.

house makes a servant of 'em. Out here we walk abroad. We know we're small potatoes, but we're free."

      "Do you really like it that well?" she asked, bending forward. "Or are you just talking?"

      He knocked the ashes from his pipe, the old reticence returning. After all, she was an outlander. She couldn't catch his point of view. No more than Lispenard did. "All I am belongs to it. It made me. It's in my system, and I couldn't get rid of it if I wanted to. If you lived here long enough you'd feel the same way."

      She was gay and provocative instantly. "I haven't been invited to stay indefinitely, Tom. Are you meaning to invite me now?"

      He met her glance stubbornly. "I'm reachin' for no strings, Kit. That's over."

      "Oh, why must you be so stolid, so dense?" she cried. "Look at me!"

      He shook his head. The wind ripped at the house savagely, a voice trailed past the eaves, weird and meaningless. It was growing darker.

      Christine's laugh was like the touching of crystal pendants. Her question barely carried to him. "Am I, then, so undesirable?"

      "It's apt to be the other way around," said Tom, turning. And after a moment he flung a hot phrase at her. "Do you think I'm made of wood, Kit? What have you come here for—under the same roof with me?"

      "Oh, I have no pride left. I have come a-begging to make up for a mistake." Then she slipped away, in one of those characteristic changes, to another topic. "Back home at this time I would be going out. And there would be a dance at the Coopers. Do you remember those dances, Tom?"

      He nodded. It was quite dark and he lighted the lamp. Christine lay back in her chair, relaxed, studying him. "Do you recall Harry Cooper? He stood for the assembly in the eighth district. My father backed him, and now Harry is at Albany and well on the way to political honours. My father always helps a good man, Tom."

      "Every fellow to his liking."

      "You could do anything you set your mind to do," was her quick answer. "Anything."

      She stopped there. Tom was smiling at her, humour wrinkling around his eyes. She caught her breath, the colour rising to her cheeks. Still, she displayed a courage and a directness he had not suspected she owned. Her tapering fingers spread apart; a diamond flashed in the amber light. "Must I surrender everything, Tommy? Isn't it generous in the winner to allow a little?"

      He stood up, tall and rugged against the lamp's glow. "Kit, I have always said you were more beautiful than any woman I knew. I begin to think you are brave as well. But you surrender nothing. Don't do it. You are only tormenting a man meant to be a cowpuncher the rest of his days."

      She was out of her chair and before him, one hand striking his chest again and again. "You are a fool, Tom Gillette! You are a fool!"

      The door rattled. Christine moved back to her chair as Quagmire let himself inside, coated with sand, red-eyed. "I rode over to where yo' stationed Baldy Laggett, Tom. He met tracks this mo'nin'—two hosses tailin' around the broken top buttes. It's the second time a-running'. Night work, Baldy says."

      "I saw those tracks away east of the buttes not more than an hour ago," replied Gillette. "Looked as if the parties were travelling fast. You get the idea, don't you, Quagmire?"

      Quagmire nodded; his homely face pinched together. "I comprehend plenty, as the parson would say."

      "How many cows have we got over that way now, Quagmire?"

      "Three-four hun'red." After a pause the foreman added, "They's sorter bunched up the last few days. Driftin'. Baldy Laggett says they shifted overnight to'rds them arroyos that fork."

      "Tracks there?"

      "Yeah—tracks. 'Sif somebody was scoutin'!"

      Kit Ballard stood in a corner and watched them. She sensed the undercurrent of conflict behind the words, the slow gathering of a decision; and she admired the casualness with which the two covered themselves. Tom's head dropped forward, there was a tightening of his features and a harder glow down in the wells of his eyes. She saw him in a fighting mood, and this new point of character left her with mixed emotions. He was beyond her power to sway, beyond her ability to cajole. Quagmire's hand described an Indian sign that meant nothing to her but seemed to impress Gillette. "P.R.N. cattle crossin' the river four days ago. Saw a travellin' puncher this mo'nin' headin' to'rds Deadwood. He told me. All Tejanners gone from the south bank. Wyatt lef las' week."

      Gillette's head came up. "Where to?"

      The girl caught the bite of that question; she stirred, wanting to speak yet not able to break in. How much aside they placed a woman out here—how much of a man's world it was! No time for philosophy, no time for that exchange of wit she was so accustomed to. No time for playing at all. They moved slowly, they seemed to drift with the elements. But she began to see they were not drifting but fighting. Always fighting the treachery of nature and the treachery of man. Struggle was the warp of their lives, it left its stamp on every one of them.

      "Dunno," murmured Quagmire; "puncher didn't remark. All gone, though. An', like I say, they's P.R.N. stock with P.R.N. punchers on all them ranches now."

      Gillette's pipe disappeared in his pocket. He was drawling, "Tell Whitey Almo he's to stick on the ranch. Rest of us ride."

      Quagmire's eyes strayed toward the girl and bashfully dropped. "Yo' hunch runs with mine," he murmured and went out.

      The wind was dying, it was dark, and the day's heat had gone. Tom Gillette touched a match to the kindling in the fireplace; the colored cook entered like a shadow and stood questioningly on the threshold.

      "Get it on the table, doctor. We pull out early."

      The black man left. "Where to, Tom?" asked Christine.

      "Out along the range, Kit."

      "Trouble?"

      "Just a little night riding, Kit."

      They stood at opposite corners, looking at each other across the interval while the old cook slid in and out with his dishes and his platters; they seemed to be unconscious of him. Christine had a trick of putting her hand up to her breast when disturbed. She did it now, and the yellow light revealed the trouble in her eyes. Once, when the black man was out of the room, she half whispered to him, "You are not the same man I knew back East."

      "Clay to clay," muttered Tom Gillette, cheek muscles snapping.

      "No—you are bigger. I am sorry—you will never know how much—that I made you dance to my tune. Tom—isn't it Western to forget and forgive a mistake?"

      The crew came filing in, and there was no more between them. Christine took the head of the table, and even her wit was damped; they disregarded her this night, they ate with intolerant haste and they were gone again; twelve homely faces grim set, twelve sets of eyes burning in the lamplight; rough men, illiterate men—men whose lives made queer and sometimes shameful patterns along the past. Intuition told her that. Yet they were brave. The wind had gone, and outside she heard a slapping of saddles and a murmuring—a soft murmuring and now and then a slashing oath in the darkness. Quagmire's face appeared a moment in the doorway, his head dropped and he was gone. Tom's cigarette sailed into the fireplace; he squared toward her.

      "Be back before midnight, I'm thinkin'. Whitey Almo and doctor will be camped outside this door."

      "I am not deceived," said Christine, coming forward. "You are going out to fight."

      "I'll not be denying it," said he, soberly. "We've got no constables to summon hereabouts, Kit, when the law is broken. Maybe a fight—maybe only a false alarm. My back's to the wall. I'm not crying about it, understand. I'm only doing what my dad would have done, or any other man would do. That's the law of the range."

      "To kill or be killed!" she cried. "I don't understand it! Here in America in this century—I don't believe it! You are not cold enough to take a life, Tom!"

      "The fellow that rustles another fellow's cattle dies. I'm telling you it is range law. You're a long,