with absentees.

When Phyllis came into the big room where the dancing was in progress,
her dark eye swept the room without finding him for whom she looked.
There were many there she knew, not more than two or three whom she had
never met, but among them all she looked at none who was a magnet for
her eyes. Keller had not yet arrived.

Before she had taken her seat she had three engagements to dance. Jim
Yeager had waylaid her; so, too, had Slim and Curly. She waltzed first
with Phil, and after he had done his duty he left her to the besiegings
of half a score of riders for various ranches who came and went and came
again. She joked with them, joined the merry banter that went on,
laughed at them when they grew sentimental, always with a sprightly
devotion to the matter in hand.

Nevertheless, though they did not know it, her mind was full of him who
had not yet appeared. Why was he late? Could he have missed the way by
any chance? And later--as the hours passed without bringing him--could
anything have happened to him? More than once her troubled gaze fell
upon Brill Healy with a brooding question in it. The man had received
only the day before his party's nomination for sheriff, and he was doing
the gracious to all the women and children.

He had many of the qualities that make for popularity, even though he
was often overbearing, revengeful, and sullen. When he chose he could be
hail fellow well met in a way Malpais found flattering to its vanity.
Now he was apparently having the time of his life. Wherever he moved an
eddy of laughter and gayety went with him. The eyes of men as well as
women admiringly followed his dark, lithe, picturesque figure.

Phyllis had declined to dance with him, giving as an excuse a full
programme, and for an instant his face had blazed with the suppressed
rage in him. He had bowed and swaggered away with a malicious sneer. Her
judgment told her it was folly to connect this man with the absence of
her lover, but that look of malevolent triumph had none the less shaken
her heart. What had he meant? It seemed less a threat for the future
than a gloating over some evil already done.

When she could endure them no longer she carried her fears to Jim
Yeager. They were dancing, but she made an excuse of fatigue to drop
out.

"First time I ever knew you to play out at a dance, Phyl," he rallied
her.

"It isn't that. I want to say something to you," she whispered.

He had a guess what