silence
which had fallen over her mother and father.

Long that night Wanda stared out through the darkness which lay about
the orchard with no thought of sleep. She had the feeling that no one
in the house was asleep yet, not even Julia whom she could hear now and
then moving as softly as physical conditions permitted in her room.
That her father and mother were awake, she knew from the drone of their
voices coming to her indistinctly.

The spirit of restless anxiety falling upon a household is a thing to
be felt through stick and stone and mortar. There had been no such
spirit here to-night until Red Reckless had come home. He had not
brought it with him, he had brought only his sheer madness of exuberant
life, and yet he had left this other thing behind him. Wanda wondered
what thoughts, what fears or evil premonitions troubled those other
unsleeping brains.

Her own thoughts fled back a year and clung fearfully about the
revolver with the pearl grip. She knew that the murder of his brother
still remained a mystery and that people do not like mysteries to go
long without solution. MacKelvey was sheriff, it was his duty, and it
was his habit, to bring some man to book for every crime committed in
the county. It was quite possible that the sheriff had been playing a
waiting game throughout the year, and that he was waiting for this man
to come back as he must do soon or late.

Meanwhile the man who was so vividly in Wanda's thoughts rode through
the silent night with his cousin, drinking deep of the peace of the
starlit night, finding an old familiar music in the hammering of his
horse's hoofs on the grassy hills. Silent himself while thinking of
other days and other rides, he did not notice how silent Garth was.
They topped the rocky ridge which stood as boundary line between the
two ranges, and swerved westward taking the long curve to the Crossing,
welcomed back to the home outfit by the great booming voice of the
distant river. Another mile and the river itself, flashing, turbulent
molten silver, swollen with the wet winter in the mountains, swept
shouting past them.

They turned upward along the river and raced wordlessly the greater
part of the remaining half mile to the Bar L-M corrals. When they drew
rein in the wide clearing in which stood range house, bunk house,
stables and corrals, there was no spark of light about. They unsaddled
swiftly, turned their horses loose with a resounding slap t