? I
tell you that you're made in His image. Bite on that thought hard
whenever you're up against it an' want to hide yorese'f in a hole. Every
time you get too s-scared to play yore hand out, you're playin' it low
down on yore C-creator."

Bob came to another phase of the situation. "What about--June?"

"Well, what about her?"

"She's gone with Houck. He'll not take her home."

"What d' you m-mean not take her home? Where'll he take her?"

"I don't know. That's it. I'm responsible for her. I brought her here. He
means to--to make her live with him."

"Keep her by force--that what you're drivin' at?"

"No-o. Not exactly. He's got a hold over her father somehow. She's worn
out fightin' him. When she ran away with me she played her last card.
She'll have to give up now. He's so big an' strong, such a bulldog for
gettin' his way, that she can't hold him off. June ain't seventeen yet.
She's gettin' a mighty rotten deal, looks like. First off, livin' alone
the way she an' Tolliver do, then Houck, then me, an' finally Houck
again."

"I'll notify Tolliver how things are," Blister said. "Get word to him
right away. We'll have to take a lead from him about June."

"I was thinkin'--"

"Onload it."

"Mrs. Gillespie was so kind to her. Maybe she could talk to June an' take
her at the hotel--if June an' Houck haven't gone yet."

"You said something then, boy. I'll see Mollie right away. She'll sure
fix it."

They were too late. The wrangler at Kilburn's corral had already seen
Houck hitch up and drive away with June, they presently learned.

CHAPTER XI

JUNE PRAYS

When June turned away from her husband of an hour she abandoned hope. She
had been like a child lost in the forest. A gleam of light from a window
had cheered her for a moment, but it had flickered out and left her in
the darkness.

In one sense June was innocent as an infant. She knew nothing of feminine
blandishments, of the coquetry which has become so effective a weapon in
the hands of modern woman when she is not hampered by scruples. But she
had lived too close to nature not to be aware of carnal appetite.

It is a characteristic of frontier life that one learns to face facts.
June looked at them now, clear-eyed, despair in her heart. As she walked
beside Jake to the corral, as she waited for him to hitch up the broncos,
as she rode beside him silently through the gathering night, the girl's
mind dwelt on that future which was closing