Circle Diamond riders. What they would do to him he could guess.

He went without another word.

Presently she heard him galloping down the road and out of her life.

The anger died out of Ruth almost instantly. She was filled with a sense
of desolating degradation. There had been a time in her life when she
had put this weakling before Rowan, when her laughter and her
friendliness had been for him instead of for the man to whom she was
married. He had never of course been anything vital to her life, never
one hundredth part as important to her as Rowan. Indeed, she had used
him as an instrument with which to punish her husband. But the fact
remained that she had offered him her friendship, had in resentment
flirted with him and skirted the edge of sex emotion.

The feeling that flooded her now was almost a physical nausea.

                              CHAPTER XXVI

                             AN EXPLANATION

AS Tim Flanders had predicted, the establishment of government forest
reserves changed the equation that faced the cattleman. The open range
was doomed, but federal supervision brought with it compensations. One
of these was that the man who ran cattle on the reserve need not fear
overstocking nor the competition of “Mary’s Little Lamb.” The market was
in a better condition than it had been for years. The price of beef was
high, and was still on the rise. Nor was there any prospect of a slump,
since the supply in the country was not equal to the demand.

Ruth had every reason to feel satisfied. Her shipment of beef steers had
brought a top price at the Denver stockyards. The opportune sale of a
house from her aunt’s estate made it possible for her to pay the debts
that had accumulated from Rowan’s trial and to reduce a little the
mortgage on the Circle Diamond. The hay-cutting in the meadow had run to
a fair average, and already she had in one hundred acres of winter
wheat.

She had worked hard and steadily, so that when one afternoon Jennings
brought back from the post office a letter from Rowan his young mistress
decided to ride up into the hills and read it where she could be alone
among the pines. An earned holiday is a double delight. As the
pinto—one that Rowan himself had gentled for his bride—picked his way
into the cañon mouth through blue-spiked larkspur and rabbit bush in
golden splashes the girl in the saddle was nearer happy than she had
been for many a day. Her lover’s letter lay warm against her breast, all
the joy of reading it still before her. The sky was blue as babies’ eyes
except where a shoal of mackerel clouds floated lazily westward. A
meadow-lark throbbed out its full-throated bliss. Robins and bluebirds
exulted in the sunshine. Already the quivering leaves of a grove of
young, quaking asps that marched up from the trail to the rock wall were
golden with the touch of autumn.

In a pine grove on a sunny slope Ruth read his letter, the tessellated
light all about her in warm, irregular patterns. To read what he had
written was to see the face of love. It filled her with deep joy,
brought with it a peace that was infinitely comforting. She wept a
little over it thankfully, though every word carried good cheer.

He was allowed to write only once a week, and everything he sent out was
censored. But each letter told her a little more than she had known
before of the man she had married. When she had vowed to cleave to him
through good and ill fortune he had been a stranger to her. In some ways
he still was, just as no doubt she was to him. For underneath the tricks
of manner that had charmed him and captured his imagination, what had he
discerned of the real woman sleeping in her? As for Ruth, she had
married Rowan because of her keenness for the great adventure, Life, of
which she supposed love to be a large part.

It had been a little cross to her that he was uneducated in the schools,
that he could not parrot the literary patter to which she was
accustomed. He spoke and he wrote fairly correctly. Once he had
surprised her by a reference which showed her he knew his Scott
intimately. But the moderns were closed books to him.

In the last paragraphs of his letter was a reference that showed her his
mind went straight to the relation that lies between literature and
life. His letter concluded:

    You must not worry about me, dear. Whatever happens, it is all
    right. From the night that we rode on the raid until I said
    good-bye to you, I was tied hand and foot in a web of lies. That
    is all past. I can’t explain it, but somehow all the kinks have
    straightened out. I would give anything to be back home, so as
    to look after you. But except for that, I am at peace.

    From the prison library I got some poems by a man called
    Browning. It’s queer, mixed-up stuff. I couldn’t make head or
    tail of some of it, but every once in a while he whangs out a
    verse that grades ’way up. Take this:

         “The best is yet to be,
         The last of life, for which the first was made;
         Our times are in His hand
         Who said: ‘A whole I planned,
         Youth shows but half; trust God; see all, nor be afraid.’”

    Ever since I came here I had been thinking that myself, but I
    didn’t know how to say it like he does. Most poets spill a heap
    of language, looks like to me, but this fellow throws a straight
    rope. Our times are in His Hands! I’m banking a heap on that,
    honey. No need to fear—just trust and wait. Some day our
    waiting will be over.

Dusk had fallen before Ruth rode down the trail to the ranch, her spirit
still with Rowan up in the pines.

Mrs. Stovall was on the porch speeding a parting guest, a dark-eyed,
trim young woman of unobtrusive manners.

“Mrs. McCoy, I want you should meet an old friend of mine—Mrs. Tait,”
said the housekeeper by way of introduction.

It was like a blow in the face to Ruth. She drew herself up straight and
stiff. A flush of indignation swept into her face. With the slightest of
bows she acknowledged the presentation, then marched into the house and
to her bedroom.

All the sweet gladness of the day was blotted out for her. Just as she
and Rowan were coming together again the woman who had separated them
must intrude herself as a hateful reminder of the past. She had forgiven
her husband—yes; but her forgiveness did not extend to the woman who
had led him into temptation. And even if she had pardoned him, she had
not forgotten. It would be impossible ever quite to forget the sting of
that memory with its sense of outrage at a wrong so flagrant.

She did not deny that she was jealous. All of Rowan she could hold fast
would not be too much to carry her through their years of separation.
Except for this one deadening memory, she had nothing to recall but good
of him. Why must this come up now to torment her?

A knock sounded on the door. “Supper’s ready,” announced Mrs. Stovall
tartly.

“I don’t want any to-night.”

After a moment’s silence Ruth heard retreating footsteps. A few minutes
later there came a second knock.

“I’ve brought you supper.”

The housekeeper did not wait for an invitation, but opened the door and
walked in. Never before had she done this.

Ruth jumped to her feet from the chair where she was sitting in the
dusk. “I told you I didn’t want any supper,” she said, annoyed.

Mrs. Stovall had promised Rowan to look after Ruth while he was away. In
her tight-lipped, sardonic fashion she had come to be very fond of this
girl who was the victim of the frontier tragedy that had so stirred
Shoshone County. Silently she had watched the flirtation with Larry
Silcott and the division between husband and wife. It was her firm
opinion that Ruth needed a lesson to save her from her own foolishness.
But what had occurred on the porch a half hour since had given her a new
slant on the situation. Martha Stovall prided herself on her plain
speaking. She had a reputation for it far and wide. She proposed to do
some of it now.

“Why don’t you want any supper?”

The housekeeper set the tray down on a little table and faced her
mistress. Every angular inch of her declared that she intended to settle
this matter on the spot.

Ruth was too astonished for words. Mrs. Stovall did not miss the
opportunity.

“What ails you at the supper? Are you sick?” The thin lips of the woman
were pressed together in a straight line of determination.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Fiddlededee! It’s Norma Tait that’s spoiled your appetite. What call
have you to be so highty-tighty? Isn’t she good enough for you?”

“I would rather not discuss Mrs. Tait,” answered Ruth stiffly. “I don’t
quite see why you should come into my room and talk to me like this,
Mrs. Stovall.”

“Don’t you? Well, maybe I’m not very polite, but what I’ve got to say is
for your good—and I’m going to say it, even if you order me off the
place when I get through.”

The answer of Ruth was rather disconcerting. She said nothing.

“When I introduced you to Norma Tait you ’most insulted her. I’d like to
know why,” demanded the housekeeper.

“I think I won’t talk about that,” replied the young woman with icy
gentleness.

“Then I’ll do the talking. You’ve heard that fool story about Norma and
Mac. I’ll bet a cooky that’s what is the matter with you.” The shrewd
little eyes of Martha Stovall gimleted the girl. “It’s all a pack of
lies. I ought to know, for it was me that asked Mac to drive Norma down
to Wagon Wheel in his car.”

“You!” The astonishment of the girl leaped from her in the word.

The housekeeper nodded. “Want I should tell you all about it?” The
acidity in her voice was less pronounced.

“Please.”

“You know that Mac used to be engaged to her and that after a quarrel
Norma ran away with Tait and married him?”

“Yes.”

“Joe Tait was a brute. He bullied Norma and abused her. When she
couldn’t stand it any longer she ran away and ’phoned me to get a rig to
have her taken to Wagon Wheel, so’s she could go to Laramie, where her
sister lives.”

It was as though a weight were lifting from Ruth’s heart. She waited,
her big eyes fixed on those of Mrs. Stovall.

“But folks didn’t want to mad Joe Tait,” went on the housekeeper. “He
was always raising a rookus with someone. Folks knew he’d beat the head
off’n any man that helped Norma get away from him. So they all had
excuses. When I was at my wit’s end Mac came along in his car, headed
for Wagon Wheel. I asked him to take Norma along with him. Well, you
know Mac. He said, ‘Where is she?’ And I told him. And he took her.”

Ruth nodded urgently, impatiently. She could not hear the rest too soon.

“Mac stands up on his own hind legs. He didn’t need to ask Joe Tait’s
permission to help a woman when she was in trouble,” explained Mrs.
Stovall. “So he took Norma down and fixed it with Moody so’s he lent her
the money for her ticket. Mac had ’phoned down to the depot agent and
got the last vacant berth to Cheyenne. He gave it up to Norma and went
into the day coach. That’s exactly what he did. There’s been a lot of
stuff told by them that ought to ’a’ known Mac and Norma better, and o’
course Tait spread a heap of scandal, but Bart Mason, the Pullman
conductor, told me this his own self. Mac never even sat down beside
Norma. He talked with her a minute, and then walked right through to the
chair car.”

Not for an instant did Ruth doubt that this was the true version of the
story she had heard. It was like Rowan to do just that, quietly and
without any fuss. How lacking in faith she had been ever to doubt him!

Her heart sang. She caught Mrs. Stovall in her arms and kissed the
wrinkled face.

“I’ve been such a little fool,” she confided. “And I’ve been so
dreadfully unhappy—and it’s all been my own fault. I got to hating
Rowan, and I was awfully mean to him. Before he went away we made it all
up, but I wasn’t any help to him at all during the trial. I’m so glad
you told me this.” She laughed a little hysterically. “I’m the happiest
girl that ever had a lover shut up in prison for life. And it’s all
because of you. Oh, I’ve acted hatefully, but I’ll never do it again.”

