"How could you!" said the girl, shuddering.

"Please don't get dramatic," jeered the other. "The rules that govern the love game are very elastic--for some women. I played it strong, but there was no chance for me from the beginning. Trevison thinks you are Corrigan's trump card in this game. It _is_ a game, isn't it. But he loves you in spite of it all. He told me he'd go to the gallows for you. Aren't men the sillies! But just the same, dearie, we women like to hear them murmur those little heroic things, don't we? It was on the night I told him you'd told Corrigan about the dynamiting."

"Oh!" said the girl.

"That was my high card," laughed the woman, harshly. "He took it and derided me. I decided right then that I wouldn't play any more."

"Then he didn't send for you?"

"Corrigan did that, dearie."

"You--you knew Corrigan before--before you came here?"

"You _can_ guess intelligently, can't you?"

"Corrigan planned it _all_?"

"All." Hester watched as the girl bowed her head and sobbed convulsively.

"What a brazen, crafty and unprincipled _thing_ Trevison must think me!"

Hester reached out a hand and laid it on the girl's. "I--there was a time when I would have done murder to have him think of me as he thinks of you, dearie. He isn't for me, though, and I can't spoil any woman's happiness.

There's little enough--but I'm not going to philosophize. I was going away without telling you this. I don't know why I am telling it now. I always was a little soft. But if you hadn't spoken as you did a while ago in that crowd--taking Trevison's end--I--I think you'd never have known. Somehow, it seemed you deserved him, dearie. And I couldn't bear to--to think of him facing any more disappointment. He--he took it so--"

The girl looked up, to see the woman's eyes filling with a luminous mist.

A quick conception of what this all meant to the woman thrilled the girl.

She got up and walked to the woman's side. "I'm _so_ sorry, Hester," she said as her arms stole around the other's neck.

She went out a little later, into the glaring, shimmering sunlight of the morning, her cheeks red, her eyes aglow, her heart racing wildly, to see an engine and a luxurious private car just pulling from the main track to a switch.

"Oh," she whispered, joyously; "it's father's!"

And she ran toward it, tingling with a new-found hope.

In her room at the _Castle_ sat a woman who was finding the world very empty. It held nothing for her except the sad consolation of repentance.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE FIGHT

"The boss is sure a she-wolf at playin' a lone hand," growled Barkwell, shortly after dusk, to Jud Weaver, the straw boss. "Seems he thinks his friends is delicate ornaments which any use would bust to smithereens.

Here's his outfit layin' around, bitin' their finger nails with ongwee an'

pinin' away to slivers yearnin' to get into the big meal-lee, an' him racin' an' tearin' around the country fightin' it out by his lonesome. I call it rank selfishness!"

"He sure ought to have give us a chancst to claw the hair outen that d.a.m.ned Corrigan feller!" complained Weaver. "In some ways, though, I'm sorta glad the d.a.m.ned mine was blew up. 'Firebrand' would have sure got a-hold of her some day, an' then we'd be clawin' at the bowels of the earth instid of galivantin' around on our cayuses like gentlemen. I reckon things is all for the best."

The two had come in from the river range ostensibly to confer with Trevison regarding their work, but in reality to satisfy their curiosity over Trevison's movements. There was a deep current of concern for him under their accusations.

They had found the ranchhouse dark and deserted. But the office door was open and they had entered, prepared supper, ate with a more than ordinary mingling of conversation with their food, and not lighting the lamps had gone out on the gallery for a smoke.

"He ain't done any sleepin' to amount to much in the last forty-eight hours, to my knowin'," remarked Barkwell; "unless he's done his sleepin'

on the run--an' that ain't in no ways a comfortable way. He's sure to be driftin' in here, soon."

"This here country's goin' to h.e.l.l, certain!" declared Weaver, after an hour of silence. "She's gettin' too eastern an' flighty. Railroads an'

dams an' hotels with bath tubs for every six or seven rooms, an'

resterawnts with filleedegree palms an' leather chairs an' slick eats is eatin' the gizzard outen her. Railroads is all right in their place--which is where folks ain't got no cayuses to fork an' therefore has to hoof it--or--or ride the d.a.m.n railroad."

"Correct!" agreed Barkwell; "she's a-goin' the way Rome went--an Babylone--an' Cincinnati--after I left. She runs to a p.u.s.s.y-cafe aristocracy--_an'_ napkins."

"She'll be plumb ruined--follerin' them foreign styles. The Uhmerican people ain't got no right to adopt none of them new-fangled notions."

Weaver stared glumly into the darkening plains.

They aired their discontent long. Directed at the town it relieved the pressure of their resentment over Trevison's habit of depending upon himself. For, secretly, both were interested admirers of Manti's growing importance.

Time was measured by their desires. Sometime before midnight Barkwell got up, yawned and stretched.

"Sleep suits me. If 'Firebrand' ain't reckonin' on a guardian, I ain't surprisin' him none. He's mighty close-mouthed about his doin's, anyway."

"You're shoutin'. I ain't never seen a man any stingier about hidin' away his doin's. He just nacherly hawgs all the trouble."

Weaver got up and sauntered to the far end of the gallery, leaning far out to look toward Manti. His sharp exclamation brought Barkwell leaping to his side, and they both watched in perplexity a faint glow in the sky in the direction of the town. It died down as they watched.

"Fire--looks like," Weaver growled. "We're always too late to horn in on any excitement."

"Uh, huh," grunted Barkwell. He was staring intently at the plains, faintly discernable in the starlight. "There's horses out there, Jud!

Three or four, an' they're comin' like h.e.l.l!"

They slipped off the gallery into the shadow of some trees, both instinctively feeling of their holsters. Standing thus they waited.

The faint beat of hoofs came unmistakably to them. They grew louder, drumming over the hard sand of the plains, and presently four dark figures loomed out of the night and came plunging toward the gallery. They came to a halt at the gallery edge, and were about to dismount when Barkwell's voice, cold and truculent, issued from the shadow of the trees:

"What's eatin' you guys?"

There was a short, pregnant silence, and then one of the men laughed.

"Who are you?" He urged his horse forward. But he was brought to a quick halt when Barkwell's voice came again:

"Talk from where you are!"

"That goes," laughed the man. "Trevison here?"

"What you wantin' of him?"