to my father," she went on, thinking aloud. "But he's so
bitter I'm afraid he won't do anything."

"He will after I've talked with him."

Her anxious young eyes rested in his clear, steady gaze. There was
something about this youth that compelled confidence. His
broad-shouldered vigor, the virile strength so confidently reposeful,
were expressions of personality rather than accidentals of physique.

The road dipped suddenly into a deep wash that was almost a little
gulch. There was a grinding of brakes, then a sudden lurch that threw
Ramona against the shoulder of the Ranger.

"The brake's done bust," she heard the ex-Confederate say.

Another violent swing flung Ramona outward. The horses were off the
road, and the coach swayed ominously on two wheels. The girl caught at
the Ranger's hand and clung to it. Gently he covered her hand with his
other one, released his fingers, and put a strong arm round her
shoulders.

Hank's whip snaked out across the backs of the wheelers. He flung at his
horses a torrent of abuse. The stage reached the bottom of the wash in a
succession of lurches. Then, as suddenly as the danger had come upon
them, it had passed; the stage was safely climbing the opposite side of
the ravine.

The Ranger's arm slipped from the shoulders of the girl. Her hand crept
from under his. He did not look at her, but he knew that a shell-pink
wave had washed into the wan face.

The slim bosom of the girl rose and fell fast. Already she was
beginning to puzzle over the difficulties of a clear-cut right and
wrong, to discover that no unshaded line of cleavage differentiates them
sometimes. Surely this young fellow could not be all bad. Of course she
did not like him. She was quite sure of that. He was known as a tough
citizen. He had attacked and beaten brutally her brother Rutherford--the
wild brother whose dissipations she had wept and prayed over, and whose
death she was now mourning. Yet Fate kept throwing him in her way to do
her services. He had saved her life. He had adroitly--somehow, she did
not quite know in what way--rid her of an offensive fellow traveler. She
had just asked a favor of him, and there was yet another she must ask.

Ramona put off her request to the last moment. At Tascosa she left her
purse in the stage seat and discovered it after the coach had started to
the barn.

"My purse. I left it in the seat," she cried.

The announcement was made to the world at large, but it was in