ou see, Stillwell, Don Carlos has vaqueros coming and going
all the time. They're guerrilla bands, that's all. And they're getting
uglier. There have been several shooting-scrapes lately. A rancher named
White, who lives up the valley, was badly hurt. It's only a matter of
time till something stirs up the boys here. Stillwell, you know Nels and
Monty and Nick."

"Sure I know 'em. An' you're not mentionin' one more particular cowboy
in my outfit," said Stillwell, with a dry chuckle and a glance at
Stewart.

Madeline divined the covert meaning, and a slight chill passed over her,
as if a cold wind had blown in from the hills.

"Stewart, I see you carry a gun," she said, pointing to a black handle
protruding from a sheath swinging low along his leather chaps.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Why do you carry it?" she asked.

"Well," he said, "it's not a pretty gun--and it's heavy." She caught
the inference. The gun was not an ornament. His keen, steady, dark gaze
caused her vague alarm. What had once seemed cool and audacious about
this cowboy was now cold and powerful and mystical. Both her instinct
and her intelligence realized the steel fiber of the man's nature. As
she was his employer, she had the right to demand that he should not do
what was so chillingly manifest that he might do. But Madeline could
not demand. She felt curiously young and weak, and the five months of
Western life were as if they had never been. She now had to do with a
question involving human life. And the value she placed upon human
life and its spiritual significance was a matter far from her cowboy's
thoughts. A strange idea flashed up. Did she place too much value
upon all human life? She checked that, wondering, almost horrified
at herself. And then her intuition told her that she possessed a far
stronger power to move these primitive men than any woman's stern rule
or order.

"Stewart, I do not fully understand what you hint that Nels and his
comrades might do. Please be frank with me. Do you mean Nels would shoot
upon little provocation?"

"Miss Hammond, as far as Nels is concerned, shooting is now just a
matter of his meeting Don Carlos's vaqueros. It's wonderful what Nels
has stood from them, considering the Mexicans he's already killed."

"Already killed! Stewart, you are not in earnest?" cried Madeline,
shocked.

"I am. Nels has seen hard life along the Arizona border. He likes peace
as well as any man. But a few years of that doesn't cha