h your brand on it?"

She had startled him at last. "With my brand on it?" he repeated, his
voice dangerously low and soft.

"You know as well as I do. You had got the F just about finished when I
called. You dropped the running iron and ran."

"Dropped it and ran, did I? And what did you do?"

"I reheated the iron and blurred the brand so that nobody could tell what
it had been."

He laughed harshly without mirth. "I see. I'm a waddy and a thief, but
you're going to protect me for old times' sake. That's the play, is it? I
ought to be much obliged to you and promise to reform, I reckon."

His bitterness stung. She felt a tightening of the throat. "All I ask is
that you go away and never come back to me," she cried with a sob.

"Don't worry about that. I ain't likely to come back to a girl that thinks
I'm the lowest thing that walks. You're not through with me a bit more
than I am with you," he answered harshly.

Her little hand beat upon the rock in her distress. "I never would have
believed it. Nobody could have made me believe it. I--I--why, I trusted
you like my own father," she lamented. "To think that you would take that
way to stock your ranch--and with the cattle of my father, too."

His face was hard as chiseled granite. "Distrust all your friends. That's
the best way."

"You haven't even denied it--not that it would do any good," she said
miserably.

There was a sound of hard, grim laughter in his throat. "No, and I ain't
going to deny it. Are you ready to go yet?"

His repulse of her little tentative advance was like a blow on the face to
her.

She made a movement to rise. While she was still on her knees he stooped,
put his arms around her, and took her into them. Before she could utter
her protest he had started down the trail toward the house.

"How dare you? Let me go," she ordered.

"You're not able to walk, and you'll go the way I say," he told her
shortly in a flinty voice.

Her anger was none the less because she realized her helplessness to get
what she wanted. Her teeth set fast to keep back useless words. Into his
stony eyes her angry ones burned. The quick, irregular rise and fall of
her bosom against his heart told him how she was struggling with her
passion.

Once he spoke. "Tell me where it was you saw this rustler--the exact place
near as you can locate it."

She answered only by a look.

The deputy strode into the living room of the ranch with her in his arms.
Lee was