heavy revolver at his hip was jammed
painfully against her gauntlet; she merely shut her teeth and smiled.

They were returning from Tin Cup, whither they had gone in the morning
in company with Robert and his mother, who were leaving for the East.
The morning after his arrival at the ranch she had bravely told her
brother the whole circumstances of the preceding week, magnanimously
taking upon herself all the blame--in which truth compels us to say her
brother entirely agreed--and thereafter had ridden out to the camp of
the ditch repairers and patched up a truce with Douglass.

"I am only a tenderfoot," she had wisely begun, "and always have had an
unhappy faculty of doing the wrong thing unintentionally. You are a big,
strong, generous man, and you will hold no malice against a foolish
girl--!"

He capitulated instantly; but he was over-voluble in his reassurances
and somehow she divined that her apology had missed fire so far as it
affected his determination to leave when he had recouped her brother for
the losses he had unwittingly brought about. She was not for a moment
deceived by his studiously polite words but was too politic to betray
it. He had affected not to see the hand she had timidly extended in
amity and for that he would pay, later! There was much of old Bob
Carter's inflexible determination in this frail-looking daughter of his.

To her mother she had, curiously enough, said nothing about it. She had
even been unwise enough to impose secrecy upon her brother and Abigail
as to the cause of the conflagration and Red's mishap, forgetting that
Mrs. Carter was range bred and born, and that Nellie Vaughan was an
incorrigible gossip! It would not have added to her equanimity to have
known that inside of twenty-four hours her astute mother was in
possession of all the facts and considerably perturbed thereover. She
would, however, have appreciated the relief in her mother's eyes on her
first encounter with Douglass.

"Clean, manly and good to look at," had been her shrewd verdict.
"Thoroughbred stock, too. A good friend and a bad enemy! A good cowman
and a valuable accession all around. I really must congratulate Robbie.
But what is Grace's mysterious interest in him? She was very anxious not
to have me find out the facts about this latest outrage, poor dear! Was
it that she was afraid that I would be unduly exercised over a trifle
like this?"

She smiled somewhat grimly as her mind went back to that d