on't like me. It's something
about some shacks--damaging property, she called it. Just what was it
you said was done, Miss Hallman?" He turned his honest, gray eyes toward
her and met her suspicious look steadily.

Miss Hallman bit her lip. She had been perfectly sure of the guilt of
Andy Green, and of the others who were his friends. Now, in spite of
all reason she was not so sure. And there had been nothing more tangible
than two pairs of innocent-looking eyes and the irreproachable manners
of two men to change her conviction.

"Well, I naturally took it for granted that you did it," she weakened.
"The shacks were moved off eighties that you have filed upon, Mr.
Green. Mr. Owens told me this morning that you men came by his place
and threatened him yesterday, and ordered him to move. No one else would
have any object in molesting him or the others." Her voice hardened
again as her mind dwelt upon the circumstances. "It must have been you!"
she finished sharply.

Whereupon Pink gave her a distressed look that made Miss Hallman flush
unmistakably. "I'm just about distracted, this morning," she apologized.
"I took it upon myself to see these settlers through--and everybody
makes it just as hard as possible for me. Why should all you fellows
treat us the way you do? We--"

"Why, we aren't doing a thing!" Pink protested diffidently. "We thought
we'd take up some claims and go to ranching for ourselves, when we
got discharged from the Flying U. We didn't mean any harm--everybody's
taking up claims. We've bought some cattle and we're going to try
and get ahead, like other folks. We--I wanted to cut out all this
wildness--"

"Are those your cattle up on the hill? Some men shipped in four carloads
of young stock, yesterday, to Dry Lake. They drove them out here
intending to turn them on the range, and a couple of men--"

"Four men," Miss Allen corrected with a furtive twinkle in her eyes.

"Some men refused to let them cross that big coulee back there. They
drove the cattle back toward Dry Lake, and told Mr. Simmons and Mr.
Chase and some others that they shouldn't come on this bench back here
at all. That was another thing I wanted to see you men about."

"Maybe they were going to mix their stock up with ours," Pink ventured
mildly.

"Your men shot, and shot, and shot--the atmosphere up there is shot so
full of holes that the wind just whistles through!" Miss Allen informed
then gravely, with her eyebrows all pucke