tongue to say.

"You've got a right to think that of me, after what you've seen," Barrett said, bitter against himself for his touching and passing, and overturning nothing com-


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 pletely, since he came to the range.

"He ain't alone, Ed. He's got three or four fellers with him, maybe more. Boy, they'd eat you up like a redish."

Barrett rode on, his face solemn and determined, thinking it over.

"No, he's alone," he declared. "Findlay's not the man to stick to his friends in trouble—he'll throw them and go his way alone. And he's not a man to split with anybody else, either. What he's got cached he's going to carry away in his own jeans, if he can."

"I think you're right about that, but you're wrong about goin' alone. I'm goin' with you. You'd be like a blind colt on this range without a guide—you said so yourself."

Barrett was kind, but sternly firm. He would see what could be done for Nearing if he still lived, bury him if dead, and then turn his face to the range.

"I'll make one complete job of it, one way or another," he declared. "Can't you see it's cut out for me alone, Fred?"

"No, I can't see it any whichaway," said Fred.

He argued, he begged, he swore softly under his breath at such behavior, which he declared beat his time. 'And he kept up his argument and soft swearing, all to no purpose, until Barrett pulled up suddenly and pointed ahead.

A single horseman was cutting the trail two miles or more ahead of them, coming from the shelter of an arroyo. When he struck the trail, he bore straight onward.


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 "Let me take your spy-glass," Barrett requested.

Fred produced the instrument, a small brass telescope such as was in common use on the range among cowboys of that day. Barrett fixed it on the fast-riding horseman, and handed it back without a word.

"You was right, he's ridin' alone," said Fred, lowering the glass from his eye. "What do you suppose his game is now, headin' towards the ranch?"

"He's makin' for the railroad, the back door's open for him," Barrett replied.

"Yes, I guess we're the only ones on this part of the range, the others're all up north. He's headin' for the ranch after a fresh horse."

"That's about it."

They paused there on top of a little high ground, looking after Findlay as he drew off rapidly, a handful of dust rising behind him.

"Maybe we can git there before he leaves," said Fred.

Barrett did not speak. He leaned forward in his saddle as he gave rein to his horse, urging it onward as he had ridden that night at the summons of Manuel, pressed by what he felt now to be even a greater and graver need.


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LMA was alone at a late breakfast, having risen unrefreshed from a few hours' sleep after two nights' vigil at Nearing's side. It was near noonday now; Mrs. Nearing, to whom this crisis in a long suspense seemed less terrible than the waiting for it to fall, was with her husband.

A quiet was over the house and premises, as if death already had fallen upon the master of that princely domain. The corrals were empty; old Manuel was the only man about the place.

The pursuit of Findlay and his rustlers had drawn the far-scattered neighbors away. Save for the doctor from the post, nobody had visited the ranch in two days. Alma never had felt the isolation and loneliness of it so sharply as now, separated, as they seemed to be, by this tragedy from all the world.

She knew that Nearing, wounded and at death's door as he lay, was under a shadow of suspicion which would formulate into definite challenges should be ever walk forth in the sun again. She knew it would be far better for him to die, in the disgrace that was only partly known, partly guessed, than live to answer to something she shuddered to think upon.

The front door, never locked in her recollection, closed softly. Thinking it was the doctor come from the post, Alma rose to receive him. Dale Findlay con-


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 fronted her in the hall, where he had hesitated as if to listen, pistol in his hand.

Alma started back, her very life seeming to sink out of her in a cold and devastating fear. Desperation was lined deep in Findlay's gaunt, dark face; fear of the fate that waited him stood in his harried eyes.

"Who's here?" he whispered, his pistol thrust almost against her bosom.

"You've come in your proper character, like a housebreaker and sneaking thief!" she said, scorning him above her fear.

"Who's here?" he asked again, coming nearer, bending to whisper close to her ear.

"Two women and a dying man—fit subjects for your noble wrath, Mr. Findlay."

"Don't talk so loud!" he cautioned her. "Where's Nearing?"

"In his room. Have you come to kill him?"

Her scorn of him grew as her fear dissolved, although man nor woman ever had reason to fear Dale Findlay more than in that hour.

"You must hide me here till night," said Findlay, sharply. "Tell Manuel to put my horse away and hide my saddle."

"Do it yourself!" said she.

"You've got to hide me"

"I'll yell from the door you're here if anybody passes!"

"They'll never get me!" he declared.

"Is that the doctor, Alma?"

Mrs. Nearing appeared in the sufferer's door, speak-


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 ing eagerly. She leaned into the hall, unable for a moment to grasp what was going forward.

"It's Mr. Findlay come back, begging us to hide him," Alma said.

"Hush!" Findlay commanded harshly.

"Oh, Dale, Dale! are you here again?" Mrs. Nearing hastened forward, confronting him without a tremor. "After all the sorrow and trouble you've brought on this house, do you dare come back to it again?"

"I just want to stay here till night, then I'll go. I promise you I'll never come back."

"Till night—stay till night? You—after you—you murderer!"

"Hide me!" he ordered, roughly, desperate now over the delay. "They may come any minute! Put me in Nearing's room—they'll not search it. Hurry, I tell you—take me to Nearing's room!"

"No!" Mrs. Nearing answered him, coldly, placing herself before him as if to dispute his passage along the hall. "There's no place where you can hide in this house. The long-suffering walls themselves would shout murder."

Findlay was at far greater disadvantage in the presence of these two women, who scorned and despised him, and seemed to fear him not at all, than he would have been if confronted by three armed men. He hesitated, in spite of his desperate need, not knowing which foot to advance.

