line of mountains beyond. You felt it more strongly when you
rode up to the gate of barbed-wire, spliced here and there, and having
an unexpected stubbornness to harry the patience of men who would pass
through it in haste. You grew unaccountably depressed if you rode on
past the stables and corrals to the house, where the door was closed
but never locked, and opened with a squeal of rusty hinges, if you
turned the brown earthenware knob and at the same instant pressed
sharply with your knee against the paintless panel.

You might notice the brown spot on the kitchen door where a man had
died; you might notice the brown spot, but unless you had been told the
grim story of the Lazy A, you would never guess the spot was a
bloodstain. Even though you guessed and shuddered, you would forget it
presently in the amazement with which you opened the door beyond and
looked in upon a room where the chill atmosphere of the whole place
could find no lodgment.

This was Jean's room, held sacred to her own needs and uses, in
defiance of the dreariness that compassed it close. A square of old
rag carpet covered the center of the floor, and beyond its border the
warped boards were painted a dull, pale green. The walls were ugly
with a cheap, flowered paper that had done its best to fade into
inoffensive neutral tints. Jean had helped, where she could, by
covering the intricate rose pattern with old prints cut from magazines
and with cheap, pretty souvenirs gleaned here and there and hoarded
jealously. And there were books, which caught the eyes and held them
even to forgetfulness of the paper.

You would laugh at Jean's room. Just at first you would laugh; after
that you would want to cry, or pat Jean on her hard-muscled, capable
shoulder; but if you knew Jean at all, you would not do either. First
you would notice an old wooden cradle, painted blue, that stood in a
corner. A button-eyed, blank-faced rag doll, the size of a baby at the
fist-sucking age, was tucked neatly under the red-and-white patchwork
quilt made to fit the cradle. Hanging directly over the cradle by a
stirrup was Jean's first saddle,--a cheap pigskin affair with harsh
straps and buckles, that her father had sent East for. Jean never had
liked that saddle, even when it was new. She used to stand perfectly
still while her father buckled it on the little buckskin pony she rode;
and she would laugh when he picked her up and tossed her into the seat.
She w