f her. What was the girl like
whose actions functioned in courage and independence and harsh
hostility?

Life had imposed on her a hard finish. But it was impossible for Roy
to believe that this slender, tawny child of the wind and the sun could
at heart be bitter and suspicious. He had seen the sweet look of her
dark-lashed eyes turned in troubled appeal upon her father. There had
been one hour when he had looked into her face and found it radiant,
all light and response and ecstasy. The emotion that had pulsed
through her then had given the lie to the sullen silence upon which she
fell back as a defense. If the gods were good to her some day, the red
flower of passion would bloom on her cheeks and the mists that dulled
her spirit would melt in the warm sunshine of love.

So the dreamer wove the web of his fancy about her, and the mystery
that was Beulah Rutherford lay near his thoughts when he walked or rode
or ate or talked.

Nor did it lessen his interest in her that he felt she despised him.
The flash of her scornful eyes still stung him. He was beyond caring
whether she thought him a spy. He knew that the facts justified him in
his attempt to save Dingwell. But he writhed that she should believe
him a coward. It came too close home. And since the affray in the
arcade, no doubt she set him down, too, as a drunken rowdy.

He made the usual vain valorous resolutions of youth to show her his
heroic quality. These served at least one good purpose. If he could
not control his fears, he could govern his actions. Roy forced himself
by sheer will power to ride alone into Battle Butte once a week.
Without hurry he went about his business up and down Mission Street.

The town watched him and commented. "Got sand in his craw, young
Beaudry has," was the common verdict. Men wondered what would happen
when he met Charlton and Meldrum. Most of them would have backed John
Beaudry's son both in their hopes and in their opinion of the result.

Into saloons and gambling-houses word was carried, and from there to
the hillmen of the park by industrious peddlers of trouble, that the
young cattleman from the Lazy Double D could be found by his enemies
heeled for business whenever they wanted him.

Charlton kept morosely to the park. If he had had nothing to consider
except his own inclination, he would have slapped the saddle upon a
cowpony and ridden in to Battle Butte at once. But Beulah had laid an
interdic