"I look like the big black devil now," he said bitterly, "but I've never done any more than Hal Nearing would have done, has done, many a time in his honorable


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 career. I skinned a man when I had him down. He could do it and go to the senate; I do it, and I'm a thief!"

"You were merciless, you drove him out of himself," Alma said.

"I only went after what I wanted," Findlay defended, ready to argue his justification even in his peril.

"Go!" Mrs. Nearing faced him, imperious in her old manner of stateliness—"or even a defenseless old woman may strike you down!"

"All right, by God! I'll go. But they'll never get me—I tell you now they'll never get me!"

"Hope! Who's there? Hope!"

Nearing's voice sounded from his room, weakly, but recognizable. Findlay started at the sound of it, seeming to set his ears like a listening horse. Mrs. Nearing hastened away, answering her husband's call softly as she went.

"The honorable senator!" Findlay sneered. "He seems a long way from dead yet." He reached suddenly, caught Alma by the wrist, and bent to speak his hot, savage words into her ear. "Go on—go to his room!" he ordered her. "I'm not going to hurt you—go on, I say!"

He enforced his command by the thrust of his pistol against her neck, twisting her arm roughly. Looking up into his face one moment, Alma saw that any appeal to humanity or honor would be wasted against the armor of his vindictive heart. She went ahead of him to Nearing's door.

"You've not got even the decency to die, you woman


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 killer!" Findlay said, looking down on Nearing from the door.

Mrs. Nearing attempted to close the door against this invasion, so terrifying to the wounded man. Findlay put his free hand against it, advancing his foot into the room. Alma moved to stand in front of him, and shield if she could at least the sight of his persecutor from the eyes of the dying man.

Findlay hung in the door like a wary beast before a pitfall. Mrs. Nearing was at the bedside, bending over her husband, trying to assure and calm him, when no assurance could comfort nor human effort bring serenity. It was evident in the terror of Nearing's face that he believed Findlay had come to kill him. He tried to shrink into his pillows, his face gray in the agony of his tortured soul.

Findlay motioned Alma aside with his pistol. She stood defiantly facing him, refusing to move.

"What do you owe him, to stand between him and me?" Findlay asked. "I'm not here to hurt him—nothing would suit me better than to see him get well. Stand out of the way!"

Mrs. Nearing rose from bending over her husband, her white, haggard face heartbreaking in its pathetic appeal.

"Dale, for humanity's sake, if there's any humanity in you, go away and let us have these last few hours together in peace!" she implored.

There was no sound from Nearing, not a groan, not the laboring of his slow breath. He lay with fixed eyes staring at Findlay, who leaned now to look past Alma,


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 whom he pushed aside with his pistol.

"I ought to kill you, for poor old Kate," Findlay said slowly, a peculiar dragging softness in his voice, "but the worst thing I can wish you is to live."

Findlay looked with quick turning of the head, like a watchful eagle, into Alma's face, holding her eyes a moment with his compelling glance so long accustomed to beating down the wills of men.

"For pity's sake, Dale, let him die in peace!" Mrs. Nearing pleaded, putting out her hands in supplication, no more tears, it seemed, left in the fount of her misery to soften his unfeeling heart.

"You women cussed me out for a thief and a murderer a little while ago," Findlay said, looking earnestly into Alma's face, "and you stand here begging a chance for this man to die in honor and peace. When I leave here I'll go with a pack of men after me, with a long chance against me of swingin' somewhere on a cow-rope, but before I go I want to tell you something, Alma, and leave you to judge between that man and me."

Nearing lay gazing with bulging eyes already glazing over with the misty film of death. His breath came panting in him like a lizard's; one hand clenched the covers as if he held there in his painful desperation upon the margin of life, and only waited Findlay's last word to loose his hold and plunge into the abyss which the soul must cleave like a meteor in its hour, and wake on mortal ears no sound of its passing.

"Whatever he says will be a lie, Alma, out of his black, murderous heart!" Mrs. Nearing declared in


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 sudden passion, rising from the wreckage of her life to this one last defense.

"There's the man," said Findlay, pointing with his pistol, "that sent me out to steal my first unbranded calf."

"What a cruel lie!" said Mrs. Nearing, her pale face suddenly aflame.

"There is the man," Findlay went on with his arraignment unmoved, "who would have betrayed me and double-crossed me, years after my cattle rustlin' under his able direction had made him rich, if I hadn't got something on him that put a padlock on his jaw."

Nearing was lifting himself up in his bed, his arms behind him, weak props in the current fast cutting away the sands of his life. Terrible he leaned there, like a convicted man come before the bar to hear the sentence of his death. His wife, waiting Findlay's words, did not see him; Alma, in helpless anguish between the force of condemnation and the slow-moving, merciless stroke of death, stared with horror on the grisly man who rose slowly and leaned so, waiting, waiting, in the shadow of the disgrace he had stayed so long.

"I promised him then I'd make him pay for his treason, for his attempt to sacrifice me to make himself safe. I promised him I'd cut him to the bone, I'd take the best he had, and then I'd put my heel down on him and mash him like a centipede. I lost the one thing I wanted most—if that damn' monkey-legged sailor had been a minute later—but that's all off. It wasn't the young Englishman up in Eagle Rock Can-


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Rh and began to send forth fire scorching everything on either side of her, trying to find out where the forty-one youngsters had gone to. At last she caught sight of them, and sent forth more fire to scorch them. What were they to do? In front of them was the dark blue sea; behind them the witch with her fiery shield, which was beginning to burn them. Nothing was left for them, except to drown themselves or be burnt to death!

But Starveling, who was always thoughtful and clever, had stolen a handkerchief from the old witch's palace. He waved this three times in front of him, and immediately a tremendous bridge appeared across the sea. When they had all galloped safely over, Starveling again waved the handkerchief three times, and the bridge at once disappeared, while the enraged witch had to return home to her palace and growl.

