r.
He would not come again--and she cared. She put her hand to her throat.
It ached with the lump in it--yes, she cared.

The tears slipped down and wet the flour-sack pillow case. The outlines
of the coffee pot on the stove and the frying pan dangling on the door
grew blurred. Her eyes were still swimming when she suddenly held her
breath.

An unfamiliar sound had caught her ear, a sound like a stealthy
footstep. In the instant that she waited to be sure, a hand and forearm
reached inside the door and laid something on the floor.

"Who's there?"

There was no response to the imperative interrogation.

With the same movement that she swung her feet over the edge of the bunk
she reached for her rifle and ran to the door. There was not a sound or
sign that was unusual save that the horses had stopped eating and with
ears thrown forward were looking down the gulch. She picked up the paper
that lay on the floor, struck a match and read a scrawl by its flare:

WARNING

Stop where you are if you ain't looking for trouble. Them range maggots
of yourn ain't wanted on the mountain this summer.

What did it mean? The match burned to her fingers while she conjectured.
Who was objecting? Neifkins? Since there was ample range for both, and
each had kept to the boundaries which he tacitly recognized, there had
been no dispute. A horse outfit grazing a small herd of horses during
the summer months, and a dry-farmer with a couple of milch cows, who,
while he plowed and planted and prayed for rain, was incidentally
demonstrating the exact length of time that a human being could live on
jack-rabbit and navy beans, were the only other users of the mountain
range. Was it the hoax of some local humorist? Or an attempt to
intimidate and worry her by someone whose enmity she had incurred?

Whatever the motive, was it possible that any one knew her so little as
to believe they could frighten her in any such manner? Her lip curled as
she asked herself the question. She had imagined that she had at least
proved her courage.

Bowers, she knew, would stand by her; the others, perhaps, would use the
familiar argument that it cost too much for repairs to be shot up for
forty-five dollars a month.

Finally, she tossed the note on the sideboard and stepped out on the
wagon tongue. The stars glimmered overhead and the shadows lay black and
mysterious in the gulch, but she felt no fear as she stood there
straight and soldierlike, her eyes