other I've got nothing to say but
'God bless you.' You're a white man. You're decent. I believe you'll
be kind to her."

"I'm going to try to the best I know, Mr. Rutherford."

"You'd better, young man." The big rancher swallowed a lump in his
throat and passed to another phase of the subject. "Boots was telling
me about how it kinder stuck in yore craw to marry the daughter of Hal
Rutherford, seeing as how things happened the way they did. Well, I'm
going to relieve yore mind. She's the one that has got the forgiving
to do, not you. She knew it all the time, too, but she didn't tell it.
Beulah is the daughter of my brother Anse. I took her from the arms of
her dying mother when she was a little trick that couldn't crawl.
She's not the daughter of the man that shot yore father. She's the
daughter of the man yore father shot."

"Oh!" gasped Roy.

Beulah went to her lover arrow-swift.

"My dear . . . my dear! What does it matter now? Dad says my father
was killed in fair fight. He had set himself against the law. It took
his life. Your father didn't."

"But--"

"Oh, his was the hand. But he was sheriff. He did only his duty.
That's true, isn't it, dad?"

"I reckon."

Her strong young hands gripped tightly those of her lover. She looked
proudly into his eyes with that little flare of feminine ferocity in
hers.

"I won't have it any other way, Roy Beaudry. You're the man I'm going
to marry, the man who is going to be the father of my children if God
gives me any. No blood stands between us--nothing but the memory of
brave men who misunderstood each other and were hurt because of it.
Our marriage puts an end forever to even the memory of the wrong they
did each other. That is the way it is to me--and that's the way it has
got to be to you, too."

Roy laughed softly, tears in his eyes. As he looked at her eager young
beauty the hot life in his pulses throbbed. He snatched her to him
with an ardor as savage as her own.

THE END

OF THE BEGINNING

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SHERIFF'S SON***

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