Meanwhile the forty-one young men gave up the idea of searching for any more brides, at least for the present, and returned home to their delighted parents.


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 yon, Alma, like you and that tar-heeled Barrett think. I'll put you right. It was"

A hand fell sharply on Findlay's shoulder. He started, wheeling like a hawk on the wing. Barrett caught his pistol-arm as it swung round, holding the weapon pointed to the floor.

"Drop it, Findlay!"

"Drop it!" said Fred Grubb, pushing his shotgun against the rustler's ribs.

"Shoot! By God! I'll never swing!" Findlay defied them, struggling with Barrett to free his hand.

"There's nobody else; it's the between you and me, Findlay. Outside!"

"Outside!" Fred Grubb echoed, reaching to draw Findlay's other pistol from the holster.

Nearing sank slowly back to his pillow, a relief in his face as in that of a man whose pardon comes as he stands under the gallows tree.

Barrett took charge of the rustler's guns. Findlay was reluctant to proceed toward the front door, evidently distrustful of Barrett's word.

"Go on!" Barrett ordered. "You'll get a man's chance—more than you gave me, more than you ought to have, around here bluffing a dying man!"

Findlay hesitated no longer. With the muzzle of Grubb's gun in his back he walked beside Barrett to the door. There Barrett passed out ahead of him, going on to the gate.

Findlay's horse stood in the shade of the cedar hedge, for the day was hot and the animal was weary and Worn, sweat-caked and dust-coated from its long flight.


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 Barrett took the animal and started away with it, leading it by the bridle, his intention unknown and unguessed by the rustler and Fred Grubb, who followed into the road.

"Stop!" Fred ordered his prisoner when they stood in the middle of the highway.

Findlay obeyed, turning around slowly, with what indifference he could assume, to look sharply at the man who held him under his gun. There was a glitter in Findlay's dark eyes, a calculative desperation in his thin face, as he marked the distance growing between his captors.

Barrett led the horse across the road, out fifty yards or more into the open range, where he dropped the reins to the ground. He hung Findlay's double holster to the saddle horn, put one of the rustler's guns in it, and turned to leave, carrying Findlay's other pistol in his hand. His action said as plainly as words: "If you can do it, you're free to mount and ride."

Findlay was standing in the middle of the road, looking keenly in the direction of the hay-ranch. Suddenly he lifted his hand and exclaimed:

"Here they come!"

Fred Grubb jumped, turned his head quickly, like a horse startled from its grazing. Findlay seized the gun-barrel as Fred gatheredhis surprised wits and cut loose with both charges. The buckshot spent their force impotently upon the air, and the next moment Findlay, lithe and strong as a panther, wrenched the gun out of the wrangler's hands.

"Give me the shells!' he demanded, menacing Fred's


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 head with the clubbed gun.

"Go to hell and git 'em!" said Fred, jamping back as Findlay swung the gun.

Barrett came running, shouting something to Findlay that neither of them seemed to understand. Fred had his pistol out, and was holding Findlay off with it, that in his eyes which told the rustler the once-despised wrangler had grown to be a man.

"You ain't my meat, but I'll kill you if you turn a hair!" said Fred. "There's your man! Go and meet him if you've got the guts in you!"

Barrett had reached the road, coming back to it some twenty yards or more from the point where Grubb and Findlay were playing their little preliminary scene in the greater tragedy to come. He tossed Findlay's gun that he had carried back with him into the road, and backed away, plainly laying down the terms of his challenge by his act.

"Look at that, you woman-bluffer!" said Fred. "He told you he'd give you a man's chance! If you're a man, go and take him up!"

Findlay threw down the shotgun and started on the run for his pistol in the road. Barrett backed off as he came, hand on his own gun. He did not draw it, it being his determination to take no advantage that might be charged to his discredit, should chance favor him in that fight. Not more than fifty feet lay between the two men when Findlay stopped to pick up his gun.

As Findlay stooped to pick up the gun, he scraped his left hand violently through the dust which padded the road thickly, raising a sudden and confusing cloud.


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 Through this he fired, crouching low, his outline blurred to Barrett's sight. As he fired he scraped his hand through the dust again, adding to the obscuration of his Position.

While this impalpable barrier answered for the moment the purpose for which Findlay designed it in his crafty mind, it confused his own vision and aim as well. Barrett's first shots missed Findlay, and Findlay's shots went wildly down the road. Now Findlay, breaking from his cover of dust, dashed for his horse, firing back as he ran.

The man's admirable audacity and cunning moved in Barrett a feeling almost of admiration, but he did not spare his shots. Findlay fell within ten yards of his horse, his pistol whirling far out of his hand.

He lay a moment, face downward, as if dead. Barrett paused to reload, his last cartridge having been the one that told. As he was slipping a fresh charge into his cylinder, Findlay rose to his hands and knees and struggled on.

Barrett raised his pistol, held his aim for a moment, lowered it. He could not bring himself to slay a wounded, unarmed man, no matter how vicious, vengeful and unprincipled he might be.

Findlay crawled on, slower, slower; he weaved and staggered as if wounded in a vital spot. Barrett followed slowly. A little way from the horse Findlay sank down, his breast against the ground, his dark head lifted weakly, half turned, as if he expected the shot that would put a period to his pain. When he saw it did not come, he gathered his last strength, lifted him-


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 self again to his knees, and staggered: on.

When he reached the horse, which had not moved farther than to lift its ears at the sound of the firing, Findlay tried to reach up and grasp a stirrup. He felt for it weakly, his efforts failing; rose to his knees, groping as if his sight failed him, and reached for it again.

