At the junction of Horse and Squaw creeks, some seven miles from where Grace Carter was lying in her hammock awaiting the arrival of her brother and mother, Ken Douglass outspanned his weary scraper team and called his day's work done. The damage had been of even greater magnitude than he had feared and his most sanguine estimate placed the time required for complete repairs at three more days.

He had impressed every available man and team into the service, leaving only one young fellow at the ranch to do the choring inseparable to a holding like the C Bar. Having outlined his plans and assigned to each man his specific duty, he had personally plunged into the thick of the work, driving his men only a trifle less strenuously than he did himself. In consequence whereof it was a sore-muscled crowd that ruefully rubbed their aching backs about the camp-fire that night, quaintly profane after the manner of their kind.

"Gawd! But you make a bum driver, Punk," said one of them dispassionately to a short, squat fellow who was anointing his blistered hands with bacon drippings. "Yuh pushed so hawd on thu lines that yuh raised cawns on that claybank's gooms. Was yuh thinkin' yuh was polin dogies oveh to Glenwood again?"

Now Punk Dixon was a bit sensitive on the dogie question; while employed in the engaging pursuit of prodding refractory yearlings up a loading chute that spring his flimsy footing had given way, precipitating him under the feet of two score frightened animals whose sharp hoofs had reduced his brand new "chaps" to rags and himself to a sadly dilapidated mass of incoherent blasphemy. But he grinned good-naturedly and wiped the surplus grease off his hands over the head of his tormenter.

"Thar! That's better'n that pink axle-grease yuh been lavigatin' yuh pore old coco with, Woolly," vigorously massaging the viscid fat into the bald pate with his thumbs, much to the hilarious enjoyment of the inconstant crowd who laughed even louder at the last victim's discomfiture. It was a tradition that "Woolly" Priest had been born with exceedingly long hair in plenteous supply, losing it in the stress of a hard winter succeeding "thet awful calamity to Grand County," as the narrator generously put it, by reason of a goat's having dined upon it, mistaking it for wire grass! According to the veracious relator his head had been so soft and mushy that the goat had "pulled the bristles out by the roots 'n they wa'nt annythin' left fer a starter." Certain it is that the shiny poll was entirely devoid of any hirsute covering at the present time, despite its owner's unremitting applications of all the patent nostrums he could get—the latest being an unguent built by Red McVey's suggestion out of rattlesnake oil and Tobasco sauce!

"Well," said one of the more optimistic among them as he kicked off his boots preparatory to turning in after supper, "this yeah life might be better, 'n it might be wuss. But I'm shore thankful fer this yeah leetle ole baid, an' thu knowin' that I'm goin' to roll out of it to-morrow mawnin' alive an' kickin'. They's a heap o' satisfaction in bein' able to ante when yuh are called to eat!"

"An' thu daid don't eat none. Say, Hungry, haow d' yuh like to be Braun?" The speaker was the friend of the dead man who had discovered the mutilation of the revolver. The badinage ceased instantly and an ominous silence fell upon the whole assemblage.

"Hungry" Thompson looked over to where Douglass was morosely glaring over the demolished ruins of his spring's labor. Even through the murk of the gathering night the clenched hands and swelling neck cords were visible to that sharp eye.

"Haow d'yuh like to be Matlock?"

A match snapped sharply as some inveterate smoker kindled his cigarette. A man sat bolt upright in his blankets and Hungry swore angrily. The camp sank to rest but not exactly to sleep, as the occasional clearing of a throat evinced. Eventually, when the fire had sunk to a heap of smouldering coals, tired nature asserted itself and the men slept.

To Douglass alone came neither sleep nor rest. His mind was in a turmoil of doubt and anger—doubt as to the nature of the strange obsession under which he travailed, and anger directed chiefly against himself. His hatred of Matlock was very bitter, but it was inconsequential in comparison with his savage self-objurgation. He did not go to bed, as common sense would have dictated and overwrought frame pleaded, but sat by the dead coals smoking himself black in the face.

"What an egregious ass I am!" he reflected, reviewing his senseless and stilted actions of the day before. "Here I am quarreling with the first bread and butter that ever came my way with jelly on it. After all, I am only a menial, Carter's hired man, and I presumed too far. What in the devil's name is the matter with me? My hide ought to be thick enough by this time, God knows! And yet that fool girl's little bodkin went through it like an electric spark and cut to the marrow! Well, she's taught me my place, all right, all right." He smiled his grim admiration of her cleverness. "But it's too late. It's a pity, too, for I think I could have made good."

It was characteristic of him that he never entertained even a momentary thought of a possibility of reconciliation. He had told her what he was going to do and that was settled business. It was going to be a little rough on him to quit "broke"; it would take all his summer's wages to recoup Carter for that hay and the loss of the men's time incurred in the ditch mending. The fall round-up would be over by that time and work is scarce for unattached cowpunchers in the winter. It meant "choring for his board" until spring's activities widened the vista and the prospect was uninviting to one of energetic temperament.

Even more characteristic was his utter lack of resentment of the young lady's rebuke; he had "presumed too far" and got what was coming to him. He was conscious that he had deserved it, in more ways than one. But even as he admitted this to himself there crept again into his eyes a something not altogether wholesome and reassuring to any woman arousing it.

