was ever the staunch defender of a friend.

Just where another brown trail branched off and wandered away over a
hill to the east, a woman rode out and met him face to face. She
pulled up and gave a little cry that brought Weary involuntarily to a
halt.

"You!" she exclaimed, in a tone that Weary felt he had no right to hear
from any but his little schoolma'am. "But I knew you'd come back when
you heard I--Have--have you seen Spikes, Ira?"

Weary flushed embarrassment; this was no joke. "No," he stammered, in
some doubt just how to proceed. "The fact is, you've made a little
mistake. I'm not--"

"Oh, you needn't go on," she interrupted, and her voice, had Weary
known it better, heralded the pouring out of a woman's heart. "I know
I've made a mistake, all right; you don't need to tell me that. And I
suppose you want to tell me that you've got over--things; that you
don't care, any more. Maybe you don't, but it'll take a lot to make me
believe it. Because you _did_ care, Ira. You _cared_, all right
enough!" She laughed in the way that makes one very uncomfortable.

"And maybe you'll tell me that I didn't. But I did, and I do yet. I
ain't ashamed to say it, if I did marry Spikes Weber just to spite you.
That's all it was, and you'd have found it out if you hadn't gone off
the way you did. I _hate_ Spikes Weber; and he knows it, Ira. He
knows I--care--for you, and he's making my life a hell. Oh, maybe I
deserve it--but you won't-- Now you've come back, you can have it out
with him; and I--I almost hope you'll kill him! I do, and I don't care
if it is wicked. I--I don't care for anything much, but--you." She
had big, soft brown eyes, and a sweet, weak mouth, and she stopped and
looked at Weary in a way that he could easily imagine would be
irresistible--to a man who cared.

Weary felt that he was quite helpless. She had hurried out sentences
that sealed his lips. He could not tell her now that she had made a
mistake; that he was not Ira Mallory, but a perfect stranger. The only
thing to do now was to carry the thing through as tactfully as
possible, and get away as soon as he could. Playing he was Irish, he
found, was not without its disadvantages.

"What particular brand of hell has he been making for you?" he asked
her sympathetically.

"I wouldn't think, knowing Spikes as you do, you'd need to ask," she
said impatiently. "The same old brand, I guess. He gets drunk, and
then--I told him