Mrs. Stovall, comforting the young wife after the fashion of her sex,
forgot that she was the cynic of the settlement, and mingled her glad
tears with those of Ruth.

                             CHAPTER XXVII

                               THE SYMBOL

THE long white fingers of winter reached down through the mountain
gulches to the Circle Diamond. Ruth looked out of her windows upon a
land grown chill and drear. She saw her line riders returning to the
bunk house crusted with snow and sleet. The cattle huddled in the
shelter of haystacks, and those on the range grew rough and thin and
shaggy.

The short days were too long for the mistress of the ranch. She began to
mope, and her loneliness was accented by the bitter wind and the deep
drifts that shut her from the great world outside. A dozen times she was
on the point of going to Denver for the winter, but her pride—and
something finer than pride, a loyalty that held her back from pleasures
Rowan could not share and tied her to interests which knit her life to
his—would not let her give up the task she had set herself.

Through Louise McDowell, the wife of the governor, she ordered a package
of new books sent in from Cheyenne. With an energy almost fierce she
attacked her music again, and spent hours practising at the piano. When
the winds died down she made Jennings show her how to travel on
snowshoes, and after that there was seldom a day during which she could
not be outdoors about the place for at least a little while.

Her fragility had always been more apparent than real. Back of her
slenderness was a good deal of wiry strength. As the months passed she
took on flesh, and by spring was almost plump. The open life she
cultivated did not help her pink-and-white complexion, but brought
solidity to her frame and power to her muscles.

The boy was born in early April. Norma Tait and Mrs. Stovall nursed her
back to health, and in a few weeks she was driving over the ranch in
consultation with Jennings.

She had a new venture in her mind, one of which he did not approve at
all. She intended to raise head lettuce for the market.

Her foreman did his best to dissuade her from such a radical
undertaking.

“This here is a cattle country, ma’am. Tha’s what the Lord made it for.
O’ course it’s proper to put in some wheat an’ some alfalfa where we can
irrigate from the creek. I got nothing to say against that, because with
the price of stock good an’ the quality improved we can’t hardly afford
to have ’em rough through the way they used to do. We got to feed. Tha’s
reasonable. But why lettuce? Why not cabbages or persimmons or sweet
peas, ma’am, if you come to that.”

Jennings softened his derision with a friendly smile.

“Because there is money in this head lettuce. I’ve been reading about it
and corresponding with a farmer in Colorado who raises it. He has made a
lot of money.”

“Prob’ly he ships to Denver. But Denver ain’t such a big city that it
can’t be overstocked with a commodity. It ain’t any New York.”

“But he ships to New York and all over the country. It’s like this. By
midsummer the lettuce crop of most of the country is exhausted. The
weather is too hot for it. But up in the mountains it can be raised. It
develops into a fine solid head, the crispest in the world. Mr.
Galloway, the ranchman I told you about, writes that there is no limit
to the market and that this is going to be a permanent and a stable crop
for the Rocky Mountain country. He is very enthusiastic about it.”

“Tha’s all right too. I don’t claim he ain’t right. But we’re cattlemen.
The Circle Diamond is a cattle ranch. It ain’t any Dago truck farm. Me,
I’d never make a vegetable-garden farmer, not onless my farmin’ could be
done from the saddle. We know cattle; we don’ know lettuce.”

“If there’s money in it we can learn to know it.”

“How do we know there’s money in it here? This ain’t Colorado, come to
that. Maybe it takes a particular kind of soil and temperature. Maybe
this guy Galloway just happens to be in a lucky spot.”

“Not from what I read. Anyhow, we can put out a few acres and see how it
does.”

“Why, yes, we could,” admitted Jennings. “If we knew how to fix the land
for it an’ how to look after it. But we don’t. Why, we don’t even know
what kind of seed to buy or what kind of ground to put it in. Honest,
ma’am, it looks plumb ridiculous to me.”

“Not to me,” she dissented. “What’s the use of saying that this is a
cattle country and not good for anything else when we haven’t tried
other things? People have to be progressive to make money. As for your
objection about us not knowing the kind of seed to get or the sort of
land to use or how to prepare the land, why you’re wrong in all three of
your guesses. You buy seed called New York or else the Wonderful, and
you plant it in nice rich soil prepared the way you do a garden. I
thought we’d use that twenty back of the pasture.”

“H’mp!” he grunted. “You got yore mind made up, I see.”

“Yes,” she admitted, and added diplomatically, “if you approve.”

“Whether I approve or not,” he grinned. “A lot you care about me
approvin’. You’re some bull-haided when you get started, if you ask me.”

“If you can show me that I am wrong, of course——”

He threw up his hands. “I can’t. I wouldn’t ever try to show a lady she
was wrong. All I can do is get ready to say, ‘I done told you so’ when
you waken from yore dream about makin’ two haids of lettuce grow where
there ain’t any growin’ now.”

“You think I won’t make it grow, and I’ll lose money?” she asked.

“Why, yes, ma’am. I hate to say so, but that’s sure how it looks to me.”

She gave him her vivid smile. “You’re going to live to take off your hat
and apologize humbly, Mr. Jennings,” she prophesied.

“I sure hope so.”

Ruth made her preparations to go ahead and assumed that the foreman was
as enthusiastic as she was. She did not have to assume that he was loyal
and would support her project with a whole heart when it once got under
way.

Though she had a healthy interest in making the most of the ranch,
Ruth’s real absorption was in the baby. He was a continuous joy and
delight.

Rowan, junior, was king of the Circle Diamond from his birth. He ruled
imperiously over the hearts of the three women. It was natural that Ruth
should love him from the moment that they put him in her arms and his
little heel kicked her in the side. He was the symbol of the love of
Rowan that glowed so steadfastly in her soul. So she worshipped him for
his own sake and for the sake of the man she had married. The small body
that breathed so close to her, so helpless and so soft, filled her with
everlasting wonder and delight.

His daily bath was a function. Ruth presided over it herself, but Norma,
and often Mrs. Stovall, too, made excuses to be present. His plump legs
wrinkled into such kissable creases as he lay on his back and waved them
in the air, his smiling little mouth was such an adorable Cupid’s bow
that the young mother vowed in her heart there never had been such a boy
since time began.

But she did not coddle him. His mother had read the latest books on the
care of babies, and she intended to bring him up scientifically. He
spent a large part of his time sleeping on a screened porch, and, as he
grew older, Ruth took him with her when she drove over the place on
business.

In every letter she wrote Rowan the baby held first place, but she was
careful to show him that the boy was _his_ son as well as hers, a bond
between them from the past and a promise for the future. In one letter
she wrote:

    I took Boy up into the pine copse back of the house this
    afternoon. We were there, you and I and he, and we had such a
    lovely time.

    Isn’t it strange, dear, that the things we care about become so
    infinitely a part of all life that touches us? There is no
    beautiful thing of sound or vision or colour—no poignancy of
    thought or feeling—that does not become a sign, somehow, for
    the special gladness—as though, at bottom, all beauty and
    dearness rested on the same foundation. To-day the wind has
    blown swift and gray and strong, so that the hills are purple
    with it, and the marching pines are touched to a low, tremendous
    murmur. It is magnificent, as though something too vast and
    solemn for sight passed by and one could hear only the sweeping
    of its wings. And the thrill of it is one and the same with the
    gladness of your letter of yesterday. There is in the heart of
    them both something finer and bigger than I once could have
    conceived.

    While I was putting Rowan, junior, to bed I showed him your
    picture—the one the Denver _Times_ photographer took just after
    you won the championship last year—and he reached out his
    dimpled fingers for it and spluttered, “Da-da-da-da-da.” I
    believe he knows you belong to him. Before I put his nightie on
    I kissed his dear little pink body for you.

    Do you know that we are about to entertain distinguished
    visitors at the Circle Diamond? Louise McDowell and the governor
    are going to stay with us a day on their way to Yellowstone
    Park. I can’t help feeling that it is a good omen. Last year
    when I went to Cheyenne he would not give me any hope—said he
    could not possibly do anything for me. But there has been a
    great change of sentiment here. Tim Flanders talked with the
    governor not long since, and urged a parole for you. I feel sure
    the governor would not visit me unless he was at least in doubt.

    So I’m eager to try again, with Rowan, junior, to plead for me.
    He’s going to make love to the governor, innocently and
    shamelessly, in a hundred darling little ways he has. Oh, you
    don’t know how hard I’m going to try to win the governor this
    time, dear.

                             CHAPTER XXVIII

                         DISTINGUISHED VISITORS

GOVERNOR McDOWELL was a cattleman himself. His sympathies were much
engaged in behalf of the Bald Knob raiders. All the evidence at the
trial tended to show that Tait had forced the trouble and had refused
all compromise. From his talk with the prisoners the governor had
learned that the tragedy had flared out unexpectedly. Personally he
liked Rowan McCoy very much. But he could not get away from the fact
that murder had been done. As a private citizen, McDowell would have
worked hard to get his friend a parole; as governor of the State of
Wyoming he could not move in the matter without a legitimate excuse.

It was his hope of finding such an excuse that led him to diverge from
the direct road to Yellowstone for a stop at the Circle Diamond Ranch.
On the way he called at the ranches of several old-timers whom he had
long known.

“It’s like this, Phil,” one of them told the governor. “The Government
has stepped in and settled this whole sheep and cattle war. We don’t aim
to go night raiding any more—none of us. Sheep are here, and they’re
going to stay whether we like it or not. So we got to make the best of
it—and we do. What’s the use of keeping Mac and Brad and the other boys
locked up for an example when we don’t need one any more? Everybody
would be satisfied to see ’em paroled; even the sheepmen would. You
couldn’t do a more popular thing than to free the whole passell of ’em.”

The governor made no promises, but he kept his ears open to learn the
drift of public opinion. Even before he reached Circle Diamond he knew
that there would be no strong protest against a parole from the western
part of the State.

Ruth did not make the mistake of letting the governor see her in the
rough-and-ready ranch costume to which she was accustomed. She dressed
her hair with care and wore a simple gown that set off the slender
fullness of her figure. When she came lightly and swiftly to meet them
as the car drew up at the Circle Diamond, her guests were impressed anew
with the note of fineness, of personal distinction. There was, too,
something gallant and spirited in the poise of the small head set so
fastidiously upon the rounded throat.

