ience sustained the charge, she resented the accusation
and proceeded deliberately to add to its justice; which did not make
Ford any the happier, you may be sure. For when a man reaches that
mental state which causes him to carry a girl's ribbon folded carefully
into the most secret compartment of his pocketbook, and to avoid the
girl herself and yet feel like committing assault and battery with
intent to kill, because some other man occasionally rides with her for
an hour or two, he is extremely sensitive to averted glances and chilly
tones and monosyllabic conversation.

Since the day before, when she had ridden as far as the stage road with
Dick, when he went to the line-camp, Ford had been fighting the desire
to saddle a horse and ride to town; and the thing that lured him
townward confronted him now in that gray stone jug with the brown neck
and handle.

He lifted the jug, shook it tentatively, pulled out the cork with a jerk
that was savage, and looked around the room for some place where he
might empty the contents and have done with temptation; but there was no
receptacle but the stove, so he started to the door with it, meaning to
pour it on the ground. Mose just then shambled past the window, and Ford
sat down to wait until the cook was safe in the kitchen. And all the
while the cork was out of that jug, so that the fumes of the whisky rose
maddeningly to his nostrils, and the little that he had swallowed
whipped the thirst-devil to a fury of desire.

In the kitchen, Mose rattled pans and hummed a raucous tune under his
breath, and presently he started again for the stable. Dick, desultorily
bracing a leaning post of one of the corrals, saw him coming and
grinned. He glanced toward the bunk-house, where Ford still lingered,
and the grin grew broader. After that he went all around the corral with
his hammer and bucket of nails, tightening poles and braces and,
incidentally, keeping an eye upon the bunk-house; and while he worked,
he whistled and smiled by turns. Dick was in an unusually cheerful mood
that day.

Mose came shuffling up behind him and stood with his stiff leg thrust
forward and his hands rolled up in his apron. Dick could see that he had
something clasped tightly under the wrappings.

"Say, that he-hen--she laid twice in the same place!" Mose announced
confidentially. "Got 'em both--for m'mince pies!" He waggled his head,
winked twice with his left eye, and went back to the bunk-house.

St