de a chair, put his chin on the
back cross-bar, and grinned malevolently from one to another.

"What's come over this happy family? It don't look so joyous all of a
sudden. Y'u don't need to worry, ma'am, I'll send him back to y'u all
right--alive or dead. With his shield or on it, y'u know. Ha! ha!"

"You will not go with him?" It was wrung from Helen as a low cry, and
struck her lover's heart.

"I must," he answered. "I gave him my word, y'u remember."

"But why keep it? You know what he is, how absolutely devoid of honor."

"That is not quite the question, is it?" he smiled.

"Would he keep his word to you?"

"Not if a lie would do as well. But that isn't the point, either."

"It's quixotic--foolish--worse than that--ridiculous," she implored.

"Perhaps, but the fact remains that I am pledged."

"'I could not love thee, dear, so much
Loved I not honor more,'"

murmured the villain in the chair, apparently to the ceiling. "Dear Ned,
he always was the soul of honor. I'll have those lines carved on his
tombstone."

"You see! He is already bragging that he means to kill you," said the
girl.

"I shall go armed," the sheepman answered.

"Yes, but he will take you into the mountain fastnesses, where the men
that serve him will do his bidding. What is one man among so many?"

"Two men, ma'am," corrected the foreman.

"What's that?" The outlaw broke off the snatch of opera he was singing
to slew his head round at McWilliams.

"I said two. Any objections, seh?"

"Yes. That wasn't in the contract."

"We're giving y'u surplusage, that's all. Y'u wanted one of us, and y'u
get two. We don't charge anything for the extra weight," grinned Mac.

"Oh, Mac, will you go with him?" cried Helen, with shining eyes.

"Those are my present intentions, Miss Helen," laughed her foreman.

Whereat Nora emerged from the background and flung herself on him. "Y'u
can't go, Jim! I won't have you go!" she cried.

The young man blushed a beautiful pink, and accepted gladly this overt
evidence of a reconciliation. "It's all right, honey. Don't y'u think
two big, grown-up men are good to handle that scalawag? Sho! Don't y'u
worry."

"Miss Nora can come, too, if she likes," suggested he of the Shoshones.
"Looks like we would have quite a party. Won't y'u join us, too,
Miss Messiter, according to the original plan?" he said, extending an
ironical invitation.

"I think we had better cut it down to me alone. We'll no