Mrs. McDowell always admired tremendously her school companion. She was
more proud of her than ever now, and as she dressed for dinner she
attacked her husband.

“You’ve got to do something for her, Phil. That’s all there’s to it. I
can’t look that brave girl in the face if you don’t let her husband out
of prison.”

He was wrestling with a collar and a reluctant button. “H’mp!” he
grunted.

“And that baby—did you ever see such a darling? It’s a crime to keep
his father away from him.”

“It’s a crime to keep a lot of men in prison, but we do it.”

“I’m not worrying about the rest of them. But Ruth’s husband—you’ve
just got to let him out.” She came in and perched herself down on a
couch beside him and cuddled him in a cajoling fashion she had.

“You can’t bribe me, young lady,” he blustered. “Don’t you see that I
can’t let McCoy out unless I parole his accomplices, too? This isn’t a
matter to be decided by personal friendship. I’ve got to do what’s
right—what seems right to the average sense of the community.”

“Do you think it’s right to keep Ruth’s husband shut up from her and the
baby?” she demanded indignantly.

“I don’t know. I wish I did.”

“You told me yourself that he’s a fine man,” Louise reminded him
triumphantly.

“I talk too much,” he groaned humorously. “But say he is. The
penitentiaries are full of fine men. I can’t free them all. He and his
friends killed two men. That’s the point. I can’t turn them all loose in
a year. Folks would say it was because I’m a cattleman and that Rowan
and Brad Rogers are my friends. What’s more, they would have a right to
say it.”

Ruth and Tim Flanders showed the guests over the ranch, and afterward in
the absence of the mistress, who was in the kitchen consulting with Mrs.
Stovall about the dinner, the owner of the Dude Ranch sang her praises
with enthusiasm:

“I never saw her beat, Phil. That slim little girl you could break in
two over your knee has got more git-up-and-dust than any man I know. Mac
wanted her to sell the ranch and live off the proceeds. Did she do it?
Not so you could notice it. She grabbed hold with both hands, cleared
off the debts of the trial, wiped off the mortgage, got a permit to run
a big bunch of cattle on the reserve, and has made money hand over fist.
Now she’s in lettuce an’ I’m blamed if I don’t think she’s liable to
make some money out of it. Two or three others are aimin’ to put some
out next year.”

McDowell smiled dryly. “She’s doing so well it would be a pity to let
Mac come home and gum the works up.”

But in his heart the governor was full of admiration for this vital
young woman who had thrown herself with such pluck and intelligence into
the task of saving the ranch for her imprisoned husband. The situation
troubled him. He wanted to do for her the most that he legitimately
could, but he came up always against the same barrier. Rowan McCoy had
been convicted of first-degree murder. He had no right to pardon him
within fifteen months without any new, extenuating evidence.

The governor was a warm-souled Scotch Irishman. Until the past year he
had been a bachelor. He was very fond of children. Rowan, junior, walked
right into his heart. Children have an infallible instinct that tells
them when they are liked. The young boss of the Circle Diamond opened up
his mouth in a toothless grin and stretched his dimpled fingers to the
governor. He rubbed noses with him, goo-gooed at him, clung mightily
with his little doubled fist to his excellency’s forefinger. Whenever
Rowan was in the room he claimed the big man immediately and definitely.
As for the governor, he surrendered without capitulation. He was a
willing slave.

None the less, he was glad when the time came for him to go. It made the
big, simple cattleman uncomfortable not to be able to relieve the sorrow
of this girl whom his wife loved.

Ruth made her chance to see him alone and let him know at once what was
in her heart. She stood before him white and tremulous.

“What about Rowan, Governor?”

He shook his head. “I wish I could do what you want. In a couple of
years I can, but not yet.”

She bit her lip. The big tears came into her eyes and splashed over.

“Now don’t you—don’t you,” he pleaded, stroking her hand in his big
ones. “I’d do it if I could—if I were free to follow my own wishes. But
I’m not.”

Softly she wept.

“Get me some new evidence—something to prove that Mac didn’t shoot
Gilroy himself—and I’ll see what I can do. You see how it is, Ruth.
Someone shot him while he was unarmed. All five of them pleaded guilty.
If Mac’s lawyers can find the man that did the killing I’ll parole the
others. That’s the best I can do for you.”

With that promise Ruth had to be content.

                              CHAPTER XXIX

                            A DISAPPOINTMENT

DURING the second winter Ruth left the ranch only twice, except for runs
down to Wagon Wheel. Late in January she went to Cheyenne with her boy
to make another appeal to the governor. He was full of genuine homely
kindness to her, and renewed at once his allegiance to Rowan, junior.
With the large hospitality of the West, he urged her to spend the next
few months as their guest, to postpone her return at least until the
snow was out of the hills. But in the matter of a parole he stood firm
against the entreaties of his wife, the touching wistfulness of her
friend, and the tug of desire at his own big heart.

Her other visit was in April to the penitentiary. McCoy was away as a
trusty in charge of a road-building gang near Casper. But it was not her
husband that Ruth had come to see. She wanted to make a plea to the one
man who could help her. She carried an order from Governor McDowell
permitting her to see him.

The hour she had chosen was inauspicious. Falkner, sullen and dogged,
was brought in irons to the office of the warden. His face was badly
swollen and cut. He pretended not to recognize Ruth, but stood, heavy
and lowering, his sunken eyes set defiantly straight before him.

“He’s been in solitary for a week,” explained the warden. “Makes us more
trouble than any two men here. This time he hit a guard over the head
with a shovel.”

The prisoner had the baited look of a hunted wild animal.

“I’m so sorry,” breathed Ruth.

It was plain to her at a glance that he was much more of a wild beast
than he had been when she last saw him.

“You needn’t be sorry for him. He brings it all on himself.” The warden
turned curtly to Falkner. “This lady wants to talk to you. See you
behave yourself.”

But when she was alone with this battered hulk her carefully prepared
arguments all fell away from her. She felt instinctively that they would
have no weight with him. She hesitated, uncertain how to proceed. The
best she could do was to repeat herself.

“I’m sorry they don’t treat you well, Mr. Falkner. Is there anything I
can do for you—tobacco or anything like that?”

He gave her a sulky sidewise look, but did not answer.

“We’re all hoping you’ll get out soon,” she went on bravely. “They are
talking of getting up a petition for all of you.”

She stuck again. His whole attitude was unfriendly and hostile.

“I—I’ve come to ask another favour of you. Perhaps you don’t know that
I have a little baby now. I’m trying to get Rowan out on parole, but the
governor won’t do anything unless we bring evidence to show that he did
not kill Mr. Gilroy.”

He clung still to his obstinate silence. His eyes were watching her now
steadily. It came to her that her suffering pleased him.

“So I’ve come to you, Mr. Falkner. You are the only man that can help
me. If you’ll make a statement that you shot Mr. Gilroy the governor
will give me back my husband. I’m asking it for the sake of my little
baby.”

A pulse beat fast in her throat. A tremor passed through her body. The
eyes begged him to be merciful.

He laughed, and the sound of his laughter was harsh and cruel.

“I’d see the whole outfit of you rot first.”

“I’m sure you don’t mean that,” she said gently. “You haven’t been
treated well here, and naturally you feel hard about it. Anybody would.
But I’m sure you want to be fair to your friends.”

“My friends!” he jeered bitterly. “Tha’s a good one. My friends!”

“Isn’t Rowan your friend? You told me yourself that he had stood by you
to the finish, though it almost cost him his own life. If he had lifted
a finger and pointed it at you he and the others would have been given
short terms and you would have been hanged. You said as much to me that
day down at Wagon Wheel. Won’t you say as much to the governor now? It
can’t hurt you, and it would bring happiness to so many people.”

“You want me to be the goat, eh?”

“I want you to tell the truth. Rowan would in your place. He’d never let
women and children suffer for his wrongdoing. I don’t think you would if
you thought of it.”

“You’re wastin’ yore breath,” he told her sulkily.

“I wish you could see Missie Yerby and her little boy. They get along
somehow because the neighbours help with the cattle. She doesn’t
complain. She’s brave. But she does miss Sam dreadfully. So does the
little boy. He’s a nice manly little chap, but he needs a father. It
isn’t right that he shouldn’t have one. He often asks when his dad is
coming home.”

“I ain’t keepin’ him here,” he growled.

“And Mrs. Rogers will be an old woman soon if Brad doesn’t get out. I
can see her fading away. It seems to me that if I could help them by
saying a few words, by just telling the truth, that it would give me
pleasure to make them happy.”

“Different here,” he snarled. “It’s every one for himself.”

“That isn’t what you told me that day at Wagon Wheel,” she said quietly.

“All right. I’ve changed my mind. Let it go at that.”

“Kate is still waiting for Jack Cole. She won’t look at any other man.”

“Makes no difference to me if she waits till Kingdom Come.”

“That’s three women who are unhappy, and Jack’s mother is another, and
I’m the fifth. Five women and two children you could make glad by
confessing that you started the shooting and killed Mr. Gilroy. Not many
men have an opportunity like that. We would bless you in our prayers,
Mr. Falkner.”

“Keep right on soft-soapin’ me. See where it gets you,” he taunted.

She ignored his retort.

“We’d do more for you than that. We’d all work for your pardon, too.
We’d show how Joe Tait had beaten you up when you hadn’t a chance and
how quarrelsome he was. Pretty soon we’d get you out, too.”

“The hell you would! Don’t I know? I’d stand the gaff for all of ’em.
Ain’t I doing it now? Rowan’s out somewheres bossin’ a road gang. Rogers
is in the warden’s office. Sam Yerby putters around the garden. An’
me—I live in that damned dark hole alone. They’re warden’s little pets.
I’m the one that gets the whip. By God, if I ever get a chance at one of
these slave-drivers——”

He broke off, to grind his teeth in a fury of impotent rage.

“Don’t! Don’t feel that way,” she begged. “You get all the worst of it.
Don’t you see you do? And it makes you unhappy. Let me tell the warden
that you’ll try not to break the prison rules. It would be so much
better for you.”

“Tell him I’ll cut his black heart out if I ever get a chance.”

