s covered the walls; more rugs and pelts
lay on the floor. Indian blankets partitioned off one end for her
sleeping room.

"You had something to tell me," she observed, after he had remained
silent for the space of a minute, sitting in the chair she had
indicated and gazing into the fire.

"And I'll have to start it a little different from the way I first
counted on," he said. "Have any of the boys mentioned my name to you?"

She shook her head and waited for him to go on.

"You won't care much to hear it," he announced. "I'd thought some of
spending two years here under some other name--but perhaps it's better
to come out in the open--don't you think?"

The girl had straightened in her chair and was leaning toward him, her
face white and her gray eyes boring straight into the man's. She knew
now who he was,--the man she had more reason to despise than all others
on earth combined. Of the Harris family she knew nothing at all except
that her father's lifelong regret had been the fact that the
partnership between himself and his oldest friend, William Harris, had
never been brought to pass. And this regret had, in the end, led him
to try and cement that arrangement in the second generation. Five
years before his trail had crossed that of the elder Harris for the
first time since he had taken over the Three Bar brand; and when his
will had been read she had known that on the occasion of that visit his
old friend had played upon this sentiment to trick him into making it.
On all sides of her she had evidence that men were wolves who preyed
upon the interests of others, and there was not a doubt that the father
of the man before her had preyed upon her interests through the
sentiment of her parent; no other possible theory could account for the
strange disposal of his property, the will dated and signed at the
exact time of his visit to the Harrises.

The tenseness of her pose was replaced by lethargic indifference and
she relaxed into her chair.

"I've known all the time you would come," she said.

"It's too bad, Billie," he said. "It's tough having me wished on to
you this way."

"Don't play that game with me!" she flared. "Of course you've
disproved every drop of human decency in advance."

"It sure looms up like that on the surface," he admitted ruefully.
"But I didn't have a hand in cinching you this way."

"You could have proved that by staying away. I wrote you a year ago
that I'd donate you a