glance with a brave smile
although his lips were twitching.

"I reckon that I've been a bit thick-haided," he said simply. "I ought
have knowed thet you wa'nt the kind o' woman to take no sech mean
advantage of a feller. Yuh'll excuse _me_, Miss Abbie! Yuh see, I didn't
savvy the how o' things."

Abbie, torn with remorse and pity, was all woman again. In the reaction
she wished she had left her words unsaid and impulsively went over and
laid her hand on his. The cowboy covered it with his other bronzed paw
and for a long time neither spoke. It was McVey who broke the silence.

"I'll kill him, o' cose. Reckon it'll cost me me' job--an' then some!
It's goin' to be mahnst'ous hard to make Ken see it thu right way an'
he'll be some rambunctuous about it. He's awful sot in hes ways an' it's
goin' to be hard to explain. I'd shore hate to have some one play me
thet trick, I suttinly would!"

The woman was crying now and as the weak drawl ended she grew
hysterical. "Oh! Gawd, what hev I done?" she moaned under her breath;
then she frantically implored him to forget what she had said, insisting
that it was all a joke, that she was merely "tryin' to pay him back fer
his imperence" the night before. But Red smiled his entire conviction.

"Miss Abbie, don't yuh do it no moah, don't yuh, now! It shore ain't
yuah strong suit, yuh giv' yuah han' away. Lyin's man's work, an' a
powerful bad business it is, too! Gawd nevah intended a woman's lips to
be dirtied that away."

"An' besides, it's too late," he went on dispassionately. "Yuh've made
many things plain to me that I was too locoed to see before. But tell
me straight, is that true about her'n Ken?"

She nodded mutely, not daring to meet his eyes.

He looked long into the starlit sky, and Abbie, emboldened after a time
by his seeming composure, rose and bade him good night. He reached out
for the cigarette materials laid convenient to his hand.

"Guess I'll make a terbacco smoke." Abbie struck a match and he
luxuriously filled his capacious lungs. Then slowly exhaling the pungent
wreath he flicked the ash from the cigarette tip and tentatively
extended his sinewy arm. It was as devoid of tremor as that of a bronze
statue and he nodded his satisfaction.

"Her heart won't be broke none."

His voice was very calm and even.

CHAPTER VI

THE MAN AND THE WOMAN

At the junction of Horse and Squaw creeks, some seven miles from where
Grace Carter was lying in her ha