semblance of quiet, cold rage. If the man were just acting....

"I've just got the hunch," he said bluntly, "that I know who he is, too.
And, for the last time, Winifred Waverly, I am interfering in your
business and advising you the best way I know how to turn back right
here and right now and forget that you've got an uncle named Pollard!"

CHAPTER X

IN THE MOONLIGHT

She stood there in a bright patch of moonlight looking up into his face,
seeing every line of it in the rich flood of light from the full moon,
wondering dully if she had lost her sense of the real and the unreal. It
seemed to her so rankly absurd, so utterly preposterous that he should
seek to pretend with her. For, now that she had seen the limping gait of
his big sorrel, was she more than certain that this was the man whom she
had seen following her in the afternoon. And as she noted again the
sinewy bigness of him, the garb of grey shirt, open vest and black
chaps, she told herself angrily that he was a fool, or that he thought
her a fool, to pretend that he knew nothing of that thing which had just
happened in the lonely cabin. Even the grey neck-handkerchief, now
knotted loosely about the brown throat, was there to give him the
lie.... With shame and anger her cheeks burned until they went as
crimson as hot blood could make them.

It was all so clear to her. She had refused to believe that he had
robbed Hap Smith's mail bags. Why? She bit her lip in sudden anger:
because he had fitted well in a romantic girl's eye! Fool that she was.
She should have put sterner interpretation upon the fact that Thornton,
coming rudely into the banker's private office, had admitted hearing
part of her conversation with Mr. Templeton. Now she had no doubt that
he had heard everything.

"Have you ever been over this trail? As far as the next ranch, seven
miles further on?" he asked at last, his hard eyes coming away from the
horse that stood with one foot lifted a little from the ground, the
quick twitching of the foot itself, the writhing and twisting of the
foreleg, speaking of the pain from the deep cut.

"No."

There was so much of hatred in the one short word which she flung at
him, so much of passionate contempt, that he looked at her wonderingly.

"What's the matter, Miss Waverly?" he asked, his voice a shade gentler.
"You seem all different somehow. Are you more tired than you thought?"

She laughed and the wonder grew in his eyes. He had