She was appalled at his venomous hatred. Vaguely she knew that prison
discipline was often harsh. Occasionally some echo of it crept into
newspapers. Falkner was refractory and undisciplined. No doubt he had
broken rules and been insubordinate. It came to her that there had been
some contest of stubborn will between this lawless convict and the
guards who had charge of him. His face was scarred with wounds not yet
healed. She did not know that ridges crossed and recrossed his back
where the lash had cut away the skin with cruel strokes which had burned
like fire. But she did know that he was untamed and unbroken, that
nothing short of death could make that wild spirit quail before his
tormentors.

“I wish I could help you,” she said. “But I can’t. All I can do is ask
you to help me. Won’t you think about it, please? I know you’re a man.
You’re not afraid to take the blame that belongs to you. If you could
only see this straight, the way you would see it if you were outdoors in
the hills, I know you would help me.”

“I don’t need to think about it. I’m playin’ my own hand.”

“The governor says that if I can get any evidence, any proof that Rowan
did not start the shooting or kill Gilroy, he will give him a pardon. It
lies with you, Mr. Falkner.”

“Well, I’ve done given you my answer. I’m for myself, an’ for nobody
else. Tha’s the bed rock of it.”

For Rowan’s freedom Ruth would have gone a long way. She had humbled
herself to plead with the convict. But she had known it would be
useless. His environment had so deadened his moral sense, so numbed his
sympathy, that she could strike no response from him. When she left the
prison it was with the knowledge that she had not advanced her husband’s
cause one whit.

In front of the warden’s house a convict was wheeling manure and
scattering it on the lawn. Some trick of gesture caught the attention of
Ruth. Her arrested eyes fixed themselves on the man. His shoulders
drooped, and his whole attitude expressed dejected listlessness, but she
was sure she knew him. Deserting the warden’s wife, she ran forward with
both hands outstretched.

“Oh, I’m so glad to see you!”

For an instant a puzzled expression lifted the white eyebrows and
slackened the lank jaw of Sam Yerby. Then his shoulders straightened. He
had been caught with his guard down, detected in the mood of
hopelessness into which he often fell now.

He came gamely to time. “Well—well, Miss Ruth. I’m sure proud to see
you, ma’am.”

“They told me you were at a road camp. One of the guards said so.”

“I was, but I’m back. You’re looking fine, ma’am. Missie writes me
you-all done got a little baby of yore own now.”

She nodded. “Yes, I’ll tell you all about it. But how are you? Missie
will ask me a hundred questions.”

“I’m tol’able, thank you.” Yerby, looking across her shoulder, saw a
guard moving toward them. He did not mention to her that he was liable
to ten days’ solitary confinement for talking to a visitor without
permission. “How’s Missie—and Son?”

“Missie is prettier than ever. She’s always talking about you. And the
boy—he’s the dandiest little chap—smart as a whip and good as gold.
You’ll be awfully pleased with him when you come home.”

“Yes’m—when I come home.”

His voice fell flat. Its lifelessness went to the heart of his friend.
She saw that hope was dead within him. He was getting into the fifties,
and the years were slipping away.

“That won’t be long. We’re getting up a petition to——”

The guard pushed between Ruth and the convict. “You know the rule,
Yerby,” he said curtly.

“Yes, sir, and I most generally aim to keep it. But when a lady speaks
to me—an old friend——”

“Come along with me.”

The old cowman dropped his shovel and shambled off beside the guard.

Ruth turned in consternation to the wife of the warden. “What have I
done?”

“He oughtn’t to have talked with you. That’s the rule. He knew it.”

“You won’t let him be punished because I made a mistake, will you? He’s
a Texan, you know. He thinks it wouldn’t be courteous not to answer a
lady. It would make me very unhappy if I had got him into trouble.”

The warden’s wife smiled. “I think it can be arranged this time. We all
like him. We’re all sorry for him. He takes it to heart a good deal that
he has to stay in prison. I talk with him when he pots my plants, and he
tells me he wants to hear the whining of a rope and to taste the dust of
the drag driver, whatever that is. I wish the governor would pardon him.
If he stays much longer he’ll become an old man with no hope in his
heart.”

“I’ll tell his wife that you are good to him. It will be a great comfort
to her. She’s a good deal younger than he is, but she’s very fond of
him.”

The meeting with Yerby depressed Ruth more even than her encounter with
Falkner. She took home with her a memory of a brave man slowly having
the zest of life pressed out of him.

But of this she said little when next she wrote to Rowan. Always her
letters had running through them the red thread of hope. She told him
that Flanders was getting up a petition for a parole which had been
signed by half the county, including the judge who had tried him, every
member of the jury, the prosecuting attorney, and the sheriff. Nor did
she mention that Ruth McCoy was the motive power behind the petition,
that she in person had won the signatures of Haight, Matson, and the
judge, as well as hundreds of others.

The clock struck midnight before she finished her letter:

    It is very late, sweetheart—almost utterly quiet, save for a
    small wind among the leaves, and the night is black and soft,
    and abloom with stars. Stillness and stars and whispering
    wind—they are all astir with dreams and questions—yes, and
    answers, too. I feel sure of that, love—as sure as I do of you.

    Will you take “good-night” born of the night’s voices, dear?

She signed her name, turned out the lights, and sat long at the low
window, her fingers laced around her knee. The thoughts back of her
hungry, shadowy eyes were gropings for the answers of which she had
written so confidently.

                              CHAPTER XXX

                              THE BLIZZARD

AGAIN spring bloomed into summer and summer yellowed into autumn. A
mellow, golden glow lay over the valleys, and in the foothills purple
asters and pink thistles lent patches of colour to a brown land.

During the daytime Ruth was busy with business details of the round-up,
of the fall beef shipment, of planting and of harvesting. The lettuce
crop had been very successful and Jennings had long ago made the _amende
honorable_ for his doubts. She had experimented with pinto beans, and
these were no sooner cut and stacked than the men were hard at it
putting in winter wheat. As soon as dusk fell she devoted herself to the
baby until he went to sleep for the night. In the evening she took up
the accounts of the ranch, wrote to Rowan, held a conference with
Jennings, or did a little desultory reading. The housekeeping she left
almost entirely in the competent hands of Mrs. Stovall.

In addition to the business of the Circle Diamond and superintending the
care of a year-old baby, Ruth had other claims upon her time that she
could not ignore. One of these was her promise to Sam Yerby to look
after Missie and the boy. It was her custom to have them down for a day
every other month and to visit the Yerby place between times.

On a day in mid-November, with Rowan, junior, beside her, Ruth set out
in the car for the little mountain ranch. It was a cool crisp morning.
The sting of frost was in the air, and the indigo mountains were ribbed
with white in the snow-filled gulches. To the nostrils came the tang of
sage and later of pine.

After she had driven from the foothills into the cañon, Ruth stopped to
wrap an extra blanket around the baby, for the sun was painting only the
upper walls as yet, and down by the creek there was an inch-thick ice at
the edges. The early fall snows were melting on the sunny slopes above,
and Hill Creek was pouring down in a flood. The road crossed the creek
twice, but after she was on it Ruth discovered that the second bridge
was very shaky. The car got over safely, but she decided to take the
high-line road home, even though it was a few miles longer.

Robert E. Lee Yerby came running down to the gate to meet them.

“Oh, Auntie Rufe!” he shouted. “Mumma’s peelin’ a chicken for dinner.”

Ruth caught the youngster up and hugged him. He was an attractive little
chap, with the bluest of eyes and the most ingenuous of smiles.

“I like you, Auntie Rufe. You always smell like pink woses,” he confided
with the frankness of extreme youth.

His r’s were all w’s, but the young woman understood him. She gave him
another hug in payment for the compliment.

“I’ve brought budda to play with you, Bobbie.” “Budda” was the nearest
Robert could come to the word brother at the time Rowan was born, and
the word had stuck with him, as is the way with children. “Now let me
go. I must get out and shut the gate.”

“No, it don’t hurt if it’s open. Mumma said so, tos everyfing’s in the
pasture.”

As she went into the house with Missie, stripping the driving gauntlets
from her hands, Ruth noticed that clouds were banking in the sky over
the summit of the range. It looked like snow.

The days she spent with Ruth were red-letter ones for Mrs. Yerby. Missie
was a simple mountain girl, born and bred in the Wyoming hills. What
little schooling she had had was of the country-district kind. It did
not go far, and was rather sketchy even to the point she had gone. But
this radiant, vital girl from the cities, so fine and beautiful, and yet
so generous of her friendship, so competent and strong and self-reliant,
but so essentially feminine—Missie accepted what she offered with a
devotion that came near worship. She did not understand how anybody
could help loving Ruth McCoy. To be elected one of her friends was a
rare privilege. Perhaps this unquestioning approval of all she was and
did, together with Mrs. Yerby’s need of her, did more to win Ruth than
any effort the other woman could have made. She was plentifully endowed
with human failings, and flattery of this sort was no doubt incense to
her self-esteem.

The women chatted and worked while the youngsters played on the floor.
Just before dinner a cow-puncher from the Triangle Dot rode up and
trailed into the house with spurs a-jingle. He had come to tell Mrs.
Yerby about one of her yearlings he had rescued from a swamp and was
keeping in the corral for a day or two. His nostrils sniffed the dinner
in the kitchen, and it was not hard to persuade him to stay and eat.

“Wha’ a’ is?” demanded Robert E. Lee Yerby, pointing to the rowel on the
high heel of the rider.

“It’s a spur, son, for to jog a bronc’s memory when it gits to
dreamin’,” explained the young man. “I reckon I’ll step out and wash up
for dinner, Mrs. Yerby.”

When he came in, his red face glowing from soap and water, it was with a
piece of news he had till that moment forgotten.

“Have you ladies heard about Hal Falkner?”

Ruth, putting a platter of fried chicken on the table, turned abruptly
to him. “What about him?”

“He escaped from the pen four days ago—beat up a guard ’most to death
and made his get-away. Four prisoners were in the jailbreak, but they’ve
got ’em all but Hal. He reached the hills somehow.”

The eyes of Ruth McCoy asked a question she dared not put into words.

“No, ma’am. None of the rest of our boys mixed up in it a-tall,” he told
her quickly.

The young woman drew a deep breath of relief. The hope was always with
her of a day near at hand when the Bald Knob raiders would be paroled,
but she knew if they joined such an undertaking as this it would be
fatal to their chances.

“Do you think Mr. Falkner will get away?” Ruth asked.