Watching him from a distance, Barrett felt a compassion for the man that swept away all further thought of vengeance or requital for the indignities and perils he had suffered at his hands. As for himself, the balance between them had been struck; Findlay was free to go his way. With this thought, which brightened over him like a burst of sunlight, Barrett put away his weapon, picked up Findlay's hat and pistol, and went on to where he struggled weakly, one hand grasping the stirrup, the other steadying him on the ground.

As Barrett approached him, Findlay's hold on the stirrup broke. His head drooped, his arms fell limply at his sides. He stood in that posture, upright on his knees. Barrett laid a hand on his shoulder to support him. Findlay rallied a moment, and looked up with failing eyes.

"His own brother, damn him!" he said, as if completing something a moment before unfinished on his tongue.

Barrett eased him to the ground, where, in his last agony, he turned his face to the noonday sky.

Fred Grubb came up, a hushed manner over him, walking on his toes, his pistol in his hand.

"He died game, he went his way like a man!" he said.


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 "You said the word," Barrett solemnly assented, bending to cover Findlay's face from the glare of heaven with his hat.

Barrett turned away, feeling that the past few minutes had aged him by twenty years. The day was bright around him, yet there seemed a mistiness in it, a gloom and solemn hush.

Alma was speeding toward him across the road. She was as hope and life coming where death had trampled but a few moments past. And she came straight to him, unfalteringly as a dove homing to its refuge out of the storm, and bent her head upon his breast, and clung to him and cried.

He led her away from that scene of desolation—for death is desolate, always, its atmosphere despairing and dark—to the gate beside the cedars, where he consoled and assured her and calmed her fears away. It was revealed to him then that he had not failed; that a strong man must wait for his hour, and strike; that it is the fool who hurls himself against the barbican of fate, to perish in the evil of his day.

"He's askin' for you, Ed," Fred Grubb said, coming softly to the porch, the awe of death still over him.

Nearing was propped against his pillows; the sweat of death was on his brow. He tried to lift his hand, as if to offer it to Barrett, as the young man came into the room. Barrett stopped just inside the door, and the trembling hand fell to the cover, where it lay opening and closing weakly, as if it struggled faintly to grasp again the slipping cable of life.

A moment Nearing fixed Barrett with his harassed


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 eyes, in which the concentrated spark of his failing life seemed centered.

"Barrett, did he speak?" he asked, his voice hoarse and unfamiliar.

"No, Senator Nearing," Barrett answered, bowing his head as if he stood at prayer.


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E WAS a vindictive and unprincipled man." said Barrett. "Nobody will ever know what was true and what was false in the charges he laid at Senator Nearing's door."

"But what do you suppose it was, Ed, that he tricd twice to tell—that night, that first terrible night, and here again when Uncle Hal was dying? What was it he knew that was so terrifying it could turn Uncle Hal's blood to water, and drive him to such a desperate and cowardly length that he would have sacrificed me to Findlay to protect himself?"

Alma's eyes were clouded again with the shadow of old troubles, which Barrett had hoped were gone forever from her skies. She looked at him appealingly, as if the thought that he could tell what Findlay knew dwelt with her and would not let her rest.

"The only man that might have answered that question is dead," Barrett returned.

"Dale Findlay? Yes, I know. But surely"

"Old Charley Thomson. They found him yesterday up in the canyon, shot through the heart."

"Findlay must have done it, he left here with Findlay that night. But I thought they were friends."

"I believe Thomson was holding something over Findlay, Alma, just as Findlay held his secret over your Uncle Hal. I think the old rascal rode Findlay a little


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 too hard in his extremity, and Findlay cut the rope."

"Money. Thomson must have pushed him for a share of what he had hidden up there. He was afraid Dale would skip, leaving him holding the sack."

"That's a reasonable conclusion, considering both of them. The world's a better place for the vacancy that old scoundrel left in it. He was a worse man, any day, than Findlay."

They had buried Hal Nearing in the spot he had dedicated to that purpose, a grassy hill near the ranch-house, and heaped stones above his grave according to his wish. The two young people now sat in the sunny patio, where the little golden argosies of the air came sailing down from gaunt-growing trees. Soon this nook that gladdened in green refreshment around the fountain all the summer days would be bare, and stripped of its dignity as that stricken house was stripped.

Barrett had been so engrossed with the matters attendant upon the tragedies at the ranch that he had not had an hour to himself before this afternoon. Mrs. Nearing, fatigued by her vigil beside her dying husband, broken by the sorrow that came as the culmination of her long fear, was resting in her room. She was gentler under this burden of grief than she had been when haunted by the fear that it might come. Barrett found her again her gracious self, for peace had descended upon her, in spite of the turmoil through which it had come.

Only a few hours ago they had laid Nearing in his grave. Alma had stopped Barrett as he was saddling to ride away to Eagle Rock camp. Hospitality had a


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 greater claim than duty, she said; he must stop at the ranch one night to refresh himself before riding to the range. Besides, she had matters of importance to disclose.

But it seemed difficult for her to bring herself to tell what she had held him there to communicate. She was serene after the storm that had shaken her like a young pine on the mountain-side, refined and sweet, Barrett thought, as a violet after rain. Now that the great understanding had come between them, in the greatest matter of business that ever arises in the lives of maids and men, all other affairs could wait her pleasure while she drank deeply in the blissful peace of this.

At last she came to it, like a truant to her tasks. She turned a little on the bench where she sat at Barrett's side, so that she faced him, and regarded him in such a long silence that he began to fear some new trouble had shown itself in her course.

"I've been slow to speak of it, Ed, because I'm afraid it doesn't reflect much credit on Uncle Hal," she said. "Of course I don't hold the mad tyranny of that night against him now, for I know he had been driven out of his mind. He was insane."

