't drive out
other people's cattle and take away their living."

"Well, I might compromise, but not at the end of a gun."

"No, of course not. Here comes dad now," she added hurriedly, aware for
the first time that she had been holding an extended conversation with her
father's foe.

"We started enemies and we quit enemies. Will you shake hands on that,
Miss Lee?" he asked.

She held out her hand, then drew it swiftly back. "No, I can't. I forgot.
There's another reason."

"Another reason! You mean the Arkansas charge against me?" he asked
quietly.

"No. I can't tell you what it is." She felt herself suffused in a crimson
glow. How could she explain that she could not touch hands with him
because she had robbed him of twenty thousand dollars?

Lee stopped at the steps, astonished to see his daughter and this man in
talk together. Yesterday he would have resented it bitterly, but now the
situation was changed. Something of so much greater magnitude had occurred
that he was too perturbed to cherish his feud for the present. All night
he had carried with him the dreadful secret he suspected. He could not
look Melissy in the face, nor could he discuss the robbery with anybody.
The one fact that overshadowed all others was that his little girl had
gone out and held up a stage, that if she were discovered she would be
liable to a term in the penitentiary. Laboriously his slow brain had
worked it all out. A talk with Jim Budd had confirmed his conclusions. He
knew that she had taken this risk in order to save him. He was bowed down
with his unworthiness, with shame that he had dragged her into this
horrible tangle. He was convinced that Jack Flatray would get at the
truth, and already he was resolved to come forward and claim the whole
affair as his work.

"I've been apologizing to Mr. Morse for insulting him, dad," the girl said
immediately.

Her father passed a bony hand slowly across his unshaven chin. "That's
right, honey. If you done him a meanness, you had ought to say so."

"She has said so very handsomely, Mr. Lee," spoke up Morse.

"I've been warning him, dad, that he ought to be more careful how he rides
around alone, with the cattlemen feeling the way they do."

"It's a fact they feel right hot under the collar. You're ce'tainly a
temptation to them, Mr. Morse," the girl's father agreed.

The mine owner shifted the subject of conversation. He was not a man of
many impulses, but he yielded to one now.