Marion?"

"But why?" asked Marion. "I mean what was his motive in all that? He
isn't a cattleman. I mean--I don't think he cares enough--"

She stopped, finding herself in dangerous waters.

"Why? Because he's a--" Huntington checked himself. "Anyhow, he barely
escaped a lynching that night. And if he only knew it, I'm the one
that stopped it. I said we'd find some other way. But we haven't found
it. We had to bring most of our stock down to the pastures we needed
for winter, and in winter we had to buy hay at eighteen dollars a ton.
And Haig had hay to sell. Three of our men were driven out of
business. Tom Jenkins, being dead broke and discouraged, with a
family, killed himself. I had to sell off a third of my cattle, and
twenty head disappeared, and I never saw them again. And maybe you can
understand now how I felt when I saw him this evening, standing there
in my own house, grinning at me. God!"

He turned, grabbed up the poker, and began jabbing viciously at the
fire.

Yes, Marion could understand that, but--She was not satisfied. There
was something missing from Seth's narrative. Haig's accusations that
day at the post-office--his missing cattle, and the cut wires at the
Forbidden Pasture--And if all that Seth had said was true, which she
doubted, the mystery was only deepened. She was sure that Haig was
only playing a part, that he was not a cattleman by choice, and that
his heart was not in the game, whatever it was. She wanted to ask
questions, but refrained, lest she should again arouse Seth's
suspicions. She would see Smythe.

CHAPTER X

STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL

The next afternoon Huntington, with painful diffidence, yet anxious to
come to some sort of terms with Marion, proposed that she should begin
her shooting lessons. She acquiesced in a manner that relieved him
immensely, for she, on her side, was sorely in need of distraction. So
they were presently on the hillside behind the ranch house with the
rifles,--Seth's Winchester and the little Savage he had bought for
Claire, who, to his great disappointment, did not like guns, and never
could be taught to see the sights with one eye closed. His delight,
therefore, was unbounded when Marion took to the Savage with almost
the quick adaptability of a man. True, her first shots went high and
wild among the foliage, but she was fast getting the grip of the gun,
and had actually once scraped the bark of the tree on which the target
of white pape