eway, and when he had concocted a weak
toddy, insisted that she must drink it, which she did listlessly, while
he rambled on.

"I've noticed a few things in my life, Miss Necia, and one of them is
that it often does a heap of good to let out and talk things over; not
that a fellow gains any real advantage from disseminating his troubles,
but it serves to sort of ease his mind. Folks don't often come to me
for advice or sympathy. I don't have it to give, but maybe it will help
you to tell me what caused this night-marauding expedition of yours."
Seeing that she hesitated, he went on: "I suppose there's a lot of
reasons why you shouldn't confide in me--I don't like that old man of
yours, nor any of your friends; but maybe that's why I'm interested. If
any of them has upset you, I'll take particular pleasure in helping you
get even."

"I don't want to get even, and there is nothing to tell," said Necia,
"except a girl's troubles, and I can't talk about them." She smiled a
painful, crooked smile at him.

"Your old man has been rough to you?"

"No, no! Nothing of that sort."

"Then it's that soldier?" he quizzed, shrewdly. "I knew you cared a
heap for him. Don't he love you?"

"Yes! That's the trouble; and he wants to many me; he swears he will in
spite of everything."

"See here! I don't quite follow. I thought you liked him--he's the kind
most women go daffy over."

"Like him!" The girl trembled with emotion. "Like him! Why--why, I
would do anything to make him happy."

"I guess I must be kind of dull," Stark said, perplexedly.

"Don't you see? I've got to give him up--I'm a squaw."

"Squaw hell! With those shoulders?"

Stark checked himself, for he found he was rejoicing in his enemy's
defeat, and was in danger of betraying himself to the girl. In every
encounter the young man had bested him, and these petty defeats had
crystallized his antipathy to Burrell into a hatred so strong that he
had begun to lie awake nights planning a systematic quarrel. For he was
the kind of man who throve upon contentions: so warped in soul that
when no man offered him offence he brooded over fancied wrongs and
conjured up a cause for enmity, goading himself into that sour, sullen
habit of mind that made him a dread and a menace to all who lacked his
favor. His path was strewn from the border North with the husks of
fierce brawls, and he bore the ineradicable mark of the killer,
carrying always in his brain those scars that h