isn't it?"

"Right, Bud," answered the big man in a mellow voice as great as his
size. "Sorry I can't swap partners with you, but I hunt alone."

An overwhelming desire to get a distance between himself and this huge
unknown came to Pierre.

He said: "There goes the music. You're off."

And the other, moving toward Jack, leaned down a little and murmured at
the ear of the outlaw: "Thanks, Pierre."

Then he was gone, and Jacqueline was laughing over his shoulder back to
Pierre.

Through his daze and through the rising clamor of the music, a voice
said beside him: "You look sort of sick, dude. Who's your friend?"

"Don't you know him?" asked Pierre.

"No more than I do you; but I've ridden the range for ten years around
here, and I know that he's new to these parts. If I'd ever glimpsed
him before, I'd remember him. He'd be a bad man in a mix, eh?"

And Pierre answered with devout earnestness: "He would."

"But where 'd you buy those duds, pal? Hey, look! Here's what I've
been waiting for--the Barneses and the girl that's visitin' 'em from
the East."

"What girl?"

"Look!"

The Barnes group was passing through the door, and last came the
unmistakable form of Dick Wilbur, masked, but not masked enough to hide
his familiar smile or cover the well-known sound of his laughter as it
drifted to Pierre across the hall, and on his arm was a girl in an
evening dress of blue, with a small, black mask across her eyes, and
deep-golden hair.

Pausing before she swung into the dance with Wilbur, she made a gesture
with the white arm, and looked up laughing to big, handsome Dick.
Pierre trembled, and his heart beat once and stopped.

As he watched, the song which Dick had sung came like a monotonous,
religious chant within him:

They call me poor, yet I am rich
In the touch of her golden hair;
My heart is filled like a miser's hands
With the red-gold of her hair.

The only sky I ride beneath
Is the dear blue of her eyes,
The only heaven I desire
Is the blue of her dear eyes.

But even the memory of the song died in him while he watched her dance,
and saw the lights and shadows flit across the smooth shoulders; and
when he saw the hands of Wilbur about her, a red rage came up in him.

Dick in passing, marked that stare above the heads of the crowd, and
frowned with trouble. The hungry eyes of Pierre followed them as they
circled the hall again; and this time Wilbur, perhaps fe