me others. He was thinking of
the day of her arrival in the camp, and the scene that had followed
Buck's discovery of her. He could never forgive that scene, or those
who took part in it. Buck, more surely than anybody else, he could
never forgive. He had always hated Buck and his friend the Padre. They
had been in a position to hand out benefits to the starving camp, and
patronage was an intolerable insult to a man of his peculiar venom.
The thought that he owed those men anything was anathema to him, for
he knew in his heart that they despised him.

Since the day of Joan's coming he had pondered upon how he could pay
Buck something of that which he owed him for the insult that still
rankled. He had been called an "outlaw parson," and the truth of the
appellation made the insult only the more maddening. Nothing else
could have hurt the man so much as to remind him of the downfall which
had reduced him to an "outlaw parson."

He had told Buck then that he would not forget. He might have added
that he could not forget. So, ever since, he had cast about for any
and every means of hurting the man who had injured him, and his
curiously mean mind set him groping in the remotest and more subtle
directions. Nor had it taken him long to locate the most vulnerable
point in Buck's armor. He had realized something of the possibilities
at the first coming of Joan. He had seen then the effect of the
beautiful inanimate body upon the man's susceptibilities. It had been
instantaneous. Then had come that scene at the farm, and Buck's
further insult over the gold which he had hated to see pass into the
girl's possession. It was then that the first glimmer of an opening
for revenge had shown itself to him.

The rest was the simple matter of camp gossip. Here he learned,
through the ridicule bestowed upon Montana Ike and Pete, who were
always trying to outdo each other in their rivalry for the favors of
Joan, and who never missed an opportunity of visiting the farm when
they knew they would find her there, of Buck's constant attendance
upon Joan. He needed very little of his evil imagination to tell him
the rest. With Buck in love with the woman it was a simple enough
process to his scheming mind to drive home his revenge upon the
man--through her.

The necessary inspiration had come that night, when the four women
vultures, plying their trade of preying upon the men in his bar, had
reached a sufficient degree of drunkenness. Then it