fe.

The realization of their need for each other was the natural outcome of
the position of each, and the fact that, whatever happened, Juliet found
herself forced to espouse Bud's cause.

In that interview with her father she had come squarely to the parting of
the ways, and had chosen the road that meant life and happiness to her.
The law that human intellects will seek their own intellectual level,
providing the person is sound in principle, had worked out in her case,
and, once she had made her decision, she clung to it with all the
steadfastness of a strong and passionate nature.

It was Bissell's discovery of a new and intimate relation between his
daughter and the sheepman that had resulted in the latter's close
confinement, and from the time that this occurred the two had seen nothing
of each other except an occasional glimpse at a distance when Bud was
taken out for a little exercise.

To-night, therefore, as Larkin sat contemplating the scene to be enacted
at dawn, his sense of shame increased a hundredfold, for he knew that, as
long as she lived, Julie could not forget the occurrence.

It should not be thought that all this while he had not formulated plans
of escape. Many had come to him, but had been quickly dismissed as
impracticable. Day and night one of the Bar T cowboys watched him. And
even though he had been able to effect escape from his room, he knew that
without a horse he was utterly helpless on the broad, level stretches of
prairie. And to take a horse from the Bar T corral would lay him open to
that greatest of all range crimes--horse-stealing.

To-night his guards had been doubled. One paced up and down outside his
window and the other sat in the dining-room on which his door opened.

Now, at ten o'clock the entire Bar T outfit was asleep. Since placing the
bunk-house at the disposal of the cowmen from other ranches, the punchers
slept on the ground--rolled in their blankets as they always did when
overtaken by night on the open range.

At ten-thirty Bud put out his candle, undressed, and went to bed. But he
could not sleep. His mind reverted to Hard-winter Sims and the sheep camp
by the Badwater. He wondered whether the men from Montana had arrived
there yet, and, most intensely of all, he wondered whether Ah Sin had got
safely through with his message.

He calculated that the Chinaman must have arrived three days before unless
unexpectedly delayed, and he chafed at the apparent lack