ivine from her expression, was, at least,
disdainful of her morning rival.

Reaching the station platform while still busy with his thoughts, de
Spain encountered Jeffries and Lefever.

"When are you coming up to take my job, Henry?" demanded the
superintendent without any parley.

"I am not coming up," announced de Spain bluntly.

"Not coming up, eh? All right, we'll find somebody that will come up,"
retorted Jeffries. "John," he added, "wire Medicine Bend to send
Farrell Kennedy here in the morning to see me."

"What's the reason that fellow sticks so close to Medicine Bend?"
demanded Jeffries, when Lefever joined him later in his office.

"Don't ask me," frowned Lefever perplexed. "Don't ask me. Henry is odd
in some ways. You can't tell what's going on inside that fellow's head
by looking at the outside of it." Jeffries grunted coldly at this bit
of wisdom. "I'll tell you what I should think--if I had to think:
Henry de Spain has never found out rightly who was responsible for the
death of his father. He expects to do it, sometime; and he thinks
sometime he's going to find out right there in Medicine Bend."

While they were talking the train was pulling out for Medicine Bend
with de Spain on board.

It was a tedious ride, and de Spain was much too engaged with his
thoughts to sleep. The Morgans were in his head, and he could not be
rid of them. He recalled having been told that long ago some of these
same Morgans lived on the Peace River above his father's ranch. Every
story he had ever heard of their wild lives, for they were men sudden
in quarrel and reckless of sequel, came back to his mind. He wondered
what sort of a young girl this could be who lived among them--who
_could_ live among them--and be what she seemed at a glance to be--a
fawn among mountain-wolves.

It was late when he reached Medicine Bend, and raining--a dismal
kind of a night. Instead of going to his room, just across the
street from the station, he went up-stairs and sat down with the
train-despatchers. After an hour of indecision, marked by alternative
fits of making up and unmaking his mind, he went, instead of going to
bed, into the telegraph-room, where black-haired Dick Grady sat at a
key.

"How about the fight to-night at Sleepy Cat?" Grady asked at once.

"What fight?" demanded de Spain perfunctorily.

"The Calabasas gang got to going again up there to-night. They say one
of the Morgans was in it. Some town, that Sleepy Cat