Best go down with me," Murray said. "I'm making Leaping Horse early
this fall on the winter trail. I'm needing stocks. I'm needing arms
and stuff. How'd that fix you?"

"Bully!" Then the boy laughed out of the joy of his heart. "But fix
it early. Fix it good and early."

The exclamation came in such a tone that pity seemed the only emotion
for it to inspire.

But Murray had finished. Whatever he felt there was no display of any
emotion in him. And pity the least of all. He crossed to the door
which opened into the kitchen. He opened it. In response to his call
Ailsa Mowbray appeared, followed by Jessie.

Murray indicated Alec with a nod.

"We're good friends again," he said. "We've acted like two school
kids, eh, Alec?" he added. "And now we've made it up. Alec figgers
he'd like to go down with me this fall to Leaping Horse, Seattle,
'Frisco, and maybe even New York. I told him I guessed you'd stake
him."

The widowed mother did not reply at once. The aging face was turned in
the direction of the son who meant so much to her. Her eyes, so
handsome and steady, were wistful. They gazed into the joy-lit face of
her boy. She could not deny him.

"Sure, Alec, dear. Just ask me what you need--if you must go."

Jessie gazed from one to the other of the three people her life seemed
bound up with. Alec she loved but feared for, in her girlish wisdom.
Murray she did not understand. Her mother she loved with a devotion
redoubled since her father's murder. Moreover, she regarded her with
perfect trust in her wisdom.

The change wrought by Murray in a few minutes, however, was too
startling for her. Their destinies almost seemed to be swayed by him.
It seemed to her alarming, and not without a vague suggestion of terror.

Father Jose was lounging over his own wood stove in the comfort of a
pair of felt slippers, his feet propped up on the seat of another chair.

He was a quaint little figure in his black, unclerical suit, and the
warm cloth cap of a like hue drawn carefully over a wide expanse of
baldness which Nature had imposed upon him. His alert face, with its
eyes whose keenness was remarkable and whose color nearly matched the
fringe of gray hair still left to him, gave him an interest which
gained nothing from his surroundings in the simple life he lived. It
was a face of intellect, and gentle-heartedness. It was a face of
purpose, too. The purpose which urges the humbler devotee to