eemed possessed of a fury to turn and run
back. Some force, like an invisible hand, withheld him. When he reached
the cabin he shut himself in, and lay on his bunk, forgetting that the
place did not belong to him, alive only to the mystery of his trouble,
smarting with the shame of the assault upon him. It was dark before he
composed himself and went out, and then he had not the desire to eat.
He made no move to open the supplies of food, did not even make a
light. But he went out to take grass and water to the horses. When he
returned to the cabin a man was standing at the porch. Slone recognized
Holley's shape and then his voice.

"Son, you raised the devil to-day."

"Holley, don't you go back on me!" cried Slone. "I was driven!"

"Don't talk so loud," whispered the rider in return. "I've only a
minnit. ... Here--a letter from Lucy.... An', son, don't git the idee
thet I'll go back on you."

Slone took the letter with trembling fingers. All the fury and gloom
instantly fled. Lucy had written him! He could not speak.

"Son, I'm double-crossin' the boss, right this minnit!" whispered
Holley, hoarsely. "An' the same time I'm playin' Lucy's game. If Bostil
finds out he'll kill me. I mustn't be ketched up here. But I won't lose
track of you--wherever you go."

Holley slipped away stealthily in the dusk, leaving Slone with a
throbbing heart.

"Wherever you go!" he echoed. "Ah! I forgot! I can't stay here."

Lucy's letter made his fingers tingle--made them so hasty and awkward
that he had difficulty in kindling blaze enough to see to read. The
letter was short, written in lead-pencil on the torn leaf of a ledger.
Slone could not read rapidly--those years on the desert had seen to
that--and his haste to learn what Lucy said bewildered him. At first
all the words blurred:

"Come at once to the bench in the cottonwoods. I'll meet you there. My
heart is breaking. It's a lie--a lie--what they say. I'll swear you
were with me the night the boat was cut adrift. I KNOW you didn't do
that. I know who.... Oh, come! I will stick to you. I will run off with
you. I love you!"

CHAPTER XV

Slone's heart leaped to his throat, and its beating choked his
utterances of rapture and amaze and dread. But rapture dominated the
other emotions. He could scarcely control the impulse to run to meet
Lucy, without a single cautious thought.

He put the precious letter inside his blouse, where it seemed to warm
his breast. He buck