sly strives to guard her border. And to Las Palmas had come the
bride and groom to live, to love, and to rear their children.

But rarely has there been a shorter honeymoon, seldom a swifter
awakening. Within six months "Young Ed" had killed his wife's love and
had himself become an alcoholic. Others of his father's vices revived,
and so multiplied that what few virtues the young man had inherited
were soon choked. The change was utterly unforeseen; its cause was
rooted too deeply in the past to be remedied. Maturity had marked an
epoch with "Young Ed"; marriage had been the mile-post where his whole
course veered abruptly.

To the bride the truth had come as a stunning tragedy. She was
desperately frightened, too, and lived a nightmare life, the while she
tried in every way to check the progress of that disintegration which
was eating up her happiness. The wreck of her hopes and glad imaginings
left her sick, bewildered, in the face of "the thing that couldn't."

Nor had the effect of this transformation in "Young Ed" been any less
painful to his father. For a time the old man refused to credit it, but
finally, when the truth was borne in upon him unmistakably, and he saw
that Las Palmas was in a fair way to being ruined through the boy's
mismanagement, the old cattleman had risen in his wrath. The ranch had
been his pride as Ed had been his joy; to see them both go wrong was
more than he could bear. There had been a terrible scene, and a
tongue-lashing delivered in the language of early border days. There
had followed other visits from Austin, senior, other and even bitterer
quarrels; at last, when the girl-wife remained firm in her refusal to
divorce her husband, the understanding had been reached by which the
management of Las Palmas was placed absolutely in her hands.

Of course, the truth became public, as it always does. This was a new
country--only yesterday it had been the frontier, and even yet a
frontier code of personal conduct to some extent prevailed.
Nevertheless, "Young Ed" Austin's life became a scorn and a hissing
among his neighbors. They were not unduly fastidious, these neighbors,
and they knew that hot blood requires more than a generation to cool,
but everything Ed did outraged them. In trying to show their sympathy
for his wife they succeeded in wounding her more deeply, and Alaire
withdrew into herself. She became almost a recluse, and fenced herself
away not only from the curious, but also f