d to send him back to Mr.
Shandon. She had cried a little over him and kissed him and talked
gently with him as was her motherly way. But Wanda's father berated
him severely and sternly and Wayne flushed and bit his lip and then
went away from them as he had gone away from the East.

More years, happy years for Wanda Leland, sped by and she did not see
the boy. Both Arthur and Garth came in the long summer vacations to
Mr. Shandon's range and were frequent visitors at the Echo Creek place.
Word came now and then of Wayne Shandon, sometimes by infrequent and
unsatisfactory short letters from him, more often in elaborately
embroidered rumour from men making long trips across the country. He
had gone to work for a cattle outfit, taking a dollar a day and doing
an ordinary cowboy's work. Even before he was twenty-one, men called
him Red Reckless. He had learned to gamble, and to gamble for big
stakes. He played poker; he took his chance with the "bank"; but he
loved the dice. They were quicker; a man could "make or break" at one
throw. It was his way to hazard everything on a throw, to laugh if he
won, to laugh if he lost.

Rumour said that he had been shot by a notorious gambler, Dash Dulac;
and had come near dying; that he had shot another man up at Spanish Dry
Diggings where he had rushed with a frantic flood of men on news of a
golden strike; that he had been sucked away with another flux of gold
seekers to the Yukon country where he had lived lawlessly with his
lawless companions; that he had drifted back to the lumber camps of the
mountains; that at last he had returned to the cattle country.

Wanda had gone away to school in the East, spending only her summers
upon the Echo Creek ranch. She had seen very little of Wayne Shandon.
When Mr. Shandon died, leaving his wide reaching cattle range to his
elder son, Arthur had come promptly to take charge of the Bar L-M
Outfit, and Garth Conway had come with him as foreman and general
manager under him. Arthur, whose affection for his stormy souled
brother had lasted strong through the years, had at last prevailed upon
Wayne to "come home" and to go to work for him. That had been a year
ago.

A light knock at her door brought back her wandering thoughts to
to-day, to Arthur Shandon, to the suspicion which was so quickly
lifting its venomous head. She rose from the bed, pushed back the hair
which had fallen unnoticed into confusion about her cheeks, and said