ered insult to the
presumed intelligence of the strangers, if he had finished the
question. But it died away on his thin lips. His fishy, blue eyes had
caught at last the gleam of Sunnysides, half in eclipse behind the
dull-hued cow ponies. For a few seconds he stared, while his mouth
stood open, and his features slowly responded to the first emotion he
had felt in years.

"Hell's bobcats!" he yelled.

The glass slipped from his hand, and fell tinkling in pieces on the
floor as he lunged out into the road.

In the saloon there was a moment of tense silence as the men there
slowly realized that a phenomenon had occurred. Slavin was excited!
The silence was followed by a hubbub of raised voices and a racket of
overturned chairs and the scrape and thud of boots on the sanded
floor. At that instant a woman in a pink calico dress, drawn by
Slavin's yell, came to the door of Thompson's, and promptly screeched.
The poker game was never finished; Thompson's trade was ruined for
the day; and the strange group in the roadway became the center of a
jostling, uproarious crowd of men and women, who alternately bombarded
the three cow-punchers with questions and stared at Sunnysides in
silent wonder. But they were careful to maintain a respectful distance
between themselves and the formidable captive, though he stood
motionless amid all the uproar, like a golden statue of a horse, with
his head raised proudly, his yellow-black eyes flashing defiance and
suspicion, and his lustrous hide gleaming in the sun.

Marion's enjoyment of this exciting scene was tinged with a vague
uneasiness. She had watched the men come tumbling out of the Square
Deal Saloon and the women swarming from Thompson's store, and had felt
a curious relief at seeing neither Seth nor Claire among them.
Though she could not have given any reason for her satisfaction,
their absence, and Seth's especially, seemed to her a piece of rare
good fortune. Haig's warning--"Tell him he's a fool to anger
me!"--was still echoing at the back of her brain; her recent act
of incomprehensible errancy still troubled and perplexed her; and
try as she would, she was unable to suppress the feeling that she had
become inextricably entangled in the feud between Haig and Huntington.
She was not yet ready to face Huntington. Thank Heaven, he was not
there!

But at the very instant of her self-congratulation, and when she was
just turning her attention again to the hubbub around the g