Of love so far he had known only two phases, the filial which is specifically restricted, and the universal which is diametrically diffused over so great an area that it is dubious whether it really merits that high classification. For his parents he had entertained an affection closely approximating idolatry, especially for his mother, whom he had known best, his father having died in his early childhood; he also had a certain affection for little children, for flowers, for the more frail and helpless things of creation in general, that might be dignified by the name of love but which more probably was merely the indulgent patronage of all strong natures for things weaker than themselves. At college he had made no special strong affiliations for the simple reason that few of his fellow-students were strong enough, physically, mentally, or morally, to greatly command his respect. And all unknowing to him he had come away from school with a hunger in his really affectionate heart that had not been appeased by precarious contact with the unsatisfying elements among which his lines had been cast. Not once in all his western career had he met with an affinitive soul on which he might have leaned and so gained that chastening sense of tender dependence without which no man ever yet attained happiness.

Women's beauty he admired, but their virtue he revered not at all; yet he had a paradoxical respect for that quality, whenever he encountered it, that first begat and ultimately conserved in him that anomalous chivalry of the frontier which impels a man to the espousal of the under dog's cause without hesitation. He would have fought instantly and to the death for a woman insulted; but he would just as readily have sprang to the aid of a man battling against unfair odds. Of conventionality he had only a contemptuous disregard, taking the goods the gods gave him—when altogether to his fastidious taste—when and where they offered. The very recklessness displayed, and its all too frequent indulgence and participation in by the objects of its incitation, had made him calloused, and cynical to a degree very disastrous to a man of his tender years. For at twenty-six it is befitting to take off one's hat to a petticoat hanging on a clothes line, after the traditional habit of Lord Chesterfield.

Let us not sit too hardly in judgment upon this red-corpuscled young savage. The fires of youth burn fiercely into the natural sequence of maturity's steady glow and senility's ashes. A boy's will is proverbially the wind's will, and youth must have its fling. In a land where every man is a law unto himself it is hard to fix limitations and the tide of license rolls high. There is no caste on the frontier, and the range of passion is as wide as the boundless horizon. He had been tenderly received in high places before, and so there was nothing incongruous in his quick desire for Grace Carter.

Something of this was passing through his mind now, but somehow it savored of sophistry and he knit his brows. He had said or done nothing to which the most hypercritical could logically take exceptions, yet her resentment had been spontaneous and unmistakable.

"Honi soit qui mal y pense!" he muttered, and again his eyes held that unlovely light. "One who divines, must feel—and she is only a woman after all." But the conclusion was not altogether satisfying and he shook his head. The cigarette was suddenly bitter in his mouth and he threw it away impatiently.

"No, damned if I believe that, either! I don't know what I believe. Guess I better hit the feathers." He rolled into bed, blinked sleepily at the stars for a few minutes, and with an indifferent "What the hell do I care, anyway!" fell asleep.

And in the hammock seven miles away she was making excuses for him. "He is very impatient of restraint," she was thinking, "and probably I misjudged him, he is so different from the others." Nevertheless a sudden flash of anger kindled in her eyes; then, strangely enough, she smiled softly into the starlight.

She had yet two hours to wait and the balmy stillness of the night was conducive to reflection. Her thoughts went back to the scenes of her former life and the people she had known in that vastly different environment. Men had been plentiful. In that effete land of worrying necessities the shrine of beauty, when allied with reputed wealth, has many devotees; the Carters were known to be "cattle kings." She was familiar with many types, and with the arrogance of all youthful women, deemed herself an infallible judge of men and their motives. There had been men of parts among her acquaintances: soldiers, merchants, clergymen, writers, financiers, and fops galore. Some she had respected, a few she had admired, many she had tolerated, but none she had loved. She was generous in her estimation of their worth and strove to enthuse over their many excellences, but to her irritation, suddenly realized that she was weighing them all against a gray-eyed man in a fire-rent shirt, with smoke-grimed face and singed hair.

She turned uneasily in her hammock, catching through the wistaria a glimpse of the open door of the dimly-lit bunkhouse. She could see the intermittent glow of Red's cigarette, and the glisten of the polished steel in the holster, hung carelessly on his bed-post. Suddenly she was infected by the magnificent extravagance of this western life, this queer jumble of loyalty, pride, poverty, sacrifice, sin, strength, suffering, fortitude and malignity. She felt a fierce satisfaction in living where men begged for the privilege of killing the enemies of their friends, and she felt almost grateful to Red for his savage appreciation of the courage which had transformed Douglass from his dearest foe into his dearest friend. She had even a greater reason to be grateful to him, had she only known it.

"He must not leave," she said with a fine determination. "It will check his career—and we owe so much to him. I am a super-sensitive little fool and I will make amends. Bobbie said we must 'make it up to him' and I will. He is a gentleman, and he will not make it hard for me." Comforted by her intuitive assurance of that fact she laid her soft cheek on the pillow at precisely the moment of Douglass's line assumption of indifference, and fell asleep.

But out in the kitchen an old woman was awkwardly stroking the head of an antelope kid. "I wonder ef I done right?" she mumbled. "I wonder!"