Chapter VI

"Cherokee Street"

She was the first to break the silence after her announcement.

"What's the matter? You look as if you had seen a ghost."

He had. The ghost of a dreadful day had leaped at him out of the past.
Men on murder bent were riding down the street toward their victim. At
the head of that company rode her father; the one they were about to
kill was his. A wave of sickness shuddered through him.

"It--it's my heart," he answered in a smothered voice. "Sometimes it
acts queer. I'll be all right in a minute."

The young woman drew the horse to a halt and looked down at him. Her
eyes, for the first time since they had met, registered concern.

"The altitude, probably. We're over nine thousand feet high. You're
not used to walking in the clouds. We'll rest here."

She swung from the saddle and trailed the reins.

"Sit down," the girl ordered after she had seated herself
tailor-fashion on the moss.

Reluctantly he did as he was told. He clenched his teeth in a cold
rage at himself. Unless he conquered that habit of flying into panic
at every crisis, he was lost.

Beulah leaned forward and plucked an anemone blossom from a rock
cranny. "Isn't it wonderful how brave they are? You wouldn't think
they would have courage to grow up so fine and delicate among the rocks
without any soil to feed them."

Often, in the days that followed, he thought of what she had said about
the anemones and applied it to herself. She, too, had grown up among
the rocks spiritually. He could see the effect of the barren soil in
her suspicious and unfriendly attitude toward life. There was in her
manner a resentment at fate, a bitterness that no girl of her years
should have felt. In her wary eyes he read distrust of him. Was it
because she was the product of heredity and environment? Her people
had outlawed themselves from society. They had lived with their hands
against the world of settled order. She could not escape the law that
their turbulent sins must be visited upon her.

Young Beaudry followed the lead she had given him. "Yes, that is the
most amazing thing in life--that no matter how poor the soil and how
bad the conditions fine and lovely things grow up everywhere."

The sardonic smile on her dark face mocked him. "You find a sermon in
it, do you?"

"Don't you?"

She plucked the wild flower out by the roots. "It struggles--and
struggles--and blooms for a day--and withe