nce that night when
the little brown bird had died! Though perhaps that was because she
had managed to keep out of his way.

"I see you've been staking yourself to a new bridle," Carl began in a
tone quite as sour as his look. "You must have bought out all the tin
decorations they had in stock, didn't you?"

Jean swung up into the saddle before she looked at him. "If I did,
it's my own affair," she retorted. "I paid for the tin decorations
with my own money."

"Oh, you did! Well, you might have been in better business than paying
for that kind of thing. You might," he sneered up at her, "have been
paying for your keep these last three years, if you've got more money
of your own than you know what to do with."

Jean could not ride off under the sting of that gratuitous insult. She
held Pard quiet and looked down at him with hate in her eyes. "I
expect," she said in a queer, quiet wrath, "to prove before long that
my own money has been paying for my 'keep' these last three years; for
that and for other things that did not benefit me in the least."

"I'd like to know what you mean by that!" Carl caught Pard by the
bridle-rein and looked up at her in a white fury that startled even
Jean, accustomed as she was to his sudden rages that contrasted with
his sullen attitude toward the world.

"What do you think I would mean? Let go my bridle. I don't want to
quarrel with you."

"What did you mean by proving--what do you expect to prove?" His hand
was heavy on the rein, so that Pard began to fret under the restraint.
"You've got to quit running around all over the country with them show
folks, and stay at home and behave yourself. You've got to quit hanging
out at the Lazy A. I've stood as much as I'm going to stand of your
performances. You get down off that horse and go into the house and
behave yourself; that's what you'll do! If you haven't got any shame
or decency--"

Jean scarcely knew what she did, just then. She must have dug Pard
with her spurs, because the first thing that she realized was the lunge
he gave. Carl's hold slipped from the rein, as he was jerked sidewise.
He made an ineffective grab at Jean's skirt, and he called her a name
she had never heard spoken before in her life. A rod or so away she
pulled up and turned to face him, but the words she would have spoken
stuck in her throat. She had never seen Carl Douglas look like that;
she had seen him when he was furious, she had seen hi