"Certain sure. I didn't trust Meldrum, and . . . I thought you had taken chances enough with him. So I gave Mr. Ryan an opportunity."

"He took it," her lover answered gravely.

She glanced at him quickly. "You mean--?"

"Never mind what I mean now. We've more important things to talk about. I haven't seen you for eight hours, and thirty-three minutes."

Rutherford turned his guests over to Ned, who led the way to the stable. The ranchman joined the lovers. He put an arm around Beulah.

"Boots has done told me about you two, Mr. Beaudry. I'm eternally grateful to you for bringing back my little girl to me, and if you all feel right sure you care for each other I've got nothing to say but 'G.o.d bless you.' You're a white man. You're decent. I believe you'll be kind to her."

"I'm going to try to the best I know, Mr. Rutherford."

"You'd better, young man." The big rancher swallowed a lump in his throat and pa.s.sed to another phase of the subject. "Boots was telling me about how it kinder stuck in yore craw to marry the daughter of Hal Rutherford, seeing as how things happened the way they did. Well, I'm going to relieve yore mind. She's the one that has got the forgiving to do, not you. She knew it all the time, too, but she didn't tell it.

Beulah is the daughter of my brother Anse. I took her from the arms of her dying mother when she was a little trick that couldn't crawl.

She's not the daughter of the man that shot yore father. She's the daughter of the man yore father shot."

"Oh!" gasped Roy.

Beulah went to her lover arrow-swift.

"My dear . . . my dear! What does it matter now? Dad says my father was killed in fair fight. He had set himself against the law. It took his life. Your father didn't."

"But--"

"Oh, his was the hand. But he was sheriff. He did only his duty.

That's true, isn't it, dad?"

"I reckon."

Her strong young hands gripped tightly those of her lover. She looked proudly into his eyes with that little flare of feminine ferocity in hers.

"I won't have it any other way, Roy Beaudry. You're the man I'm going to marry, the man who is going to be the father of my children if G.o.d gives me any. No blood stands between us--nothing but the memory of brave men who misunderstood each other and were hurt because of it.

Our marriage puts an end forever to even the memory of the wrong they did each other. That is the way it is to me--and that's the way it has got to be to you, too."

Roy laughed softly, tears in his eyes. As he looked at her eager young beauty the hot life in his pulses throbbed. He s.n.a.t.c.hed her to him with an ardor as savage as her own.

THE END