eld so dear? And then to spoil it all! Oh, I hate
you--I hate you!

He stopped and stiffened in his chair, and his eyes turned wild with
horror; then he gathered his letters together blindly and crept away
to bed. In the morning he arose and went about his work with
mouse-like quietness, performing all things thoroughly and well,
talking, even laughing, yet with a droop like that of a wounded
creature that seeks only to hide and escape.

Creede watched him furtively, hung around the house for a while, then
strode out to the pasture and caught up his horse.

"Be back this aft," he said, and rode majestically away up the canyon,
where he would be out of the way. For men, too, have their instincts
and intuitions, and they are even willing to leave alone that which
they cannot remedy and do not understand.

As Creede galloped off, leaving the ranch of a sudden lonely and
quiet, Tommy poked his head anxiously out through a slit in the canvas
bottom of the screen door and began to cry--his poor cracked voice,
all broken from calling for help from the coyotes, quavering dismally.
In his most raucous tones he continued this lament for his master
until at last Hardy gathered him up and held him to his breast.

"Ah, Kitty, Kitty," he said, and at the caressing note in his voice
the black cat began to purr hoarsely, raising his scrawny head in the
ecstasy of being loved. Thief and reprobate though he was, and sadly
given to leaping upon the table and flying spitefully at dogs, even
that rough creature felt the need of love; how much more the
sensitive and high-bred man, once poet and scholar, now cowboy and
sheep-wrangler, but always the unhappy slave of Kitty Bonnair.

The two letters lay charred to ashes among the glowing coals, but
their words, even the kindest meant, were seared deep in his heart,
fresh hurts upon older scars, and as he sat staring at the gaunt
_sahuaros_ on the hilltops he meditated gloomily upon his reply. Then,
depositing Tommy on the bed, he sat down at his desk before the
iron-barred window and began to write.

DEAR FRIEND THAT WAS: Your two letters came together--the one that
you have just sent, and the one written on that same night, which
I hope I may some day forget. It was not a very kind letter--I am
sorry that I should ever have offended you, but it was not gently
done. No friend could ever speak so to another, I am sure. As for
the cause, I am a human being, a man like other me