Barrett took her hand and held it tenderly between his, as if he warmed a nestling picked up from the sodden, storm-beaten ground.

"I'm afraid that is a defense too common to be accepted at the bar where Hal Nearing stands to plead this day," he said. "You can forgive him, for it is a woman's office to forgive. But he was a poor, weak, cowardly human vessel, full of the vile frailties that


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 curse our kind."

"He is dead," she said softly. "It is easier to forgive when the transgressor is dead."

"Much easier," he granted, thinking of his own compassion for Dale Findlay, creeping in the gathering blindness of death toward his horse.

Alma was silent again. Tears suffused the brightness of her eyes when she lifted her head and looked into his face, and smiled. He knew that Hal Nearing's sin against her had been washed away, and that no pang of it remained to trouble the serenity of her heart.

"This happened while you and Fred were taking Findlay's body to Bonita," she explained, prefacing what she had to disclose. "Uncle Hal called for me just a little while before he died and turned over my shares in the Elk Mountain Cattle Company, or rather my father's shares which came to me from him. Ed, I never dreamed that I owned a little more than a third of the company's stock."

"I don't believe you're even listed as a stockholder," he said.

"No; Uncle Hal used my stock as his own. He was my guardian until I came of age."

"And never made any settlement afterwards," said Barrett conclusively.

"No. He continued to vote my stock as his own. Together with what he and Aunt Hope held, he could do everything he wanted to do. That's how he always kept himself elected president, and Aunt Hope secretary and treasurer. She is still, you know."

"I know," said Barrett, thinking a good deal faster


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 than he spoke.

"It isn't really a company at all," she explained, "only a loose sort of copartnership. Few of the stockholders except you and me have more than five or six thousand dollars invested. The Englishman, the poor boy who was killed up in Eagle Rock Canyon, you remember—had twenty thousand dollars in it. It must have been a whole lot of money to him; I hope we can make it good to his family, Ed."

"We're going to make a good, strong try, palomita mia."

She smiled in his eyes at the sound of this endearing term, which had quite a different meaning on his lips than simple Teresa's.

"We held a sort of stockholders' meeting there at Uncle Hal's bedside," she said. "He resigned the presidency, formally, and Aunt Hope put it in the records. We voted together on a new president, three hundred shares of the outstanding five hundred being represented. You are the president, Ed."

"No!" said he, genuinely amazed by the swift revelation of his new consequence.

"It was all regular and legal, nobody can question it. For the good of the company Aunt Hope and I have agreed to stand together and keep you in office. It never would do to have a stranger in here mussing things up."

"Mussing things up!" said he, hearing her words like an echo of his own in the frequent charges he had lodged in bitterness and contempt against himself. "That's all I've done since I came here."


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 "If you'll look back from the top, Ed, you'll see a pretty direct line that you cut to your objective," she said, in gentle correction. "You came into the tangle like a blindfolded and shackled man, but you struck to the knot of it with a penetration that was admirable, I think."

"I happened on to a few things," he admitted, "but I didn't push ahead, I didn't force anybody's hand."

"I know Uncle Hal was afraid of you from the first hour. He begged you to keep hands off, hoping to free himself in his own desperate way. He never could have done it; all the time he was sinking deeper in the mire."

"It was a degrading situation for a man of Senator Nearing's mettle, the man I always thought him to be when I was a boy."

"It was a degrading situation for all of us, that black monster master over this house. It is to you we owe our redemption, for there's no telling what the end would have been if you hadn't come here to the range and forced Findlay's hand—for you did force his hand, no matter what you say."

"Maybe for the last trick or two," Barrett admitted, mightily comforted and exalted in his own opinion of himself by her praise.

"What would have happened if you hadn't come the other night?" she asked, censuring him with her eyes for his disparagement of his own fitness and valor.

"We'd better not think of that," said he, drawing her away from it by the almost sharp, commanding sternness of his voice, as one covers from a child the sight of some fearful thing.


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 "You came, you saved me when my hand was not quick and strong enough to meet my resolution to save myself. We must think of it; the thought of it will bind us closer in the bitter trials and dark days we must meet along the way, querido mio."

"Yes, we must think of it," he granted, his head bent, his voice low.

In the silence that fell they seemed to be thinking of it, of what a few moments' mischance along the way, a minute's delay in starting at the summons of old Manuel, would have brought in sorrow to them both. When Alma looked into his face at last, tears trembled in her eyes. She put out her hand to seek his, blindly through the veiling shower, as a child seeks to touch and clasp, and express in its fondling a greater trust and confidence than its tongue has mastered words to speak.

"You came," she said, simply and sufficiently.

There was still such an unsettled air of turmoil about the place that neither of them could turn from the past troubles and put them behind at once, no matter for the apparent security and peace of the present hour. Barrett was first to break upon their musing.

"I'm puzzled over what Findlay did with his money," he said. "I hoped to recover some of it and turn it into the treasury. He had only a few hundred dollars, enough to pay his and Cattle Kate's funeral expenses, when he—died."

"Teresa told me," Alma said. "Some way, I don't believe he had much, Ed. Manuel says he'd been buying the sheriff of this county off a long time, and I expect that came high. Then he had so many hangers-on that


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 he had to split with."

"Even at that, he ought to have had a pretty good pile, considering the number of cattle he stole from this ranch alone."

"He had the name of being a wild gambler. Manuel says he always tried to break the bank when he went to Cheyenne. It's a surprise, the number of things that quiet old Mexican knows."

"I think Thomson could have told something, As it is, there are a good many things that will never be answered in this mystery. Let's put The End to the last page of it, and close the book."

