ted, slim of
hindquarters as a hound. Unless rough ground came between them she would
overhaul that Kerr girl inside of four miles, for her horse lacked the
wind for a long race, as the chase across the pasture had shown. In case
that Vesta overtook her, what would she do? The answer to that was in
Vesta's eyes when she saw the cut wire, the raider riding free across
the range. It was such an answer that it shot through Lambert like a
lightning-stroke.

Yet, it was not his quarrel; he could not interfere on one side or the
other without drawing down the displeasure of somebody, nor as a neutral
without incurring the wrath of both. This view of it did not relieve him
of anxiety to know how the matter was going to terminate.

He gave Whetstone the reins and galloped after Vesta, who was already
over the hill. As he rode he began to realize as never before the
smallness of this fence-cutting feud, the really worthless bone at the
bottom of the contention. Here Philbrook had fenced in certain lands
which all men agreed he had been cheated in buying, and here uprose
those who scorned him for his gullibility, and lay in wait to murder him
for shutting them out of his admittedly worthless domain. It was a
quarrel beyond reason to a thinking man.

Nobody could blame Philbrook for defending his rights, but they seemed
such worthless possessions to stake one's life against day by day, year
after year. The feud of the fence was like a cancerous infection. It
spread to and poisoned all that the wind blew on around the borders of
that melancholy ranch.

Here were these two women riding break-neck and bloody-eyed to pull guns
and fight after the code of the roughest. Both of them were primed by
the accumulated hatred of their young lives to deeds of violence with no
thought of consequences. It was a hard and bitter land that could foster
and feed such passions in bosoms of so much native excellence; a rough
and boisterous land, unworthy the labor that men lavished on it to make
therein their refuge and their home.

The pursued was out of sight when Lambert gained the hilltop, the
pursuer just disappearing behind a growth of stunted brushwood in the
winding dry valley beyond. He pushed after them, his anxiety increasing,
hoping that he might overtake Vesta before she came within range of her
enemy. Even should he succeed in this, he was at fault for some way of
stopping her in her passionate design.

He could not disarm her wit