ld look into her face.

"Yes, for your sake!" he declared, harshly. "Haven't you sense enough
to see that? ... What kind of a game do you think you can play with me?"

"Game I ... Game of what?" she asked.

"Why, a--a game of ignorance--innocence--any old game to fool a man
who's tryin' to be decent."

This time Ellen mutely looked her dull, blank questioning. And it
inflamed Isbel.

"You know your father's a horse thief!" he thundered.

Outwardly Ellen remained the same. She had been prepared for an
unknown and a terrible blow. It had fallen. And her face, her body,
her hands, locked with the supreme fortitude of pride and sustained by
hate, gave no betrayal of the crashing, thundering ruin within her mind
and soul. Motionless she leaned there, meeting the piercing fire of
Isbel's eyes, seeing in them a righteous and terrible scorn. In one
flash the naked truth seemed blazed at her. The faith she had fostered
died a sudden death. A thousand perplexing problems were solved in a
second of whirling, revealing thought.

"Ellen Jorth, you know your father's in with this Hash Knife Gang of
rustlers," thundered Isbel.

"Shore," she replied, with the cool, easy, careless defiance of a Texan.

"You know he's got this Daggs to lead his faction against the Isbels?"

"Shore."

"You know this talk of sheepmen buckin' the cattlemen is all a blind?"

"Shore," reiterated Ellen.

Isbel gazed darkly down upon her. With his anger spent for the moment,
he appeared ready to end the interview. But he seemed fascinated by
the strange look of her, by the incomprehensible something she
emanated. Havoc gleamed in his pale, set face. He shook his dark head
and his broad hand went to his breast.

"To think I fell in love with such as you!" he exclaimed, and his other
hand swept out in a tragic gesture of helpless pathos and impotence.

The hell Isbel had hinted at now possessed Ellen--body, mind, and soul.
Disgraced, scorned by an Isbel! Yet loved by him! In that divination
there flamed up a wild, fierce passion to hurt, to rend, to flay, to
fling back upon him a stinging agony. Her thought flew upon her like
whips. Pride of the Jorths! Pride of the old Texan blue blood! It
lay dead at her feet, killed by the scornful words of the last of that
family to whom she owed her degradation. Daughter of a horse thief and
rustler! Dark and evil and grim set the forces within her, accepting
her fate, damning her enemie