t
he was. And Judith, worn with the struggle, tried beyond measure, made
reckless by the daily infusion of ill-fortune, pulled up the mare and
laughed unpleasantly.

"You think I'm going to see Lorimer about Jim? I'm going with him to a
merrymaking. We're old pals, Lorimer and I."

"Judith, dear, has it come to this, that you not only distrust an old
friend, but that you try to degrade yourself to hide from him the fact
that you are going to your brother's? You've never spoken to Lorimer. I
heard him say, not a week ago, that he had never succeeded in making you
recognize him. You deceived me at first when you spoke of meeting him--I
thought you had a message from Jim--but this talk of merrymaking is beneath
you." He shrugged his shoulders in disgust. He felt the torrent of grief
that rent her. No sob escaped her lips; there was no convulsive movement
of shoulder. She rode beside him, still as the desert before the
sand-storm breaks, her soul seared with white-hot iron that knows no
saving grace of sob or tear. She rode as Boadicea might have ridden to
battle; there was not a yielding line in her body. But over and over in
her woman's heart there rang the cry: "I am so tired! If the long night
would but come!"

Peter drew out his watch. "It's a quarter to eleven. We'll have a hard bit
of riding to reach Blind Creek before midnight."

Then he knew as well as she, perhaps better, the route to Jim's
hiding-place; she had never been there as yet. And if Peter knew,
doubtless every cattle-man in the country knew. What a fool she had been
with her talk of meeting Tom Lorimer! A sense of utter defeat seemed to
paralyze her energies. She felt like a trapped thing that after eluding
its pursuers again and again finds that it has been but running about a
corral. Physical weariness was telling on her. She had been in the saddle
since a little past noon and it was now not far from midnight. And still
there was the unanswered question of Peter's errand. It was long since
either had broken the silence. A delicious coolness had crept into the air
with the approach of midnight. Judith, breathing deep draughts of it,
reminded herself of the stoicism that was hers by birthright.

"Peter"--her voice lost some of its old ring, but it had a deeper
note--"Peter, we make strange comrades, you and I, in a stranger world. We
meet on Horse-Thief Trail, and there is reason to suppose that our errands
are inimical. You've pierced all my littl