ed to her tent when the sun was low, for
the thought of sleep had left her with Smith's discussion of the blight
of the Boyles upon that land. There appeared little use in trying to
stand out against the son of this great obstructionist who, with a few
friends and servitors, had kept the state for years as another man might
keep his field. Others might look into the enclosure and see the
opportunities which were being wasted, but none might touch.

If the gang were deprived of their chief weapon of menace, namely, the
hold which the Federal laws had upon her, Dr. Slavens might be able to
withstand their covetous attempt to dispossess him of his valuable
holdings. She knew that Slavens would not stand by and see her indicted
by the creatures of the Boyles, nor any more nearly threatened with the
disgrace of prison than she was at that hour. He would put down
everything to save her, even now when the fruition of his hard-lived
years was at hand.

She sat in the failing sun, scooping a little furrow with the heel of
her boot as she reflected. She still wore the divided riding-skirt which
she had worn the day before on her excursion into the hills, and with
her leather-weighted hat she looked quite like any other long-striding
lady of the sagebrush. Sun and wind, and more than a week of bareheaded
disregard of complexion had put a tinge of brown on her neck and face,
not much to her advantage, although she was well enough with it.

How was it, she wrangled in her mind, that the lines of their lives had
crossed in that place, this physician's and hers? Perhaps it was only
the trick of chance, or perhaps it was the fulfilment of the plan drawn
for them to live by from the first. But it seemed unfair to Dr. Slavens,
who had made a discouraging beginning, that he must be called upon to
surrender the means of realizing on his ambition when he held them in
his hand, and for no other purpose than to save her, a stranger.

It was unfair of fate to lay their lines so, and it would be doubly
ignoble and selfish of her to permit him to make the sacrifice. Dr.
Slavens cared enough for her to ask her to marry him, and to expect her
to marry him, although she had given him no word to confirm such
expectation. He had taken hold of that matter to shape it for himself,
and he intended to marry her, that was plain.

Her heart had jumped and turned warm with a softness toward him when he
spoke of "this family" so naturally and frankly to