The Rustler of Wind River. George W. Ogden

me, certainly.”

      She had no need to ask him whence the messenger came. She could see the horsemen returning to the ranchhouse by the river in the gray morning light, in the triumph of their successful hunt. Alan Macdonald had fallen. It had been Nola’s hand that had dispatched this evidence of what she could but guess to be the disloyalty of Frances to her betrothed. If Nola had hoped to make a case with the major, Frances felt she had succeeded better than she knew.

      “Then there is nothing more to be said, Major King,” said she, after a little wait.

      “There is much more,” he insisted. “Tell me that he snatched the glove from you, tell me that you lost it—tell me anything, and I’ll believe you—but tell me something!”

      64

      “There is nothing to tell you,” said she, resentful of the meddling of Nola Chadron, which his own light conduct with her had in a manner justified.

      “Then I can only imagine the truth,” he told her, bitterly. “But surely you didn’t give him the glove, surely you cannot love that wolf of the range, that cattle thief, that murderer!”

      “You have no right to ask me that,” she said, flashing with resentment.

      “I have a right to ask you that, to ask you more; not only to ask, but to demand. And you must answer. You forget that you are my affianced wife.”

      “But you are not my confessor, for all that.”

      “God’s name!” groaned King, his teeth set, his eyes staring as if he had gone mad. “Will you shame us both? Do you forget you are my affianced wife?”

      “That is ended—you are free!”

      “Frances!” he cried, sharply, as in despair of one sinking, whom he was powerless to save.

      “It is at an end between us, Major King. My ‘necessity’ of explaining everything, or anything, to you is wiped away, your responsibility for my acts relieved. Lift your head, sir. You need not blush before the world for me!”

      Sweat was springing on the major’s forehead; he drew his breath through open lips.

      “I refuse to humor your caprice—you are irresponsible, you don’t know what you are doing,” he declared. “You are forcing the issue to this point, Frances, I haven’t demanded this.”

      65

      “You have demanded too much. You may go now, Major King.”

      “It’s only the infatuation of a moment. You can’t care for a man like that, Frances,” he argued, shaken out of his passion by her determined stand.

      “This is not a matter for discussion between you and me, sir.”

      Major King bowed his head as if the rebuke had crushed him. She stood aside to let him pass. When he reached the door she turned to him. He paused, expectantly, hopefully, as if he felt that a reconciliation was dawning.

      “If it hadn’t been for you they wouldn’t have discovered him last night,” she charged. “You betrayed him to his enemies. Can you tell me, then—will you tell me—is Alan Macdonald—dead?”

      Major King stood, his stern eyes on the glove, unrolled again, now dangling in her hand.

      “If he was a gentleman, as you said of him once, then he is dead,” said he.

      He turned and left her. She did not look after him, but stood with the soiled glove spread in her hands, gazing upon it in sad tenderness.