acts were plain: the four wires had not been
broken; they had been cleanly cut, and very recently, as shown by the
absence of rust on the severed ends. By whom? And why? Seth
Huntington, Haig had said. Impossible! Absurd! True, she had heard
Seth denouncing him; Claire also; and without knowing the cause of the
feud, or caring, she had learned that Huntington and Haig were
bitterly at odds about something,--cattle, she thought, or was it
land? But that Seth could have stooped to the low trick implied in
these cut wires! And yet--

She looked down the half-made road by which Haig had disappeared. It
was quite empty now, save for Tuesday and herself. Nor was there sight
of man or beast in all the valley. Haig's cattle, like Seth's and the
other ranchmen's, were grazing in the summer pastures, no doubt in
little shut-in valleys far up among the pines yonder, where the
violet mists were deepening.

She mounted her horse again, and rode slowly up the hill. But just
where the road entered the woods at the summit of the ridge she
stopped once more, and turned for a last look at her lost valley. Her
gaze swept it lovingly from where, at her left, the long ridge shut
off the view, to where, far at her right, the valley narrowed into a
pine-screened gulch; and back again almost to the spot where the road
dipped and disappeared. There her eyes were suddenly caught by
something she had not seen before,--a thin spiral of blue smoke that
mounted slowly until it was struck and dissipated by the breeze from
across the ridge. Haig's ranchhouse, surely, nestling below the hill!
The house would be visible, doubtless, from the place where Haig had
vanished from her sight. What would it be like? she wondered.

The next instant she had pulled her pony half-around toward the
valley. But Tuesday turned his head, and looked at her; and she felt
the blood rushing into her face.

"Go on, Tuesday!" she cried, jerking him back into the road. "What are
you doing?"

She rode on into the pines, embarrassed beyond all belief.

In a few minutes she had emerged again from the woods, descended the
hill, and regained the main-traveled road along the Brightwater.
Still she rode slowly, forgetting that she had learned at last to
ride like a cowboy. She was reluctant to return to Huntington's,
reluctant to relate her experiences as she had always related them
until to-day. Haig had sent a warning to Huntington. It was her
duty to deliver it. But how c