ttomed, rushing stream that
tumbled and brawled its way down the long slope of the country.

Time after time the girl shuddered and gripped her saddle as she
pushed on past a place where the undergrowth came right down to the
trail, and six feet away the path dropped off thirty feet to the rock
bed of the stream. She caught herself leaning across the saddle to
look down. A man might have stood in the brush as Jeffrey came
carelessly along. And that man might have swung a cant-stick once--a
single blow at the back of the head--and Jeffrey would have gone
stumbling and falling over the edge of the path. There would not be
even the sign of a struggle.

Once she stopped and took hold of her nerves.

"Ruth Lansing," she scolded aloud, "you're making a little fool of
yourself. You've been down there in that convent living among a lot of
girls, and you're forgetting that these hills are your own, that there
never was and never is any danger in them for us who belong here. Just
keep that in your mind and hustle on about your business."

When she came out into the open country near the head of the Fork she
met old Darius Wilbur turning his cattle to pasture. The old man did
not know the girl, but he knew the Lansing colt and he looked sharply
at the steaming withers of Brom Bones before he would give any
attention to her question.

"What's the tarnation hurry, young lady?" he inquired exasperatingly.
"Jeff Whiting? Yes, he was here yest'day. Why?"

"Did he start home by this trail?" asked Ruth eagerly. "Or did he go
on up country?"

"He went on up country."

Ruth headed Brom Bones up the trail again without a word.

"But stay!" the old man yelled after her, when she had gone twenty
yards. "He came back again."

Ruth pulled around so sharply that she nearly threw Brom Bones to his
knees.

"Didn't ask me that," the old man chortled, as she came back, "but if
I didn't tell you I reckon you'd run that colt to death up the
hills."

"Then he _did_ take the Forks trail back."

"Didn't do that, nuther."

"Then where _did_ he go? Please tell me!" cried the girl, the tears of
vexation rising into her voice.

"Why, what's the matter, girl? He crossed the Fork just there," said
the old man, pointing, "and he took over the hill for French Village.
You his wife? You're mighty young."

But Ruth did not hear. She and Brom Bones were already slipping down
the rough bank in a shower of dirt and stones.

In the middle of th