st.

She knew that Jerry Boyle had camped somewhere near the stage-road,
where he could watch her coming and going to carry the demand on Dr.
Slavens which he had left with her. He would be watching the road even
now, and he would watch all day, or perhaps ride up there to learn the
reason when he failed to see her pass. She tied back the flaps of her
tent to let the wind blow through, and to show any caller that she was
not at home, then saddled her horse and rode away into the hills. It
needed a day of solitude, she thought, to come to a conclusion on the
question how she was to face it out with Jerry Boyle. Whether to stay
and fight the best that she was able, or to turn and fly, leaving all
her hopes behind, was a matter which must be determined before night.

In pensive mood she rode on, giving her horse its head, but following a
general course into the east. As her wise animal picked its way over the
broken ground, she turned the situation in her mind.

There was no doubt that she had been indiscreet in the manner of taking
up her homestead, but she could not drive herself to the belief that she
had committed a moral crime. And the doctor. He would drop all his
prospects in the land that he held if she should call on him, she well
believed. He was big enough for a sacrifice like that, with never a
question in his honest eyes to cloud the generosity of the act. If she
had him by to advise her in this hour, and to benefit by his wisdom and
courage, she sighed, how comfortable it would be.

Perhaps she should have gone, mused she, pursuing this thought, to his
place, and put the thing before him in all its ugliness, with no
reservations, no attempts to conceal or defend. He could have told her
how far her act was punishable. Perhaps, at the most, it would mean no
more than giving up the claim, which was enough, considering all that
she had founded on it. Yes, she should have ridden straight to Dr.
Slavens; that would have been the wiser course.

Considering whether she would have time to go and return that day,
wasted as the morning was, she pulled up her horse and looked around to
see if she could estimate by her location the distance from her camp.
That she had penetrated the country east of the river farther than ever
before, was plain at a glance. The surroundings were new to her. There
was more vegetation, and marks of recent grazing everywhere.

She mounted the hill-crest for a wider survey, and there in a