well as though he had witnessed the act that Smith had
hammered the frogs of Molly's feet until they were bruised and sore as
boils. Her lameness would not be permanent--she would recover in a week or
two; but the abuse of, the cruelty to, the little mare he loved filled
Ralston with a hatred for Smith as relentless and deep as Smith's own.

"A man who could do a thing like that," said Ralston through his set
teeth, "is no common cur! He's wolf--all wolf! He isn't staying here for
love, alone. There's something else. And I swear before the God that made
me, I'll find out what it is, and land him, before I quit!"

XIII

SUSIE'S INDIAN BLOOD

Coming leisurely up the path from the corrals, Smith saw Susie sitting on
the cottonwood log, wrapped in her mother's blanket. She was huddled in a
squaw's attitude. He eyed her; he never had seen her like that before.
But, knowing Indians better, possibly, than he knew his own race, Smith
understood. He recognized the mood. Her Indian blood was uppermost. It
rose in most half-breeds upon occasion. Sometimes under the influence of
liquor it cropped out, sometimes anger brought it to the surface. He had
seen it often--this heavy, smouldering sullenness.

Smith stood with his hands in his pockets, looking at her. He felt more at
ease with her than ever before.

"What are you sullin' about, Susie?"

She did not answer. Her pertness, her Anglo-Saxon vivacity, were gone; her
face was wooden, expressionless; her restless eyes slow-moving and dull;
her cheek-bones, always noticeably high, looked higher, and her skin was
murky and dark.

"You look like a squaw with that sull on," he ventured again, and there
was satisfaction in his face.

It was something to know that, after all, Susie was "Injun"--"pure
Injun." The scheme which had lain dormant in his brain now took active
shape. He had wanted Susie's help, but each time that he had tried to
conciliate her, his overtures had ended in a fresh rupture. Now her
stinging tongue was dumb, and there was no aggressiveness in her manner.

Smith, laying his hand heavily upon her shoulder, sat down beside her, and
a flash, a transitory gleam, shone for an instant in her dull eyes; but
she did not move or change expression.

He said in a low voice:

"What you need is stirrin' up, Susie."

He watched her narrowly, and continued:

"You ought to get into a game that has some ginger in it. This here life
is too tame for a girl lik