every
movement, her face alive.

"Then the moon's up almost?"

"It'll be up in an hour."

"Jerickety! Then I've got to get ready." He turned to the other room
again and entered.

"College pup!" said Hawley under his breath savagely. "Why didn't you
tell me he was here?"

"Was it any of your business, Abe?" she rejoined quietly.

"Hiding him away here--"

"Hiding? Who's been hiding him? He's doing what you've done. He's
smuggling--the last lot for the traders over by Dingan's Drive. He'll
get it there by morning. He has as much right here as you. What's got
into you, Abe?"

"What does he know about the business? Why, he's a college man from the
East. I've heard o' him. Ain't got no more sense for this life than a
dicky-bird. White-faced college pup! What's he doing out here? If you're
a friend o' his, you'd better look after him. He's green."

"He's going East again," she said, "and if I don't go West with Bantry,
or South over to Montana with Nick Pringle, or North--"

"Nancy--" His eyes burned, his lips quivered.

She looked at him and wondered at the power she had over this bully of
the border, who had his own way with most people, and was one of the
most daring fighters, hunters, and smugglers in the country. He was
cool, hard, and well-in-hand in his daily life, and yet, where she was
concerned, "went all to pieces," as someone else had said about himself
to her.

She was not without the wiles and tact of her sex. "You go now, and come
back, Abe," she said in a soft voice. "Come back in an hour. Come back
then, and I'll tell you which way I'm going from here."

He was all right again. "It's with you, Nancy," he said eagerly. "I bin
waiting four years."

As he closed the door behind him the "college pup" entered the room
again. "Oh, Abe's gone!" he said excitedly. "I hoped you'd get rid of
the old rip-roarer. I wanted to be alone with you for a while. I
don't really need to start yet. With the full moon I can do it before
daylight." Then, with quick warmth, "Ah, Nancy, Nancy, you're a
flower--the flower of all the prairies," he added, catching her hand and
laughing into her eyes.

She flushed, and for a moment seemed almost bewildered. His boldness,
joined to an air of insinuation and understanding, had influenced her
greatly from the first moment they had met two months ago, as he was
going South on his smuggling enterprise. The easy way in which he had
talked to her, the extraordinary sense he