y from Slow Down Ranch. The night had done something to
Louise which was making itself felt.

"You think you can come back here after what you've done--after where
you've been--the likes of you!" Mazarine snarled unmoving. "You think
you can!"

Louise turned swiftly to look at Orlando and the three men, one
riding and two in the wagon, as though to call them in evidence of her
innocence; but there came to her eyes a sudden fire of courage, and she
turned again to Mazarine and said:

"I'm your wife by the law--just as much your wife to-day as yesterday.
You treat me before strangers as if I were a criminal. I'm not going to
be treated that way. I've got my rights. Stand back and let me in--stand
back, Joel Mazarine," she said, and she took a step forward, child
though she was, as if she would strike him. Something had transformed
her.

To Orlando she seemed scarcely real. The shrinking, colourless child of
a few weeks had suddenly become a woman--and such a woman!

"I'll tell you in my own time where I've been and what I've done," she
continued. "I want to go upstairs. Stand out of the doorway."

There was a movement behind her. A man in the wagon and the one on his
horse seemed to grow angry and threatening. The ranchman dropped from
his horse. Only Orlando stood cool, quiet and ominously watchful.
Mazarine did not fail to notice the movement of the two men.

Presently Orlando's voice said slowly and calmly: "Stand back, Mazarine.
Let her go to her room. This is a free country, and she's free in her
own house. It's her house until you've proved she's got no right there."
Then he added with sharp insistence and menace: "Stand back--damn you,
Mazarine!"

Orlando did not move as he spoke, but there was a look in his face which
an enemy would not care to see. Mazarine, in spite of his rage, quailed
before the sharp, menacing voice so little in tune with its reputation
for giggling, and stepping back, he let Louise pass. Then he plunged
forward out of the doorway.

"That's right. Come outside," said Orlando scornfully. "Come out into
the open." His voice became lower. There was something deadly in it, boy
as he was. "Come out, you hypocrite, and listen to what I've got to
say. Listen to the truth I've got to tell you. If you don't listen,
I'll horsewhip you, that'd horsewhip a woman, till you can't stand--you
loathsome old dog.... Yes, he took his horsewhip to her yesterday,"
he added to the spectators, who mutter