ed angrily, for the West is
chivalrous towards women.

Something near to madness possessed Orlando. No one had ever seen him
as he was at that moment. Down through generations had come to him some
iron thing that suddenly revealed itself in him, as something had just
suddenly revealed itself in Louise.

The other three men--two in the wagon and one beside his horse-stared
at him as though they had seen him for the first time. They were unready
for the passion that possessed him. Not a muscle of his body appeared to
move; he was as motionless as the trunk of a tree. But in his eyes and
his voice there was, as one of the ranchers said afterwards, "Hell--and
then some more."

"Listen to me," he said again, and his voice was low and husky now.
"Yesterday I was broncho-busting--"

Thereupon he told the whole story of what had happened since he had seen
Louise thrown from her chestnut on the prairie. He told how Louise was
too shaken and ill to attempt the journey back to Tralee, and how they
had camped where they were, near the dead horse.

As Orlando talked, the old man was seized by terrible hatred and
jealousy. "You needn't tell me the rest," he broke in, his hands
savagely opening and shutting. "I guess I understand everything."

The words had scarcely left his mouth when from the wagon a man said:
"Wait--wait, Mister. I got something to say."

He sprang to the ground, and ran between Mazarine and Orlando.

"This is where I come in," he said, as Louise's face appeared at an
upper window, and she listened. "You don't know me. Well, I know you.
Everybody knows you, and nobody likes you. I know what happened last
night. I'm a brother of your fellow Christian Rigby, the druggist, over
there in Askatoon. He's a Methodist. I'm not. I'm only good. I been a
lot o' things, and nothing in the end. Well, you hearken to my tale.

"I was tramping with my bundle on my back acrost the prairie to Askatoon
from Waterway. I'm a sundowner, as they say in Australia. When the
sun goes down, I down to my bed wherever I be on the prairie. I was
asleep-I'd been half drunk--when the chestnut threw your wife and broke
its leg; but I was awake when he rode up." He pointed to Orlando. "I
was awake, and so I watched. I knew who she was; I knew who he was." He
pointed to Orlando again. "I guessed I'd see something. I did.

"I watched them two people all night. There was a moon. I could see. I
wasn't fifteen feet from her all night, and I j