a hard and weary voice. "Be my guardian. That
ought to sober any one. I think I shall need as many guardians as
possible. And--here comes your father. I have this dance with him."

Dickie got hurriedly to his feet. "Oh, gosh!" said he. He was obviously
and vividly a victim of panic. Sheila's small and very expressive face
showed a little gleam of amused contempt. "My guardian!" she seemed to
mock. To shorten the embarrassment of the moment she stepped quickly into
the elder Hudson's arm. He took her hand and began to pump it up and
down, keeping time to the music and counting audibly. "One, two, three."
To Dickie he gave neither a word nor look.

Sheila lifted her chin so that she could smile at Dickie over Pap's
shoulder. It was an indulgent and forgiving smile, but, meeting Dickie's
look, it went out.

The boy's face was scarlet, his body rigid, his lips tight. The eyes with
which he had overcome her smile were the hard eyes of a man. Sheila's
contempt had fallen upon him like a flame. In a few dreadful minutes as
he stood there it burnt up a part of his childishness.

Sheila went on, dancing like a mist in Hudson's arms. She knew that she
had done something to Dickie. But she did not know what it was that she
had done....

CHAPTER X

THE BEACON LIGHT

Out of the Wyoming Bad Lands--orange, turquoise-green, and murky blue, of
outlandish ridges, of streaked rock, of sudden, twisted canons, a country
like a dream of the far side of the moon--rode Cosme Hilliard in a
choking cloud of alkali dust. He rode down Crazy Woman's Hill toward the
sagebrush flat, where, in a half-circle of cloudless, snow-streaked
mountains, lay the town of Millings on its rapid glacier river.

Hilliard's black hair was powdered with dust; his olive face was gray;
dust lay thick in the folds of his neck-handkerchief; his pony matched
the gray-white road and plodded wearily, coughing and tossing his head in
misery from the nose-flies, the horse-flies, the mosquitoes, a swarm of
small, tormenting presences. His rider seemed to be charmed into
patience, and yet his aquiline face was not the face of a patient man. It
was young in a keen, hard fashion; the mouth and eyes were those of a
Spanish-American mother, golden eyes and a mouth originally beautiful,
soft, and cruel, which had been tightened and straightened by a man's
will and experience. It had been used so often for careless, humorous
smiling that the cruelty had been almost w