"I wish we could," said she, wistfully.

She sat gazing toward the far hills, where the sun was going down, something again in her eyes of deep-reading romance that Barrett had seen there when they stood that first morning at the gate. And still gazing away as if pursuing a dream that fled always before her, she sought his hand again.

"cc Ed?"

"Yes, palomita mia."

"Did Findlay say anything before he died?"

"He muttered something just as I got to him. His voice was indistinct."

She nestled a little closer to his side, to warm and coax the secret from him, with the beguiling softness that is world-old in a woman's way.

"Ed, Fred Grubb said he lifted his head up and spoke clearly, but he was too far away to make out the words. What did he say, Edgar? Won't you tell me, querido mio?"


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, many years ago, there lived in a certain unknown kingdom a young king, called Vladimir, with his three beautiful sisters, Princess Natalia, Princess Olga, and Princess Anna, of whom he was very fond, doing everything in his power to amuse them and make them happy, for when the parents died they left the three princesses in young Vladimir's charge, telling him to be both father and mother to them.

"And on no account let your sisters refuse the first offers of marriage that they have," were the last words of the young king's parents.

One fine day King Vladimir and his three sisters, who had grown to be tall and beautiful girls, went out for a stroll in the magnificent grounds of the palace. Suddenly the clear blue sky became overcast with an angry black cloud, heralding the approach of thunder.

"Let us return to the palace," said the young king, "before the storm comes."

They had hardly time to get back when the thunder roared and the lightning flashed, and the ceiling of the apartment in which they were, opened and in flew a tremendous big black falcon; but the moment the bird touched the ground it changed into a handsome youth!


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 She leaned her soft cheek upon his shoulder, caressing his forehead with her hand. Barrett caught the fluttering tempter, and held it imprisoned against his breast, as if to put in it the key to all his heart's secrets and treasured hopes. But he remained silent. And she:

"What did he say, Edgar? Won't you tell me, dear?"

Barrett drew a long breath, as a man breathes before he dashes into a fire, or when he poises himself to dive from a great and dangerous height.

"He tried to speak; he muttered something," he said.

"I know, I know"—eagerly—"but what did he say?"

Barrett raised her head, his hand on the rich treasure of her dark red hair. A moment he gazed gravely into her eyes, putting back the hair from her forehead and holding it so, hard under his hand, as if not willing that one tiny strand or blowing stress should intervene.

"No man will ever know," he said, with a gravity and depth of earnestness that shook her to the soul.

She bowed her head as if under a rebuke, and remained so, silent and humbled from her warm beguilement, at his side.

There was the whisper of falling leaves around them, and the sun was red through the blue curtain that softened the crags and riven pines of the far hills into romance, and made them holy as an altar clouded in incense where men bow down to pray.

Out of the bunkhouse there came a sound as of a bee


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 imprisoned in a flower, and the beat of a foot that measured the time of a melody. Fred Grubb was playing upon his jewsharp his evening song. The sound of it soothed away their melancholy; they looked toward the place of the poet's concealment, and smiled.

"And so the book of our tragedies is finished," said Alma.

And stooping, she wrote with her finger in the dust, The End.


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Rh "Good-day to you, King Vladimir!" he said. "I have been all over the wide world, and now I want to marry, and settle down in my own country. I have come to ask for the hand of your sister, Princess Natalia."

"If you really care for my sister," returned the king, remembering his parents' last words, "and my sister does not object, I am quite willing to have you for my brother-in-law, and will not stand in the way. Take her, and may the spirits of goodness bless you."

Princess Natalia had no objection whatever; in fact, she rather liked the idea, for the young man was wonderfully good-looking.

So the falcon married the princess, and took her with him to his native land.

A whole year had passed away since the falcon's visit to the palace, and the young king again proposed to go for a stroll in the grounds with his two sisters, when they once more beheld a black cloud in the blue sky.

"Another terrible thunderstorm," said King Vladimir; "let us go back to the palace before we get drenched."

They had just got safely in when down came the hail amidst the thunder and lightning. Again the ceiling opened; but this time an eagle flew in, and, changing itself into a young man, better-looking, if possible, than the first one, said,—

"Good-day, King Vladimir! Good-day, fair princesses. I have travelled all over the world, and am now going to return to my own kingdom. I have


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 sway to a greater or lesser extent. Amongst the in the Höng Shán district, (小欖). It is said to be larger than any district city in the Kwong Tung Province. Being so large in size and population— —the inhabitants proudly say that they are a district to themselves, and refuse to recognise either Shun Tak or Höng Shán as their district. Politically they belong to the latter, although they, it is said, once owned allegiance to the Shun Tak jurisdiction. The Shun Tak dialect is still the speech of the Síú-lamlám [sic]ites.

The San Wúí dialect is the native tongue of the dwellers in the Wong Löng Tò village (黃良都). The reason for this is said to be that this village once formed a part of the San Wúí district. The village of Taú Mún is inhabited by descendants of immigrants from the San Wúí district. They and their ancestors have probably resided here for three centuries; and the dialect they speak is a mixture of San Wúi and Höng Shán—the San Wúi element preponderating in their language, that is as regards the pronunciation of the words, but the idiom of their speech is that of the Höng Shán.

In the South of the Höng Shán district there are several villages where the dialect is like the South-west dialect of the San Wúí district. In Hong Héí's time it was perhaps included in Kong Chau, but this was changed two hundred years ago. Wong Löng Tò 黃良都 is one of these villages, also Kú Chan (古鎭). We believe, in both these places the dialect is said, according to Chinese phraseology, to be eight-tenths or nine-tenths like the San Wúí. There are also between ten or twenty or thirty villages where the speech is like the North-east dialect of San Wúí.

