p'ny, are yeh? Wal, I'll
show yeh a thing er two, my pretty lady. You'll give me a kiss with yer
two cherry lips before we go another step. D'yeh hear, my sweetie?" And
he turned with a silly leer to enforce his command; but with a cry of
horror Margaret slid to the ground and ran back down the trail as hard
as she could go, till she stumbled and fell in the shelter of a great
sage-bush, and lay sobbing on the sand.

The man turned bleared eyes toward her and watched until she
disappeared. Then sticking his chin out wickedly, he slung her suit-case
after her and called:

"All right, my pretty lady; go yer own gait an' l'arn yer own lesson."
He started on again, singing a drunken song.

Under the blue, starry dome alone sat Margaret again, this time with no
friendly water-tank for her defense, and took counsel with herself. The
howling coyotes seemed to be silenced for the time; at least they had
become a minor quantity in her equation of troubles. She felt now that
man was her greatest menace, and to get away safely from him back to
that friendly water-tank and the dear old railroad track she would have
pledged her next year's salary. She stole softly to the place where she
had heard the suit-case fall, and, picking it up, started on the weary
road back to the tank. Could she ever find the way? The trail seemed so
intangible a thing, her sense of direction so confused. Yet there was
nothing else to do. She shuddered whenever she thought of the man who
had been her companion on horseback.

When the man reached camp he set his horse loose and stumbled into the
door of the log bunk-house, calling loudly for something to eat.

The men were sitting around the room on the rough benches and bunks,
smoking their pipes or stolidly staring into the dying fire. Two smoky
kerosene-lanterns that hung from spikes driven high in the logs cast a
weird light over the company, eight men in all, rough and hardened with
exposure to stormy life and weather. They were men with unkempt beards
and uncombed hair, their coarse cotton shirts open at the neck, their
brawny arms bare above the elbow, with crimes and sorrows and hard
living written large across their faces.

There was one, a boy in looks, with smooth face and white skin healthily
flushed in places like a baby's. His face, too, was hard and set in
sternness like a mask, as if life had used him badly; but behind it was
a fineness of feature and spirit that could not be utterly h