ing, her sympathetical womanliness forced the dark passions
back, and she threw herself on the bed, sobbing, murmuring: "Forgive me!"

Later, when she had made herself presentable, she went downstairs again,
concealing her misery behind a steady courtesy and a smile that sometimes
was a little forced and bitter, to entertain her guest. It was a long,
tiresome day, made almost unbearable by Hester's small talk. But she got
through it. And when, rather late in the afternoon, Hester inquired the
way to the Diamond K, announcing her intention of visiting Trevison
immediately, she gave no evidence of the shocked surprise that seized her.
She coolly helped Hester prepare for the trip, and when she drove away in
the buckboard, stood on the ground at the edge of the porch, watching as
the buckboard and its occupant faded into the shimmering haze of the
plains.

CHAPTER XVII

JUSTICE VS. LAW

Impatience, intolerable and vicious, gripped Trevison as he rode homeward
after his haunting vigil at Manti. The law seemed to him to be like a
house with many doors, around and through which one could play hide and
seek indefinitely, with no possibility of finding one of the doors locked.
Judge Graney had warned him to be cautious, but as he rode into the dusk
of the plains the spirit of rebellion seized him. Twice he halted Nigger
and wheeled him, facing Manti, already agleam and tumultuous, almost
yielding to his yearning to return and force his enemy to some sort of
physical action, but each time he urged the horse on, for he could think
of no definite plan. He was half way to the Diamond K when he suddenly
started and sat rigid and erect in the saddle, drawing a deep breath, his
nerves tingling from excitement. He laughed lowly, exultingly, as men
laugh when under the stress of adversity they devise sudden, bold plans of
action, and responding to the slight knee press Nigger turned, reared, and
then shot like a black bolt across the plains at an angle that would not
take him anywhere near the Diamond K.

Half an hour later, in a darkness which equaled that of the night on which
he had carried the limp and drink-saturated Clay Levins to his wife,
Trevison was dismounting at the door of the gun-man's cabin. A little
later, standing in the glare of lamplight that shone through the open
doorway, he was reassuring Mrs. Levins and asking for her husband. Shortly
afterward, he was talking lowly to Levins as the latter saddled his