“I reckon not, ma’am. You see, he’s got the telephone against him.
Whenever he shows up at a ranch the news will go out that he was there.
But he got holt of a gun from a farmer. It’s a cinch they won’t take him
without a fight.”

Snow was already falling when the cow-puncher took his departure. He
cast a weather eye toward the hills. “Heap much snow in them clouds. If
I was you, Mrs. McCoy, I’d start my gasoline bronc on the home trail
so’s not to run any chances of getting stalled.”

Ruth thought this good advice. It took a few minutes to wrap Rowan for
the journey and to say good-bye. By the time she was on the way the air
was full of large flakes.

The storm increased steadily as she drove toward home. There was a
rising wind that brought the sleet about her in sharp gusts. So fierce
became the swirl that when she turned into the high-line drive she was
surrounded by a white, stinging wall that narrowed the scope of her
vision to a few feet.

The temperature was falling rapidly, and the wind swept the hilltops
with a roar. The soft flakes had turned to powdered ice. It beat upon
Ruth with a deadly chill that searched to the bones.

The young mother became alarmed. The boy was well wrapped up, but no
clothing was sufficient protection against a blizzard. Moreover, there
were dangerous places to pass, cuts where the path ran along the sloping
edge of the mountain with a sheer fall of a hundred feet below. It would
never do to try to take these with snow heavy on the ledge and the way
blurred so that she could not see clearly.

Ruth stopped and tried to adjust the curtains. But her fingers were like
ice, and the knobs so sleet-incrusted that she could not fasten the
buttons. It was her intention to drive back to the Yerby ranch, and she
backed the car into a drift while trying to turn. The snow was so
slippery that the wheel failed to get a grip. She tried again and again
without success, and at last killed the engine. Her attempts to crank it
were complete failures.

It was a moment for swift decision. Ruth made hers instantly. She took
the baby from the front seat, wrapped him close to her in all the
blankets she had, and started forward toward a deserted miner’s cabin
built in a draw close to the trail.

Half a mile is no distance when the sun is shining and the path is
clear. But near and far take on different meanings in a blizzard. Drifts
underfoot made the going slow. The pelting wind, heavy with the sting of
sleet, beat upon her, sifted through her clothes, and sapped her
vitality. More than once her numbed legs doubled under her like the
blades of a jackknife.

Ruth knew she was in deadly peril. She recalled stories of how men had
wandered for hours in the white whirl, and had lain down to die at last
within a stone’s throw of their own houses. A young schoolteacher from
Denver had perished three years before with one of her hands clutching
the barbwire strand that led to safety.

But the will to live was strong in the young mother. For the sake of
that precious young life in her arms she dared not give up. Indomitably
she fought against the ice-laden wind which flung sleet waves at her to
paralyse her energy, benumb her muscles, and chill the blood in her
arteries. More than once she went down, her frozen legs buckling under
her as she moved. But always she struggled to her feet again and plowed
forward.

At last she staggered down an incline to a dip in the road. This might
or might not be the draw that led to the cabin. There was no way of
telling. But she had to make a choice, and life for both her and the
baby hung upon it.

Her instinct told her she could go no farther. Ruth left the road,
plunged into the drifts, and fought her way up the gulch. It was her
last effort, and she knew it. When she went down it was all she could do
to drag herself to her feet again. But somehow she crawled forward.

Out of the whirling snow loomed a log wall within reach of her hand. She
staggered along it to the door, felt for the latch, found it, and
stumbled into the hut.

                              CHAPTER XXXI

                        “COMPANY FOR EACH OTHER”

RUTH, weak and shaken from her struggle with the storm, stood in
bewildered amazement near the door. A man was facing her, in his hands a
rifle. He stood crouched and wary, like a wolf at bay.

The man was Falkner.

“Any more of you?” he demanded. Not for an instant had his eyes relaxed.

“No.”

“Sure of that?”

She nodded, too much exhausted for speech.

“Fine!” he went on, lowering his gun slowly. “We’ll be company for each
other. Better shut the door.”

Instead, she staggered forward to the table and put down the bundle of
shawls. Her arms were as heavy as though they were weighted. She sank
down on the long bench in front of the table.

Like many deserted mining cabins, this one still held the home-made
furniture the prospector had built with a hammer and a saw. In one
corner was a rusty old stove, just now red-hot from a crackling wood
fire.

“Storm-bound, I reckon,” suggested the man, watching her with narrowed
lids.

“Yes,” she panted. “Going home from Yerbys’.”

From outside came the shriek of the rising storm.

“It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good, my dear,” he grinned, with a
flash of his broken teeth.

Ruth looked round at him, her steady eyes fixed in his. There came to
her a fugitive memory of meeting him on a hill trail with that look in
his eyes that was a sacrilege to her womanhood. She remembered once
before when he had used those words, “my dear.” Since then the wolf in
him had become full grown, fed by the horrors of his prison life. He was
a hunted creature. His hand was against society and its against him. The
bars that had restrained him in the old days were down. He was a
throwback to the cave man, and, what was worse, that primitive animal
with enemies hot on his trail.

If this adventure had befallen her two years earlier the terror-stricken
eyes of the girl would have betrayed her, the blood in her veins would
have chilled with horror. But she had learned to be captain of her soul.
Whatever fear she may have felt, none of it reached the surface.

A little wail rose from the bundle of shawls. Falkner, his nerves jumpy
from sleepless nights and the continuous strain of keeping his senses
alert, flashed a quick, suspicious look around the room.

Ruth turned and unloosened the wraps. The convict, taken by sheer
astonishment, moved forward a step or two.

“Well, I’ll be dog-goned! You got a kid in there,” he said slowly.

At sight of his mother the face of the youngster cleared. Through all
the fight with the storm, snug and warm in his nest, he had slept
peacefully. But now he had wakened, and objected to being half
smothered.

“Don’t you remember?” Ruth asked the man. “I told you I had a baby. Do
you think he is like me or Rowan?”

She walked straight to him, and held the baby up for his inspection.

Falkner murmured something that sounded like an oath. But it happened
that Rowan, junior, took to men. He smiled and stretched out his arms.
Before the outlaw could speak, before he could voice the sullen
rejection of friendliness that was in his mind, Ruth had pushed the boy
into his arms.

The soft little hands of the baby explored the rough face of the man.
Rowan, junior, beamed with delight.

“You da-da,” he announced confidently.

Ruth managed a little laugh. “He’s claiming you already, Mr. Falkner,
even though he doesn’t know that meeting you has probably saved our
lives.”

For years Falkner had fought his snarling way against those who held the
upper hand. Hatred and bitterness had filled his soul. But the contact
with this soft, helpless bit of gurgling humanity sent a queer thrill
through him. It was as if pink velvet of exquisite texture, breathing
delicious life, were rubbing itself against his cheek. But it was not
alone the physical sensation that reached him. Somehow the little
beggar, so absolutely sure of his welcome, twined those dimpled fingers
around the heartstrings of the callous man. Not since his mother’s death
had any human being come to him with such implicit trust. The Adam’s
apple in the convict’s throat shot up and registered emotion.

“The blamed little cuss! See him grab a-holt of my ear.”

Ruth left the baby in his arms, took off her coat, and walked to the
stove. She held out her hands and began to warm them.

“We were in the car,” she explained. “I took the high-line back because
I was afraid of the upper bridge. The machine stalled in a drift.”

“You don’t ask me how-come I’m here,” he growled.

“I know,” she said simply. “Art Philips dropped in to Yerbys’ and stayed
for dinner. He told us you escaped four days ago.”

“Did he tell you I killed a guard?”

“No. He said you wounded one.”

“First I knew he wasn’t dead. Wish I’d been more thorough. If ever a man
needed killing, he did.”

“They abused you a good deal, didn’t they?” she ventured.

He ripped out a sudden furious oath. “If ever I get a chance at two or
three of them——”

“Better not think of that now. The question is how you are going to get
away.”

“What’s that to you?” he demanded, his suspicions all alert.

“I thought if you’d come down to the Circle Diamond you could get a
horse. That would give you a much better chance.”

“And how do I know you wouldn’t ’phone to Matson?” he sneered.

She looked at him. “Don’t you know me better than that, Mr. Falkner?”
she said gently.

He mumbled what might be taken either for an apology or for an oath.

“That’s all right. I dare say I wouldn’t be very trustful myself if I
had been through what you have.” Ruth tossed him a smiling nod and
dismissed the subject. “But we’re not down at the ranch yet. How long is
this storm likely to last, Mr. Falkner?”

“It will blow itself out before morning. Too early in the season for it
to last. I reckon it’s only a one-day blizzard.”

“You don’t think there will be any trouble about getting down to-morrow,
do you?” she asked anxiously. “I’m not worried about myself, but I’ve
got to get food for Baby.”

“Depends on the snow,” he said sulkily. “If it keeps on, you can’t break
trail and carry the kid.”

“Perhaps you could go with me; then you could cut out a horse and ride
away after dark.”

“I don’t have to go down there. I can pick up a horse at Yerbys’.” He
added grudgingly in explanation: “Me for the hills. I don’t want to get
down into the valleys, where too many people are.”

At midnight the storm outside was still howling and the sleety snow was
beating against the window. The wind, coming straight from the divide
above, buffeted the snow clouds in front of it. Drifts sifted and
shifted as the snow whirled with the changing gusts.

The young mother, crouched behind the stove with her baby asleep across
her knees, drowsed at times and wakened again with a start to see
half-shuttered eyes shining across at her from the other side of the
fire. In the darkness of the night she was afraid. Those gleaming points
of light, always focused on her, were too suggestive of a beast of prey.
With that blizzard raging outside she was a thousand miles from help,
beyond the chance of human aid in case of need.

Again her instinct served Ruth well. She rose stiffly and carried the
baby across to the man.

“Would you mind holding him for a while? I’ve been still so long my
muscles are stiff and numb.”

Grudgingly Falkner took the baby, but as the warm body of the sleeping
child nestled close to him he felt once more that queer tug at his
heart. A couple of inches of the fat, pink little legs were exposed
where the dress had fallen back. The man’s rough forefinger touched the
soft flesh gently. To the appeal of this amazing miracle—a helpless
babe asleep in his arms—everything that was good and fine in him
responded. He had lived a harsh and bitter life, he had cherished hatred
and dwelt with his own evil imagination; but as he looked down and felt
the clutch of those small fingers on his wrist the devil that had been
in his eyes slowly vanished.

