happened which could have meant nothing to
any one else in the house, but which brought leaping up into the girl's
heart both fear and gladness. And, at last, understanding.

Broderick, smiling, had said some light word to Thornton, laying his
hand upon the cowboy's shoulder. For a moment, just the fraction of a
second the two men stood side by side in the open doorway. Until they
stood so, close together, a man would have said that they were of the
same height. Now Winifred marked that there was a full two-inch
difference and that Thornton was the taller.

Together they stepped out through the doorway. The door was low, Buck
stooped his head a little, Broderick passed out without stooping! It
seemed only last night that she had made her supper in the Harte camp
with Buck Thornton. She remembered so distinctly each little event. She
could see him now as he had sat making his cigarette, could see him
going to the door to look at the upclimbing moon. She had marked then
the tall, wiry body that must stoop a little to stand in the low
doorway. She had jested about his height; the six-feet-four of him, as
he called it....

She could see again the man who had come in, masked, the man whose
clothes were like the clothes of Buck Thornton even to the grey neck
handkerchief. She could remember that this man had stood in the same
doorway, that his eyes had gleamed at her through the slits in the
handkerchief,... that he had held his head thrown back, that he had not
stooped!

"It wasn't Buck Thornton!" she whispered to herself, her hands going
white in their tense grip upon the parcel they held. "A man did lame his
horse, a man who wanted me to think all the time that it was Buck
Thornton. And that man," with swift certainty, "is Ben Broderick! Uncle
Henry's friend. And Uncle ... knows!"

CHAPTER XX

POLLARD TALKS "BUSINESS"

The promise of the night flat and stale in his mouth, Thornton turned
his back upon the merriment in the little schoolhouse and strode away to
his horse awaiting him under the oak. He tightened the cinch with a
savage jerk, coiled his tie rope and flung himself into the saddle. Did
he not already have enough on his hands without running after a girl
with grey eyes and a blazing temper? Had he not already enough to think
about, what with guarding his range interests from a possible visit from
the marauder who was driving wrath into the hearts of the cattle men and
terror into the hearts of th