The girl kept him covered with the revolver while she released the lariat that bound her father.

"Are you hurt, Dad?" she inquired solicitously.

"No, just shaken up," he answered, scrambling to his feet.

"All right. Now we'll fix him!"

The girl walked to the next post from Y.D.'s, climbed it leisurely and seated herself on the top.

"Now, Mr. Y.D.," she said, "you are going to fight like a white man, with your fists. I'll sit up here and see that there's no dirty work.

First, advance and shake hands."

"I'm d.a.m.ned if I will," said Y.D.

The revolver spoke, and the bullet cut dangerously close to him.

"Don't talk back to me again," she cried, "or you won't be able to fight. Now shake hands."

He extended his hand and Wilson took it for a moment.

"Now when I count three," said the girl, "pile in. There's no time limit. Fight 'til somebody's satisfied. One--two--three--"

At the sound of the last word Wilson caught his opponent a punch on the chin which stretched him. He got up slowly, gathering his wits about him. He was twenty years younger than Wilson, but a rancher of fifty is occasionally a better man than he was at thirty. Any disadvantages Wilson suffered from being shaken up in the lariat were counterbalanced by Y.D.'s branding. His face was burning painfully, and his vision was not the best. But he had not followed the herds since childhood without learning to use his fists. He steadied himself on his knee to bring his mind into tune with this unusual warfare. Then he rushed upon Wilson.

He received another straight knock-out on the chin. It jarred the joints of his neck and left him dazed. It was half a minute before he could steady himself. He realized now that he had a fight on his hands. He was too cool a head to get into a panic, but he found he must take his time and do some brain work. Another chin smash would put him out for good.

He advanced carefully. Wilson stood awaiting him, a picture of poise and self-confidence. Y.D. led a quick left to Wilson's ribs, but failed to land. Wilson parried skilfully and immediately answered with a left swing to the chin. But Y.D. was learning, and this time he was on guard.

He dodged the blow, broke in and seized Wilson about the body. The two men stood for a moment like bulls with locked horns. Y.D. brought his weight to bear on his antagonist to force him to the ground, but in some way the Englishman got elbow room and began raining short jabs on his face, already raw from the branding-iron. Y.D. jerked back from this a.s.sault. Then came the third smash on the chin.

Y.D. gathered himself up very slowly. The world was swimming around in circles. On a post sat a girl, covering him with a revolver and laughing at him. Somewhere on the horizon Wilson's figure whipped forward and back. Then his horse came into the circle. Y.D. rose to his feet, strode with quick, uncertain steps to his horse, threw himself into the saddle and without a word started up the trail to The Forks.

"Seems to have gone with as little ceremony as he came," Wilson remarked to his daughter. "Now, let us get along with the calves."...

Y.D. rode the trail to The Forks in bitterness of spirit. He had sallied forth that morning strong and daring to administer summary punishment; he was retracing his steps thrashed, humiliated, branded for life by a red iron thrust in his face by a slip of a girl. He exhausted his by no means limited vocabulary of epithets, but even his torrents of abuse brought no solace to him. The hot sun beat down on his wounded face and hurt terribly, but he almost forgot that pain in the agony of his humiliation. He had been thrashed by an old man, with a wisp of a girl sitting on a post and acting as referee. He turned in his saddle and through the empty valley shouted an insulting name at her.

Then Y.D. slowly began to feel his face burn with a fire not of the branding-iron nor of the afternoon sun. He knew that his word was a lie.

He knew that he would not have dared use it in her father's hearing. He knew that he was a coward. No man had ever called Y.D. a coward; no man had ever known him for a coward; he had never known himself as such--until to-day. With all his roughness Y.D. had a sense of honor as keen as any razor blade. If he allowed himself wide lat.i.tude in some matters it was because he had lived his life in an atmosphere where the wide lat.i.tude was the thing. The prairie had been his bed, the sky his roof, himself his own policeman, judge, and executioner since boyhood.

When responsibility is so centralized wide lat.i.tudes must be allowed.

But the uttermost borders of that lat.i.tude were fixed with iron rigidity, and when he had thrown a vile epithet at a decent woman he knew he had broken the law of honor. He was a cur--a cur who should be shot in his tracks for the cur he was.

Y.D. did hard thinking all the way to The Forks. Again and again the figure of the girl flashed before him; he would close his eyes and jerk his head back to avoid the burning iron. Then he saw her on the post, sitting, with apparent impartiality, on guard over the fight. Yes, she had been impartial, in a way. Y.D. was willing to admit that much, although he surmised that she knew more about her father's prowess with his fists than he had known. She had had no doubt about the outcome.