Ruth tramped the floor till the pin pricks and the numbness were gone
from her limbs. Then she returned to her place against the wall back of
the stove. Her eyes closed drowsily, opened again. She told herself that
she must not fall asleep—dare not. Falkner was sitting motionless with
Rowan in his arms, his whole attention on the child. The woman’s head
nodded. She struggled to shake off the sleep that was stealing over her.

When she wakened it was broad day. A slant of sunshine made a ribbon of
gold across the floor. Rowan was crying a little fretfully, and the
convict was dancing him up and down as a diversion from his hunger.

                             CHAPTER XXXII

                            THE CLOUDS BREAK

“CAN’T you do something for this kid?” the man asked gruffly.

Ruth took the baby. “He’s hungry,” she said.

“Then we’d better be hitting the trail.”

Falkner walked to the door and flung it open. He looked out upon a world
of white-blanketed hills. The sun was throwing from them a million
sparkles of light.

“Gimme that kid,” the outlaw said roughly. “We gotta get him down to
breakfast. Here! You take my gun.”

Ruth wrapped up the baby warmly and handed him to Falkner. The man broke
trail to the point where the draw struck the road. He looked to the
right, then to the left. Safety lay for him in the mountains; for her
and Rowan, junior, at the Circle Diamond, which was three miles nearer
than Yerby’s ranch. The way up the cañon would be harder to travel than
the way down. There was a chance that they could not make it through the
snow, even a probability.

“Which way?” asked Ruth.

He turned to the left toward the Circle Diamond. The heart of the girl
leaped. The convict had put the good of the child before his own.

The day had turned warm, so that before they had travelled half an hour
the snow was beginning to get soft and slushy. The going was heavy. Ruth
was not wearing her heavy, high-laced boots, but the shoes she was
accustomed to use indoors. Soon her stockings were wringing wet and the
bottoms of her skirts were soaked. It was mostly a downhill grade, but
within the hour she was fagged. It cost an effort to drag her foot up
for each step. She did not want to be a quitter, but at last she had to
speak:

“I can’t go any farther. Leave me here and send the boys to get me. Mrs.
Stovall will look after the baby.”

The outlaw stopped. There was grudging admiration in the glance he gave
her.

“You can make it. We’re through the worst part. Soon we’ll be in the
foothills, and there the snow is real light.” After a moment he added:
“We ain’t runnin’ for a train. Take your time.”

He brushed the snow from a rock and told her with a wave of his hand to
sit down. After a few minutes’ rest she rose and told him she was ready
to try again.

Falkner’s prediction of a lighter snowfall down in the foothills proved
correct. They rounded a rocky point, which brought them within sight of
the Circle Diamond. The smoke from the house rose straight up in the
brilliant sunshine. It looked very near and close, but the deceptive air
of the Rockies could no longer fool Ruth. They still had two miles to
go. The descent to the valley was very rapid from here, and she could
see that a scant two inches would measure the depth of the snow into
which they were moving.

The young woman sloshed along behind. She was very tired, and her
shoulders sagged from exhaustion. But she set her teeth in a game
resolve to buck up and get through somehow. One after another she tried
the old devices for marking progress. She would pick a mark fifty yards
ahead and vow to reach it, and then would select another goal, and after
it was passed choose a third. One—two—three—four—five, she counted
her steps to a hundred, began again and checked off a second century,
and so kept on until she had added lap after lap.

They came to the Circle Diamond line fence, crawled between the strands,
and tramped across the back pasture toward the house.

Ruth must by this time have been half asleep. Her feet moved almost of
their own volition, as if by clockwork. She went forward like an
automaton wound up by a set will that had become comatose.

A startled shout brought her back to life abruptly. A man with a raised
rifle was standing near the bunk house. He was covering Falkner.

Swift as a panther, Falkner rid himself gently of the baby and turned to
Ruth. He ripped out a sudden furious oath. She was empty-handed.
Somewhere between the spot where she stood and the line fence the rifle
had slipped unnoticed from her cramped fingers.

The outlaw was trapped.

“Throw up your hands!” came the curt order.

Instantly the convict swerved and began running to the right. Ruth stood
directly in the line of fire. The man with the gun took a dozen quick
steps to one side.

“Stop or I’ll fire!” he shouted.

Falkner paid no attention. He was making for a cottonwood arroyo back of
the house.

The rifleman took a long aim and fired. The hunted man stumbled, fell,
scrambled to his feet again, ran almost to the edge of the gulch, and
sank down once more.

The man who had fired ran past Ruth toward the fallen man. She noticed
that he was Sheriff Matson. It is doubtful if he saw her at all. Men
emerged from the bunk house, the stable, the corral, and the house. Some
were armed, the rest apparently were not. One had been shaving. He had
finished one cheek, and the lather was still moist on the other.

The half-shaved man was her foreman, Jennings. At sight of the mistress
of the ranch he stopped. She had knelt to pick up the crying baby.

“What’s the row?” he asked.

“Sheriff Matson has just shot Mr. Falkner.” She could hardly speak the
words from her dry throat.

“Falkner! How did he come here?”

“Baby and I were snowbound in the old Potier cabin. He broke trail down
for us and carried Baby.”

“Gad! And ran right into Matson.”

“What is the sheriff doing here?”

“Came in late last night with a posse. Word had been ’phoned him that
Falkner had been seen in the hills heading for the Montana line. He
aimed to close the passes, I reckon.”

Mrs. Stovall bore down upon them from the back door of the house. Ruth
cut her off without allowing the housekeeper a word.

“No time to talk now, Mrs. Stovall. Feed Baby. He’s about starved. I’ll
look after this business.”

With Jennings striding beside her, Ruth went across to the group
surrounding the wounded man.

“Is he badly hurt?” she demanded.

One of her own punchers looked up and answered gravely: “Looks like,
ma’am. In the leg. He’s bleeding a lot.”

The sight of the blood trickling down to the white snow for an instant
sickened Ruth. But she repressed at once any weakness. Matson she ousted
from command.

“Stop the bleeding with a tourniquet, Jennings; then have him carried to
the house—to Rowan’s room. Sheriff, ’phone Doctor Irwin to come at
once. Better send one of your men to meet him.”

Ruth herself flew to the house. She forgot that she was exhausted,
forgot that she had had neither supper nor breakfast. The call for
action carried her out of her own needs. Before the men had arrived with
the wounded outlaw she was ready with sponges, cold water, and bandages.

After Falkner had been made as comfortable as possible, Ruth left him in
charge of Norma Tait and retired to the pantry in search of food. When
she had eaten she left word with Mrs. Stovall that she was going to
sleep, but wanted to be called when Doctor Irwin arrived at the ranch.

At the housekeeper’s knock she awoke three hours later, refreshed and
fit for anything. Ruth had not lived the past two years in outdoor
Wyoming for nothing. She had grown tough of muscle and strong of body,
so that she had gained the power of recuperation with very little rest.

Having examined the patient, Doctor Irwin retired with Ruth and Sheriff
Matson to the front porch.

“What do you think?” asked the young woman anxiously.

“H’mp! Think—just missed a funeral,” he snorted. “Bullet struck half
inch from artery.”

“But he’ll get well?”

“I reckon. Know better later.”

“When can I move him?” asked Matson.

“Don’t know. Not for a week or two, anyhow. You in a hurry to get him
back to that hell where he came from, Sheriff?” bristled the old doctor.

“I’m not responsible for the pen, Doc,” answered Matson evenly. “And by
all accounts I reckon Hal Falkner makes his own hell there. But I’m
responsible for turning him over to the warden. If I could get him down
to Wagon Wheel——”

“Well, you can’t!” snapped Irwin. “He’ll stay right here till I think it
safe to move him. It’s my say-so, Aleck.”

“Sure. And while he’s at the Circle Diamond I’ll leave a couple of men
to help nurse him. He might hurt himself trying to move before he’s
really fit to travel,” the sheriff announced with a grim little smile.

Ruth was head nurse herself. For years she had held a bitter resentment
against Falkner, but it could not stand against the thing that had
happened. Put to the acid test, the man had sacrificed his chances of
escape to save her and the baby. Alone, he could have reached the Yerby
ranch and gone through one of the passes before Matson had closed it.
With her and the baby as encumbrances he had not dared try the deeper
snow of the upper hills. Because of his choice he lay in Rowan’s room,
wounded, condemned to a return to Rawlins.

Never in his rough and turbulent life had the man been treated with such
gentle consideration. The clean linen and dainty food were external
effects of an atmosphere wholly alien to his experience. Here were
kindness and friendly smiles and an unimaginable tenderness. All three
of the women were good to him in their own way, but it was for Ruth that
his hungry eyes watched the door. She brought the baby with her one day,
after the fever had left him, and set the youngster on the bed, where
the invalid could watch him play.

Falkner did not talk much. He lay quiet for hours, scarce moving, unless
little Rowan was in the room. Ruth, coming in silently one afternoon,
caught the brooding despair in his eyes.

He turned to her gently. “What makes you so good to me? You know you
hate me.”

Her frank, friendly smile denied the charge. “No, I don’t hate you at
all. I did, but I don’t now.”

“I’m keeping Rowan away from you. It was my fault he went there in the
first place.”

“Yes, but you saved Baby’s life—and mine, too. If you had looked out
only for yourself, you wouldn’t be lying here wounded, and perhaps you
would have got away.” She flashed deep, tender eyes on him. “I’ll tell
you a secret, Mr. Falkner. You’re not half so bad as you think you are.
Can’t I see how you love Baby and how fond he is of you? You’re just
like the rest of us, but you haven’t had a fair chance. So we’re going
to be good to you while we can, and after you come back from prison
we’re going to be friends.”

The ice that had gathered at his heart for years was melting fast. He
turned his face to the wall and lay still there till dusk. Perhaps it
was then that he fought out the final battle of his fight with himself.

When Mrs. Stovall came in with his supper he told her hoarsely that he
wanted to see Matson at once on important business.

The sheriff drove his car in the moonlight out from Wagon Wheel. Ruth
took him in to see Falkner.

“Send for Jennings and Mrs. Stovall. She’s a notary, ain’t she?” said
the convalescent.

Ruth’s heart beat fast. “Yes. She was one when she was postmistress. Her
term hasn’t run out yet.”

“All right. Get her. I want to make a sworn statement before witnesses.”

