g
with a quick anger that leaped out to meet her father's.

"Papa!" Her head was thrown up in defiant pride, her vibrant voice,
her blazing eyes were as hard as his own. "I won't listen to such
things, not even from you. They are untrue. You say that Wayne ran
away because he is guilty and a coward. You know better than that! He
is not a fugitive from justice; he is forced by the things you have
done to become a fugitive from injustice and persecution. Oh, how can
you stand there and denounce him after you have set your hand against
him as you have? Or don't you think that I know how you and the rest
have sought to rob him and ruin him!"

"What!" stormed Leland. "Is the girl mad?"

"No, I am not mad," she flung back at him hotly, all facts and
considerations swept away before the rush of her furious indignation
except the one vital matter that she was fighting for a thing as dear
as her lover's life. "You can find no name too bad for him, just
because you hate him! You have always hated him just because he is his
father's son. You and his own cousin, two men whom he has trusted,
have tricked him and betrayed him. You have hidden from him all
knowledge of the mortgage you held upon the Bar L-M. Even now you are
trying to steal his ranch from him. Wayne has never done a thing so
vile as that in all his life. Oh! I am ashamed."

Her voice grew harsh in her throat; her face was no longer white, two
spots of anger burned in her cheeks. She broke off panting, her eyes
growing harder, brighter as they challenged his.

"Martin," cried Mrs. Leland, coming swiftly to the girl's side. "Be
careful."

"Careful!" shouted Leland, his face red with his fury. "When one of my
blood loses her last shred of decency, when she takes up with a low,
dissolute unprincipled Shandon? The worst of a bad lot. May God curse
him, may God curse her if she clings to him!"

"You have never spoken to me like this before," cried Wanda
passionately. "You will never do it again."

"Listen to me," thundered Leland, his heavier voice drowning the girl's
words. "If your father does a thing which your untrained, woman's
brain cannot rightly understand are you the one to judge and condemn
him? Because a lying Shandon has cast his cursed spell over your
romantic fancies are you to leap to these ridiculous conclusions? Am I
the man to do a dishonourable thing? Ask other men out in the world
where my dealings are an open book.