"Well, she's good backing for her old man, anyway," he admitted, with returning generosity. He had reached his cabin, and was dressing his face with salve and soda. "She sure played the game into the old man's hand."

Y.D. could not sleep that night. He was busy sorting up his ideas of life and revising them in the light of the day's experience. The more he thought of his behavior the less defensible it appeared. By midnight he was admitting that he had got just what was coming to him.

Presently he began to feel lonely. It was a strange sensation to Y.D., whose life had been loneliness from the first, so that he had never known it. Of course, there was the hunger for companionship; he had often known that. A drinking bout, a night at cards, a whirl into excess, and that would pa.s.s away. But this loneliness was different. The moan of the wind in the spruce trees communicated itself to him with an eerie oppressiveness. He sat up and lit a lamp. The light fell on the bare logs of his hut; he had never known before how bare they were. He got up and shuffled about; took a lid off the stove and put it back on again; moved aimlessly about the room, and at last sat down on the bed.

"Y.D.," he said with a laugh, "I believe you've got nerves. You're behavin' like a woman."

But he could not laugh it off. The mention of a woman brought Wilson's daughter back vividly before him. "She's a man's girl," he found himself, saying.

He sat up with a shock at his own words. Then he rested his chin on his hands and gazed long at the blank wall before him. That was life--his life. That blank wall was his life.... If only it had a window in it; a bright s.p.a.ce through which the vision could catch a glimpse of something broader and better.... Well, he could put a window in it. He could put a window in his life.

The next noon Frank Wilson looked up with surprise to see Y.D. riding into his yard. Wilson stiffened instantly, as though setting himself against the shock of an attack, but there was nothing belligerent in Y.D.'s greeting.

"Wilson," he said, "I pulled a dirty trick on you yesterday, an' I got more than I reckoned on. The old Y.D. would have come back with a gun for vengeance. Well, I ain't after vengeance. I reckon you an' me has got to live in this valley, an' we might as well live peaceful. Does that go with you?"

"Full weight and no shrinkage," said Wilson, heartily, extending his hand. "Come up to the house for dinner."

Y.D. was nothing loth to accept the invitation, even though he had his misgivings as to how he should meet the women folks. It turned out that Mrs. Wilson had been at a neighboring ranch for some days, and the girl was in charge of the home. The flash in her eyes did not conceal a glint of triumph--or was it humor?

"Jessie," her father said, with conspicuous matter-of-factness, "Y.D.

has just dropped in for dinner."

Y.D. stood with his hat in his hand. This was harder than meeting Wilson. He felt that he could manage better if Wilson would get out.

"Miss Wilson," he managed to say at length, "I just thought I'd run in an' thank you for what you did yesterday."

"You're very welcome," she answered, and he could not tell whether the note in her voice was of fun or sarcasm. "Any time I can be of service--"

"That's what I wanted to talk about," he broke in. There was something bewitching about the girl. She more than realized his fantastic visions of the night. She had mastered him. Perhaps it was a subtle masculine desire to turn her mastery into ultimate surrender that led him on.

"That's just what I want to talk about. You started breakin' in an outlaw yesterday, so to speak. How'd you like to finish the job?"

Y.D. was very red when this speech was finished. He had not known that a wisp of a girl could so discomfit a man.

"Is that a proposal?" she asked, and this time he was sure the note in her voice was one of banter. "I never had one, so I don't know."

"Well, yes, we'll call it that," he said, with returning courage.

"Well we won't, either," she flared back. "Just because I sat on a post and superintended the--the ceremonies, is no reason that you should want to marry me,--or I, you. You'll find water and a basin on the bench at the end of the house, and dinner will be ready in twenty minutes."

Y.D. had a feeling of a little boy being sent to wash himself.

But the next spring he built a larger cabin down the valley from The Forks, and to that cabin one day in June came Jessie Wilson to "finish the job."

CHAPTER III

Transley and Linder were so early about on the morning after their conversation with Y.D. that there was no opportunity of another meeting with the rancher's wife or daughter. They were slipping quietly out of the house to take breakfast with the men when Y.D. intercepted them.

"Breakfast is waitin', boys," he said, and led them back into the room where they had had supper the previous evening. Y.D. ate with them, but the meal was served by the Chinese boy.

In the yard all was jingling excitement. The men of the Y.D. were fraternally a.s.sisting Transley's gang in hitching up and getting away, and there was much bustling activity to an accompaniment of friendly profanity. It was not yet six o'clock, but the sun was well up over the eastern ridges that fringed the valley, and to the west the snow-capped summits of the mountains shone like polished ivory. The exhilaration in the air was almost intoxicating.