nge what the
early days made of him. As for Nick Steele and Monty, they're just bad
men, and looking for trouble."

"How about yourself, Stewart? Stillwell's remark was not lost upon me,"
said Madeline, prompted by curiosity.

Stewart did not reply. He looked at her in respectful silence. In her
keen earnestness Madeline saw beneath his cool exterior and was all
the more baffled. Was there a slight, inscrutable, mocking light in his
eyes, or was it only her imagination? However, the cowboy's face was as
hard as flint.

"Stewart, I have come to love my ranch," said Madeline, slowly, "and I
care a great deal for my--my cowboys. It would be dreadful if they were
to kill anybody, or especially if one of them should be killed."

"Miss Hammond, you've changed things considerable out here, but you
can't change these men. All that's needed to start them is a little
trouble. And this Mexican revolution is bound to make rough times along
some of the wilder passes across the border. We're in line, that's all.
And the boys are getting stirred up."

"Very well, then, I must accept the inevitable. I am facing a rough
time. And some of my cowboys cannot be checked much longer. But,
Stewart, whatever you have been in the past, you have changed." She
smiled at him, and her voice was singularly sweet and rich. "Stillwell
has so often referred to you as the last of his kind of cowboy. I have
just a faint idea of what a wild life you have led. Perhaps that fits
you to be a leader of such rough men. I am no judge of what a leader
should do in this crisis. My cowboys are entailing risk in my employ; my
property is not safe; perhaps my life even might be endangered. I want
to rely upon you, since Stillwell believes, and I, too, that you are the
man for this place. I shall give you no orders. But is it too much to
ask that you be my kind of a cowboy?"

Madeline remembered Stewart's former brutality and shame and abject
worship, and she measured the great change in him by the contrast
afforded now in his dark, changeless, intent face.

"Miss Hammond, what kind of a cowboy is that?" he asked.

"I--I don't exactly know. It is that kind which I feel you might be. But
I do know that in the problem at hand I want your actions to be governed
by reason, not passion. Human life is not for any man to sacrifice
unless in self-defense or in protecting those dependent upon him. What
Stillwell and you hinted makes me afraid of Nels and Nick Steele