Again in some parts of the Höng Shán dialect near the Tung Kwún borders, the dialect is Tung Kwún to a more or less extent. This is due first to Tung Kwún people having moved into the Höng Shán district, and kept up their own dialect as a foundation to which they have added on some of the Höng Shán dialect; and secondly another cause for this is, that the Höng Shán dwellers in the neighbourhood either of the Tung Kwún district (for it lies on the other side of the main estuary of the Canton River) or in proximity to the Tung Kwún speakers, mentioned just above, have been influenced to some extent in their language.

A number of the Höng Shán people have gone abroad in common with their fellow-countrymen in the delta of the Canton River. The Hawaiian Islands, as well as Australia, have both received their contingents of emigrants from this district. A recent traveller in the district found himself accosted in pidgin-English in the Háng Méí (坑尾) village; and he discovered that a third of the adult male population of this village were able to speak this hybrid speech, they having returned from Australia (Sydney).

Comparison with Cantonese, &c.

A few sounds of the Cantonese are not found in the Höng Shán dialect, though a more extended study of the dialect might lead to the discovery of new words differing in pronunciation from any of the Cantonese sounds. There are 240 syllables in the Höng Shán which are pronounced differently from the Cantonese out of a total of 737 syllables in the latter. Roughly speaking then about one-third of the Höng Shán dialect, as represented by the pronunciation of words only, differs from the Cantonese. In this estimate the tones, which have no small share in distinguishing one dialect from another, are not taken into account: the ear is the best judge of the difference caused by them. The Höng Shán contains fewer syllables than the Cantonese. This is what would naturally be expected to be the case, as most of the words commencing in ch in


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2

THEORY AND PRACTICE OF MEDICINE. bears upon all or a number of diseases; and which includes certain important subjects, such as cong-estion, haemorrhage, inflammation, degenerations. 2. Special pathology, which is concerned with the various special and individual diseases. The word pathology has come to be frequently employed in a more restricted sense than that just indicated, viz., as signifying- the explanation of the essential nature of morbid processes, of the characteristic changes accompanying the several diseases, and of the pathological causes of symptoms. According to its wider and more correct definition, it will be seen that pathology includes the following subdivisions: —

A. AEtiology or Causation of disease, which treats of the causes of the various maladies, or the influences and agencies by which they are originated.

B. Symptomatology or Semeiology. These terms comprehend the science which is concerned with all that pertains to morbid conditions, whether general or local, in their clinical relations, i.e. as they are represented in the living subject. It has to do there- fore with : — I. Their clinical history, including — a. mode of onset or invasion ; h. symptoms or clinical phenomena ; c. course, duration, and modes of terminatio?i ; d. varieties and types ; e. complications and scquelcc. 2. Their Diagnosis, which signifies the recognition of the seat and nature of particular diseases, and their discrimina- tion from other morbid states, 3. Their Prognosis, or the judg- ment which is formed as to their future course and ultimate issue.

II. Treatment or Therapeutics. — This important branch of Medicine deals with the principles upon which the management of disease is conducted ; and the measures which are employed with the view of preventing or curing the different maladies, of modi- fying their progress, or of relieving their attendant symptoms.

III. Morbid or Pathological Anatomy and Histology. — The structural and other recognizable changes which are associated v^ith organic diseases come under this head, as revealed by post- mortem examination.

An useful and adequate knowledge of Medicine can only be built up by studying the subject in all the particulars just indicated. Before proceeding to study individual diseases, it is highly desirable to have a comprehensive acquaintance with the main facts per- taining to general morbid processes, such as are grouped under ge7ieral pathology. Further, it is essential that all classes of diseases should receive due attention, and that the pathological and clinical relations of diff"erent organs and systems to each other should be known. It is a great mistake for the student to confine his obser- vation to anyone or more "specialties," even though he may intend ultimately only to practise such ; at the same time there are some of the more special departments which at the present day deserve particular attention.

I proceed now to point out the ^plan according to which the Science and Art of Medicine can be learnt most easily and satis- factorily. First, a knowledge of its theory should be acquired, as taught in books, lectures, &c., in which such information and ex-


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THEORY AND PRACTICE OF MEDICINE.

finally separating- altog-ether. This process is due to the power which these corpuscles possess, by virtue of their amoeboid nature, of spontaneous movement, as well as of altering in shape and digesting- the protoplasm of the vascular walls, so that no actual openings are left in the vessels to indicate the points at which they have escaped. The liberated white corpuscles are named leucocytes, and after they leave the vessels they send

out processes, assume peculiar shapes, and migrate far and wide into the surrounding tissues, at the same time often undergoing a process of division, and thus becoming in- creased in number. The red corpuscles ex- hibit the same tendency to aggregation and Ameboid stasis, and they may adhere to each other so '"Reckh^ghTu^en)'. closely that their outlines are quite obscured.

They also migrate through the walls of the vessels, chiefly the capillaries, but not nearly to the same extent as the white blood- cells. In an inflamed area no migration occurs in the centre, where there is stasis ; around this both white and red corpuscles escape ; but in the outer circle only white corpuscles migrate. Dr. Lionel Beale affirms that in inflammation minute particles of bioplasm or germinal matter of the blood pass through small rents or fissures in the capillary walls, and afterwards grow and multiply by divi- sion. Some of these particles, he says, are detached from white corpuscles. He considers that most of the particles seen outside the vessels originate in this way, and not from the direct transit of white corpuscles.

