irling thoughts. But if my mind sometimes
played me false my eyes never had. I thought I saw Diane Sampson die in
Steele's arms; I could have sworn his heart was breaking; and mine was
on the point of breaking, too.

How beautiful they were! How strong, how mercifully strong, yet shaken,
he seemed! How tenderly, hopelessly, fatally appealing she was in that
hour of her broken life! If I had been Steele I would have forsworn my
duty, honor, name, service for her sake. Had I mind enough to divine his
torture, his temptation, his narrow escape? I seemed to feel them, at
any rate, and while I saw him with a beautiful light on his face, I saw
him also ghastly, ashen, with hands that shook as they groped around
her, loosing her, only to draw her convulsively back again. It was the
saddest sight I had ever seen. Death was nothing to it. Here was the
death of happiness. He must wreck the life of the woman who loved him
and whom he loved. I was becoming half frantic, almost ready to cry out
the uselessness of this scene, almost on the point of pulling them
apart, when Sally dragged me away. Her clinging hold then made me feel
perhaps a little of what Miss Sampson's must have been to Steele.

How different the feeling when it was mine! I could have thrust them
apart, after all my schemes and tricks, to throw them together, in
vague, undefined fear of their embrace. Still, when love beat at my own
pulses, when Sally's soft hand held me tight and she leaned to me--that
was different. I was glad to be led away--glad to have a chance to pull
myself together. But was I to have that chance? Sally, who in the stife
of emotion had been forgotten, might have to be reckoned with. Deep
within me, some motive, some purpose, was being born in travail. I did
not know what, but instinctively I feared Sally. I feared her because I
loved her. My wits came back to combat my passion. This hazel-eyed girl,
soft, fragile creature, might be harder to move than the Ranger. But
could she divine a motive scarcely yet formed in my brain? Suddenly I
became cool, with craft to conceal.

"Oh, Russ! What's the matter with you?" she queried quickly. "Can't
Diane and Steele, you and I ride away from this bloody, bad country? Our
own lives, our happiness, come first, do they not?"

"They ought to, I suppose," I muttered, fighting against the insidious
sweetness of her. I knew then I must keep my lips shut or betray myself.

"You look so strange. Russ, I woul