rying. He had risen
before sun-up with little enough hope in his heart to cheer his day in
the saddle, and now he was contemplating his blankets at night with
even less.

Search, search. That had been his day. A fruitless search for the one
man whom he now believed to be the only person who could lift the
blight of suspicion from his overburdened shoulders.

Yes, where most Eve had sought to shield, she had most surely betrayed
by her woman's weakness and fear. For the truth had been forced upon
Jim's unsuspicious mind even against himself. Eve's terror, during her
long talk with him on his return from McLagan's ranch, had done the
very thing she had most sought to prevent. Her whole attitude had told
him its own story of her anxiety for some one, and that some one could
only have been her husband. And the rest had been brought about by the
arguments of his own common sense.

At first her fear had only suggested the anxiety of a friend for
himself, at the jeopardy in which public suspicion had placed him. Now
he laughed at the conceit of the thought, although, at the time, it
had seemed natural enough. Then the intensity of her fears had become
so great, and the personal, selfish note in her attitude so
pronounced, that his suspicion was aroused, and he found himself
groping for its meaning, its necessity.

Her terror seemed absurd. It could not be for him. It was out of all
proportion. No, it was not for him. Was it for herself? He could see
no reason. Then, why? For whom? And in a flash, as such realizations
sometimes do come, even to the most unsuspicious, the whole thing
leaped into his focus. If she had nothing to fear for herself, for
whom did she fear? There was but one person--her husband.

If she feared for her husband, then she must suspect him. If she
suspected, then there must be reason. But once this key was put into
his hand, it needed little argument to make the whole thing plain.
Point after point occurred to his mind carrying with each a conviction
that was beyond the necessity of any argument that he could offer. He
saw the whole thing with much the same instinctive conviction with
which the wife had seen it.

Will had calculated his revenge on him carefully. He saw now what Eve
had missed. The using of the "[double star]" brand,--which he must
have stolen from Jim's implement shed--the running of the small bunch
of McLagan's cattle with his, Jim's; these things had been well
thought out, a car