To Judith, with a soul attuned to every
passing expression of nature, there was significance in this transition
from darkness to light. The sudden radiance was emblematic of her belated
perception, coming as it did after a blindness so dense as to appear
almost wilful. Her mind was busy with a multitude of schemes. Fool though
she had been, she would not be the instrument of her brother's undoing.

"I've come too far," she cried, in sudden dismay. "I should have stopped
at the foot of the divide. I've never been over the trail before."

"You foolish child, why should you stop in the middle of the wilderness?"

She wheeled the mare about and faced him, a figure of graven resolution.

"I promised to meet Tom Lorimer there--now you know."

With which she cracked Dolly sharply with her heel and began to retrace
her way over the trail. Peter turned his horse and followed, with the
feeling of utter helplessness that a man has when confronted with the
granite obstinacy of women. Judith had meanwhile expected that the
announcement of her mythical appointment with Tom Lorimer would be
received differently. Tom Lorimer's reputation was of the worst. An
Eastern man formerly, an absconder from justice, rumor was busy with tales
of ungodly merrymaking that went on at his ranch, where no woman went
except painted wisps from the dance-halls. But Peter was too loyal a
friend, despite his shortcomings as a lover, to see in Judith's statement
anything more than a sisterly devotion so deeply unselfish that it failed
to take into account the danger to which she subjected herself.

However, it was plainly his duty to prevent an unprotected rendezvous with
Lorimer, to reason, to plead, and, if he should fail to bring her to a
reasonable frame of mind, to go with her, come what would of the result.
There were reasons innumerable why he, a cattle-man, should avoid the
appearance of dealing with the sheep faction, he reflected, grimly.
Lorimer owned sheep, many thousand head. His herds had been allowed to
graze unmolested, while smaller owners, like Jim Rodney, had been crowded
out because his influence, politically, was a thing to be reckoned with.
So Peter followed Judith, pleading Judith's cause; she did not understand,
he told her, what she was doing; and while perhaps there was not another
man in the country who would not honor her unselfishness in coming to him,
Lorimer's chivalry was not a thing to be reckoned with, drunken beast tha