e for the safety of everyone that
steps under my roof."

"I know, but I must go home. They have most likely been searching the
trails for me. Father would telephone"--she was desperate for
excuses--"to Belle and learn I'd started home--and the storm----"

He did not hesitate to cut her off: "Afraid of me, eh?"

The contempt and resentment in his words stirred her. Without
answering she sprang as well as she could in her wet habit from the
saddle and faced him, close enough almost to see into his eyes in the
darkness. From the fireplace inside a gleam of light, from the blaze
that Hawk had started, piercing the tiny window sash shot across her
face: "Does this look like it?" she demanded, her eyes seeking his. He
was stubborn. "Answer me!" she exclaimed in a tone of a dictator.

"Then why don't you do what I ask you to do instead of giving me a
story about Barb Doubleday telephoning?" he demanded. She winced at
her mistake in urging an impossible thing. She felt when she made it,
Laramie would not credit so wild an assertion. Her father would not
take the trouble to telephone to save even a bunch of his steers from a
storm, much less his daughter. "But there may be others over there,"
Laramie added grimly, "that would."

The reference to the man he hated--Van Horn--was too plain to be passed
over. "Now," she returned, as if to close--and standing her ground as
she spoke, "have you said all the mean things you can think of?"

He evaded her thrust. "The wires are down a night like this, anyway,"
he objected. "If you'd be as honest with me as I am with you we'd get
along without saying mean things."

"I am honest with you. Can't you see that a woman can't always be as
open in what she says as a man?"

"What do I know about a woman?"

"But since you make everything hard for me I shall be open with you."

"Come inside then and say it."

"I couldn't be any wetter than I am and if I've got to say this to one
man I won't say it to two: You ask me to stay all night in your cabin
as it I were a small boy--instead of what I am."

"You could take all the shooting irons on the place into your own room
with you."

"I shouldn't need to. But what would people say of me when they heard
of it? That I had stayed here all night! You know what they can do to
a woman's reputation in this country--you know how some evil tongues
talk about Belle. I would like to keep at least my reputation out of
this bitter wa