Matson took down the statement as Falkner dictated:

    I want to tell some facts about the Bald Knob sheep raid that
    did not come out at the trial of Rowan McCoy. When the party was
    made up to ride on that raid I wasn’t included. They left me out
    because I had a grudge at Tait. But I horned in. I followed the
    boys for miles, and insisted on going along. McCoy objected. He
    said the party was going to drive off the sheep and not to do
    any killing. I promised to take orders from him. He laid out a
    plan by which we could surprise the camp without bloodshed, and
    made it plain there was to be no shooting. Afterward he went
    over it all very carefully again, and we agreed not to shoot.

    I lost my head when we was crawling up on the camp and shot at
    the wagon. That was the first shot fired. Tait came out and
    began shooting at us. Two or three of us were shooting. I don’t
    know who killed him. Gilroy ran out of the wagon to escape.
    McCoy hollered to stop shooting, and ran forward. I must have
    been crazy. I shot and killed Gilroy.

    Then McCoy ran to protect the herders. He wrestled with me for
    the gun to keep me from shooting. None of the other boys had
    anything to do with the killing of Gilroy except me.

    It was so dark that nobody knew whether McCoy or I shot Gilroy.
    McCoy protected me, and said we were all to blame, since we had
    come together. He never did tell who did the shooting. I looked
    at his gun a little later, and saw that he had not fired a shot
    from first to last.

    I am making this statement of my own free will, and under no
    compulsion whatever. I am of sound mind and body, except for a
    bullet wound in my leg that is getting better. My only reason
    for making it is that I want to see justice done. The others
    have suffered too much already for what I did.

Falkner signed the statement. It was witnessed by Jennings and the two
deputies. Mrs. Stovall added the notarial seal of her office to it.

Ruth put her head down on the little table where the medicines were and
cried like a child. At last—at last Rowan would be free to come home to
her. Her long, long waiting was at an end. She could begin to count the
days now till her lover would be with her again.

                             CHAPTER XXXIII

                               GOOD NEWS

RUTH telephoned a message down to Wagon Wheel to be wired to Governor
McDowell that night. It was impossible for her to sleep, and after she
had packed she lay awake for hours planning the fight for Rowan’s
freedom. She found herself framing a passionate plea to the governor and
the board of pardons for justice to her husband. She visualized the
scene until it became so real that she had to rise from bed, get into a
loose gown, and take notes of what she must tell them. Not till nearly
two o’clock did she fall into a broken sleep.

The sheriff drove her and the baby to town next morning. From here she
sent Louise a telegram to tell her they were on the way to Cheyenne.
Matson, with strong letters in his pocket from Haight and the district
judge recommending clemency, took the noon train also to add the weight
of his influence.

When the train rolled into the station at Cheyenne, Louise was waiting
for them in her car. She and Ruth, after the manner of their sex, shed a
few happy tears together in each other’s arms, while Matson, rawboned
and awkward, stood near holding Rowan, junior.

“The board of pardons is to meet this afternoon in Phil’s office, and
you and Mr. Matson are to have a hearing before it,” her friend told
Ruth. “It’s going to be all right this time, I do believe. I can see
Phil means to be reasonable. He’d better. I told him I was going over to
the ranch to live with you if he didn’t pardon Rowan.”

“What does he say?”

“He says that if Falkner’s statement is as strong as your wire claimed
the board will have to free all four. Phil wants to push the whole thing
through as quick as he can for you.”

“That’s fine,” commented Matson. “Will it be a parole or a pardon?”

“Depends on the confession, Phil says,” Louise declared. “He has wired
the warden at Rawlins to call in any of the four men if they are out on
road work. I expect that by this time Rowan and his friends must guess
there is something in the air.”

This was not the first time that Ruth and her attorney had appeared
before the board of pardons. From the very day of his conviction she had
missed no possible chance that might help her husband. The members of
the board had been very kind to her. She had read admiration in their
glances. But the majority of them had voted against her request. To-day
somehow it was different. As soon as she entered the inner office of the
governor with Sheriff Matson and Rowan, she knew that victory was in
sight. The cordial handshake of the chairman, a fatherly old gentleman
with Horace Greeley whiskers, was more reassuring than promises. She
felt that his grip was congratulating her on the success he anticipated.

Little Rowan prevented the meeting from being a formal one. He wriggled
free from his mother and ran forward with arms outstretched to his
friend the governor. He insisted clamorously on having his “tick-tock”
to play with, and he experimented with the pockets of his Excellency to
find which one of them had supplied the candy with which he had been
furnished earlier in the day.

Ruth forgot all about the arguments she had meant to present. Instead
she told, between tears and smiles, the story of the blizzard and its
consequences. The adroit questions of the governor drew the tale of the
adventure from her in a simple, dramatic way. No doubt its effect was
greater coming from this slender, girlish mother with the dark, wistful
eyes and the touch of shyness in her manner. Rowan’s lawyer, an expert
with juries, knew when to avoid an anticlimax by getting her out of the
room.

Just before leaving his office for the night Governor McDowell called
Louise on the telephone. That young woman beamed at what he said, and
beckoned Ruth.

“Phil wants to talk with you.”

Ruth took the receiver, her hand trembling. “Hello!” she said. “Yes,
it’s Ruth.”

“I have good news for you, my dear,” the voice at the other end of the
wire said. “Rowan and his three friends are to be paroled at once. I am
going to make it a full pardon for Rowan and perhaps for the others,
too.”

For years Ruth had been waiting for this news. Now that it had come she
did not weep or cry out or do anything the least dramatic. She just
said: “Oh, I’m so glad! Thank you.”

“I’ve been instructed by the board to tell you how much it appreciates
the game fight you made and to add that it gives this parole with more
pleasure than any it has ever granted.”

“When can I see Rowan? And when will he be out?”

“He’ll be out just as soon as the papers can be prepared, my dear. I’m
coming right home to tell you all about it.”

Two more telegrams were flashed westward from Ruth that night. One was
to McCoy, the second to Tim Flanders. The message to Flanders laid upon
him the duty of notifying the families of the paroled men. Early next
morning Ruth sent still another telegram. It was addressed to Jennings,
and gave him instructions that made him get busy at once looking after
horses, saddles, pack saddles, a tent, and other camping outfit.

Later in the day Rowan, junior, and his mother entrained for Rawlins.
The adventure before her tremendously intrigued the interest of the
young wife. It was immensely more significant than her marriage had
been. All the threads of her life for years had been converging toward
it.

                             CHAPTER XXXIV

                        A HONEYMOON IN THE HILLS

SAM YERBY strolled up and down the station platform. His wife clung to
him on one side and on the other trotted Boy, hand in hand with his
new-found father. Outwardly Rogers and Cole took their good fortune
philosophically, but the Texan could not hide his delight at Missie,
Boy, and freedom. The habits of his former life began to reassert
themselves. His cheek bulged with a chew of tobacco. As the old cowman
grinned jauntily at Ruth, who had come down to see the party off, he
chirruped out a stanza of a range song:

               “Goin’ back to town to draw my money,
               Goin’ back home for to see my honey.

“Only I don’t have to go home to see her. She done come to see the old
man. I tell you it’s great, Miss Ruth. This air now; Lordee, I jus’ gulp
it down! But I’ll bet it ain’t a circumstance to that on the Fryingpan.
I’m sure honin’ to hit the old trails again.”

Ruth smiled through her tears. “Good days ahead, Mr. Yerby, for all of
us. We know just how you feel, don’t we, Missie?”

“When do you-all expect Mac to get in?”

“Some time this afternoon. Here comes your train. We’ll see you soon.”

After the train had gone Ruth walked back to the hotel where she was
staying. Governor McDowell had given a complete pardon to all four of
the cattlemen, but Rowan had not yet reached town from the distant road
camp where he was working. The clerk handed the young woman a letter. It
was from Jennings and was postmarked at a small town seventy miles
farther up the line.

Ruth reclaimed the baby from the nursemaid with whom she had left him
and went up to her room. A man came swinging with crisp step along the
dark corridor. She would have known that stride anywhere. A wave of
emotion crashed through her. In another moment she was in his arms.

“Oh, Rowan—at last!” she cried.

Presently they moved into the room and he held her from him while he
searched her face. Since last he had seen her she had endured the sting
of rain, the bluster of wind, and the beat of sun. They had played havoc
with her wild-rose complexion and the satin of her skin. She was no
longer the hothouse exotic he had married, a slip of a girl
experimenting with life, but a woman strong as tested steel. Here was a
mate worthy of any man, one with a vigorous, brave spirit clad in a body
of exquisite grace, young and lissom and vital.

An incomparable mate for some man! But was he the man that could hold
her? His old doubts asserted themselves in spite of the white dream of
her his heart had held through the years of their separation. She had
been loyal—never a woman more so. But he wanted more than loyalty.

Perhaps it was from him she got it. At any rate, an unexpected touch of
shyness lowered her lashes. She caught up the baby and handed him to the
father.

“Here is your son,” she said, the colour glowing in her cheeks.

Rowan looked at the little being that was flesh of his flesh and blood
of his blood, and his heart went out to the child in complete surrender.
Something primeval, old as the race, set him in an inner tumult. The
flame of life had passed through him to this dimpled babe. The child was
his—and Ruth’s. If he lived to be a hundred, he would never again know
quite the ecstasy of that moment.

To escape the tension of her feeling Ruth hurried into explanations.
“I’ve made all our arrangements for the next three days. You’re not to
ask me anything about them. You’re going to be personally conducted by
me and Baby, and you’ll have to do whatever we tell you to do. Do you
understand, sir?”

He smiled and nodded. This particular Ruth—the one that gave gay,
imperious orders—was an old friend of his. His heart welcomed her.

Apparently her plans included an automobile journey. Within an hour they
were driving through a desert of sand and sagebrush toward the
mountains. They glimpsed in the distance a couple of antelope shining in
the sunlight. Once a sage hen whirred from almost beneath the wheels of
the car. Great bare buttes rose in front of them and marched slowly to
the rear.

Rowan asked no questions. He wondered where she was taking him, but he
was content to await developments so long as he could sit beside Ruth
with the youngster on his lap.

As for Ruth her blood began to beat faster with excitement. She was
trying an experiment. If it proved a failure she knew she would be very
greatly disappointed. Just now it seemed to her that she had set the
whole happiness of her life at stake. For if Rowan did not look at it as
she did, if his joy in it did not equal her hopes, they would fail by
just so much of that unity of mind for which she prayed.