Another phenomenon which almost invariably occurs is the exu- dalion of the liquid portion of the blood out of the vessels into the surrounding tissues. Though usually called liquor sanguinis, the exuded liquid is rarely identical with this fluid in its composition. It may be mere serum, but as a rule contains fibrinogenous materials, as well as albumen, and also a considerable proportion of phos- phates, chlorides, and carbonates. Its nature and quantity will vary much according to the seat and intensity of the inflammation as will be more fully pointed out further on.

The alterations thus far described cannot of course be observed in structures which have no vessels, such as cartilage ; but they may then be noticed in the vessels of neighbouring tissues, from which the nutriment which supplies the non-vascular structures is derived.

B, Changes in the affected tissues. — The nutritive process in the in- flamed tissues themselves becomes speedily disturbed, but this takes place to different degrees in diff"erent tissues, and in some struc- tures it is the only perceptible deviation from health, there being no appreciable amount of exudation from the vessels, and little or no migration of corpuscles. Such inflammations are named parejt- chymatous, and are observed in connection with cartilages and certain organs, such as the kidneys.

In the earlier period of inflammation the change which the affected tissue presents is an increase in the nutritive activity of certain


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 INFLAMMATION.

49

and nerve, are never developed under these circumstances. This org-anization is well seen in the chang-es which occur in the granu- lation-tissue by which wounds cicatrize, and in the adhesions and thickening- formed in connection with inflamed serous membranes. The consequences of these changes are often very serious, struc- tures becoming thickened, hardened, contracted, or bound together, and transparent tissues being rendered opaque.

After organization a process of degeneration may set in, evi- denced by wasting or withering, the substance becoming dry, yellow, horny, and stiff; by fatty or liquefactive change, which may lead to its absorption ; or by the formation of black pigment. Similar changes may occur in the products of corpuscular lymph.

c. Blood is sometimes present in variable quantities in inflamma- tory exudations. It is partly the result of migration of the red corpuscles, but some may have escaped owing to the actual rupture of vessels, especially of those recently formed.

d. Mucin. — In inflammation of mucous membranes this substance is sometimes met with, and gives a tenacious, stringy character to the fluid discharged from the surface.

3. Suppuration or Formation 0/ Pus. — The tendency to suppuration varies according to the tissue affected, and the constitutional condition of the patient, but it is generally more liable to take place if the inflammation is very severe and concentrated. Pus may form on a free surface and be discharged, being then often mixed with other materials ; it may accumulate in serous or other cavities ; or it may involve the substance of tissues and organs, either as a circum- scribed abscess, or as diffuse purulent infiltration. In its physical characters healthy pus is a thick, viscid, pale-yellow liquid, odour- less, alkaline in reaction, with a specific gravity of about 1030. It consists of a fluid — liquot puris — in which float pus-corpuscles and other microscopic particles. Liquor puris is an albuminous fluid, but also contains salts, pyin, chondrin, and fat. The corpuscles, as usually seen under the microscope, closely resemble white blood-corpuscles in size and appearance, being more or less round or sometimes irregular, and granular, and having one or more nuclei, which are rendered more evident by acetic a^d, and often break up when acted upon by this reagent. Taey have the power of spontaneous movement and migration, and can alter in form, as well as increase in number by fission.

Fig. 2.

Pus-corpuscles, a. From a healthily-granulating wound ; 6. From an abscess in t'l: areolar tissue ; c. The same treated with dilute acetic acid ; d. From a sinus in bo:i : (necrosis); e. Migratory pus-corpuscles. (Rindfleisch.)

VOL. I. E


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I. Fatty Metamorphosis.— The fact of the direct conversion ot the albuminoid constituents of tissues into fat has been established by observation and experiment, and it is a frequent pathological occurrence, being- one of the natural events of decay in old age, when it often leads to serious consequences. The process may take place in connection with cells or fibres. The fat is usually deposited in a gra- nular form, but ultimately it may accumulate into masses or run into drops of oil. The granules are recognized by their dark and distinct outline ; their peculiar refractive power upon light; and their solubility in ether. Fatty metamorphosis can be best studied by a description of the process as observed in certain individual tissues.

Muscular tissue. — Voluntary muscles may become the seat of fatty change, of which a striking exam- ple has come under mv notice, where almost the whole of the muscles of the thigh on one side were Fatt7 degeneration of converted into fat, without any alteration in their fi^i^es of stnped muscle, general size or shape, or m the arrangement of their fibres. The subject, an old woman, had been bed-ridden for several years. It is in the fibres of the heart, however, that this degeneration is most commonly observed. Under the microscope these fibres are seen in the early stage to be somewhat dim as re- gards their transverse striae, owing to the presence of a few minute fat-granules, arranged either in transverse or longitudinal lines, or in an irregular manner. Ether dissolves the fat and brings the striae again into view. The increase in the number and size of the granules causes them to become more and more obscure, until eventually every trace of muscular fibre disappears, and its place is occupied by fat molecules and oil drops. Where sarcolemma exists this may ultimately rupture, and the fat becomes scattered about. The cells of involuntary muscular tissue are also liable to undergo fatty change, granules gradually filling them up and concealing their nucleus, complete destruction finally ensuing. The conversion of muscle into adipocere after death is_a form of fatty degeneration.

Blood-vessels. — The arteries are very prone to fatty degeneration as age advances, the process either starting as an immediate change in the cells of the inner coat or in the muscular coat, or being associated with the condition named alhcroma. At last the tissues may be more or less destroyed and carried away by the blood-current, leaving uneven erosions on the inner surface of the vessels. The capillaries are also apt to undergo a fatty change.

The nerve- tissues, both cells and fibres, are subject to fatty degen- eration, becoming the seat of much molecular fat, and finally breaking down. This is well seen in softening of the brain or spinal cord.

The following may be mentioned in further illustration of fatty degeneration in cells. The so-called "compound inflammatory

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