They had left Rawlins before noon. It was well into the middle of the
afternoon before the driver of the car stopped at a little two-store
village deep in the hills.

“We get out here,” Ruth told her husband.

She settled with the owner of the car, and the man started back to
Rawlins. Opposite the store where they had stopped was a corral. Ruth
led the way to it. Three horses were eating hay from a rack.

Rowan looked at them, then at Ruth. He had recognized two of the
animals, and the third one showed on the flank the Circle Diamond brand.

“Am I to ask questions yet?” McCoy wanted to know.

“If you like,” she smiled.

“Are we to ride home on the pinto and old Duke?”

“Yes.”

“And the sorrel?”

“For a pack horse.”

“You have supplies and a tent?”

“Jennings brought them.”

He took a deep breath of delight. For three days and nights they would
be alone, buried together in the eternal hills. Such a home-coming as
this had been beyond his dreams.

“Are you—glad?” she asked, and her voice was tremulous.

“Glad!” He spoke a little roughly to hide his deep feeling. “If I could
only let you know how I feel! If I could!”

Her heart jumped with a sudden gladness. Rowan did not want to meet his
friends yet. He wanted to be alone with her and the baby. This was to
be, then, their true honeymoon, the seal of their love for each other.

Rowan saddled the horses and packed the third animal, throwing the
diamond hitch expertly. His wife watched him work. It was a joy to see
how the vigour of his spirit found expression in the economy of his
movements, in the certainty of his fingers, in the easy power of the
shoulders muscled so beautifully where the bronzed neck sloped into
them.

Presently they were moving into the bigger hills. They saw no more sage
chickens or antelope, but as they wound deeper into the mountains his
keen eye detected signs of life that escaped her observation. He made
her get down once to look at the trail of an elk.

“We’ve been following his trail from that pine back there,” McCoy told
her. “He’s a big fellow, and he was on his way down to water. But he got
scared right here, I expect. Maybe he heard us coming, or maybe he
smelled a bear. Anyhow, he plunged right into the aspens without waiting
to say good-bye.”

“How do you know all that? I believe you’re spoofing, as one of our
riders, an Englishman, sometimes tells me when I joke him.”

“He’s left signposts all along the way. There’s one track. See? And
there’s another. They’re big tracks and they are far apart. The spread
of his forefeet shows that he’s a bull. Now notice where he broke the
brush here and how trampled down the young aspens are. His horn ripped
the bark clear off this tree. See how far from the ground it is. That
shows his height.”

“Yes, but how do you know he was frightened?”

“He dived into the brush mighty reckless. Why didn’t he wait and turn
off there by the big rock where the going would be easy? I reckon he
thought he hadn’t time.”

They camped far up beside a mountain lake. He pitched tent in a
beautiful grove of wide-spaced pines through which a brook sang its way
down to the lake. While he unpacked and made preparations for supper
Ruth took the rod to try her luck. When she returned half an hour later
the tent was pegged down, young pine boughs cut and spread for a bed,
and the fire going for their meal. Rowan had the water on to boil for
coffee, and slices of bacon in the frying pan ready to set upon the
rocks that hedged in his coals.

“I got the big fellow on a royal coachman. He took it with a rush,” she
explained.

McCoy cleaned the fish in the brook and cooked them in the pan when the
bacon grease was ready. They ate with the healthy appetite of outdoor
animals in the hills.

Ruth told him the gossip of the ranch and of the neighbourhood. She
retailed to him what she knew of the politics of the county. It pleased
her that his interest in these far-away topics was as yet perfunctory.
His world just now consisted of three persons, and of the three she was
the most important.

“You’re going to lose Jennings,” she told him.

“Isn’t he satisfied?”

Little imps of mischief danced in her eyes. “Not quite, but I think he’s
going to be. He has notions of marrying a handsome widow with a sheep
ranch.”

Rowan looked at her quickly. “You don’t mean Norma Tait?”

“Don’t I? Why not?” She added a corollary. “Norma is growing younger
every day. She has learned to laugh again.”

“I’m glad. Life plays some queer tricks, doesn’t it? But maybe in the
end things even up.”

From where she was cuddling the romping boy Ruth looked up and made
confession. “At first I thought I wouldn’t bring him with us. I wanted
these first days to be ours—just yours and mine. But that was selfish.
He has as much right to you as I have. Now I’m glad he is here. You
won’t think him in the way, will you?”

It did not seem to him necessary to answer that in words. He took little
Rowan into his arms and held him there till the child fell asleep.

When the baby was safely tucked up in the tent Ruth and Rowan walked to
the brow of the hill and watched the murk mist settle down into the
mountain cañons and drive the purple glow into the lake. They saw the
stars come out one by one until the heavens were full of them.

“The day is dead,” he said at last in a low voice which held the throb
of pain.

She knew that in his thoughts he was breasting again the troubled waters
that had swept them so far apart. Her warm, strong little hand slipped
into his. Cheerfully she took up his words:

“Yes, the day is dead—the long day so full of sorrow for us both. But
now the night has blotted out our grief. We are at peace—alone—beneath
the everlasting stars.”

He could not yet quite escape the net. “I’ve been a poor makeshift of a
husband, Ruth. I’ve brought you much worry and sorrow. And I’ve put a
stain on you and the boy that never can be wiped out.”

“You’ve brought me all that makes life brave and beautiful.” She turned
her buoyant head, and in the white moonlight her smile flashed radiant
upon him. “A new day is on the way to us, Rowan. The sun will reach down
into the valley there where you and I have been lost in the fog, and all
the mist will vanish as if it had never been.”

The man caught his breath sharply. She was so fine! With superb courage
and patience she had fought for him. All good things that life had to
offer should be hers. Instead, he brought her the poison of the
penitentiary record to taint her future.

Something of this he tried to tell her. “I’m a pardoned convict. Your
friends will never let you forget that—never.”

“Your friends are my friends. I have no others,” she told him, eyes
aglow. Then added, in a murmur: “Oh, my dear, as if what anybody says
matters now between you and me.”

Her faith was enough to save them both. He threw away his prudent doubts
and snatched her to him. In his kisses the lover spoke.

Presently they walked back to the camp through the gathering darkness. A
great peace lay over their world.

                                THE END

                        There’s More to Follow!

    More stories of the sort you like; more, probably, by the author
    of this one; more than 500 titles all told by writers of
    world-wide reputation, in the Authors’ Alphabetical List which
    you will find on the _reverse side_ of the wrapper of this book.
    Look it over before you lay it aside. There are books here you
    are sure to want—some, possibly, that you have _always_ wanted.

    It is a _selected_ list; every book in it has achieved a certain
    measure of _success_.

    The Grosset & Dunlap list is not only the greatest Index of Good
    Fiction available, it represents in addition a generally
    accepted Standard of Value. It will pay you to

                 Look on the Other Side of the Wrapper!

    _In case the wrapper is lost write to the publishers for a
    complete catalog_

                        NOVELS OF FRONTIER LIFE
               W I L L I A M   M A C  L E O D   R A I N E
  May be had wherever books are sold.  Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list

                     =BIG-TOWN ROUND-UP, THE=
                     =BRAND BLOTTERS=
                     =BUCKY O’CONNOR=
                     =CROOKED TRAILS AND STRAIGHT=
                     =DAUGHTER OF THE DONS, A=
                     =DESERT’S PRICE, THE=
                     =FIGHTING EDGE, THE=
                     =GUNSIGHT PASS=
                     =HIGHGRADER, THE=
                     =IRONHEART=
                     =MAN FOUR-SQUARE, A=
                     =MAN-SIZE=
                     =MAVERICKS=
                     =OH, YOU TEX!=
                     =PIRATE OF PANAMA, THE=
                     =RIDGWAY OF MONTANA=
                     =ROADS OF DOUBT=
                     =SHERIFF’S SON, THE=
                     =STEVE YEAGER=
                     =TANGLED TRAILS=
                     =TEXAS RANGER, A=
                     =TROUBLED WATERS=
                     =VISION SPLENDID, THE=
                     =WYOMING=
                     =YUKON TRAIL, THE=

               GROSSET & DUNLAP,  _Publishers_,  NEW YORK

            R A F A E L   S A B A T I N I ’ S   N O V E L S
May be had wherever books are sold.   Ask for Grosset and Dunlap’s list.

Jesi, a diminutive city of the Italian Marches, was the birthplace of
Rafael Sabatini, and here he spent his early youth. The city is
glamorous with those centuries the author makes live again in his novels
with all their violence and beauty.

Mr. Sabatini first went to school in Switzerland and from there to Lycee
of Oporto, Portugal, and like Joseph Conrad, he has never attended an
English school. But English is hardly an adopted language for him, as he
learned it from his mother, an English woman who married the
Maestro-Cavaliere Vincenzo Sabatini.

Today Rafael Sabatini is regarded as “The Alexandre Dumas of Modern
Fiction.”

=MISTRESS WILDING=

A romance of the days of Monmouth’s rebellion. The action is rapid, its
style is spirited, and its plot is convincing.

=FORTUNE’S FOOL=

All who enjoyed the lurid lights of the French Revolution with
Scaramouche, or the brilliant buccaneering days of Peter Blood, or the
adventures of the Sea-Hawk, the corsair, will now welcome with delight a
turn in Restoration London with the always masterful Col. Randall
Holles.

=BARDELYS THE MAGNIFICENT=

An absorbing story of love and adventure in France of the early
seventeenth century.

=THE SNARE=

It is a story in which fact and fiction are delightfully blended and one
that is entertaining in high degree from first to last.

=CAPTAIN BLOOD=

The story has glamor and beauty, and it is told with an easy confidence.
As for Blood himself, he is a superman, compounded of a sardonic humor,
cold nerves, and hot temper. Both the story and the man are
masterpieces. A great figure, a great epoch, a great story.

=THE SEA-HAWK=

“The Sea-Hawk” is a book of fierce bright color and amazing adventure
through which stalks one of the truly great and masterful figures of
romance.

=SCARAMOUCHE=

Never will the reader forget the sardonic Scaramouche, who fights
equally well with tongue and rapier, who was “born with the gift of
laughter and a sense that the world was mad.”

               GROSSET & DUNLAP,  _Publishers_,  NEW YORK

                           TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple
spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors
occur.