"I had to tell you," he cried harshly. "They hanged him for a cattle
thief. He was one. Oh, yes. He was one. That's why I had to tell
you."

The woman's eyes were wide with a sudden terror to which the man
remained oblivious.

"But you said----"

"I said he was pelt hunting. So he'd told me. So I believed. But he
wasn't. Say, he was a cattle rustler running a big gang who'd played
hell with the district. He'd been running it for nigh five years.
He'd beaten 'em to a mush, all that time, till a reward was offered. A
reward of ten thousand dollars. That fixed him. There was some one
knew wanted that reward, and--got it."

There was a sudden movement in the room. Elvine had abruptly risen
from her chair. She moved away. She crossed to the window, and stood
with her back turned, and so had thrust herself into her husband's
focus.

"It's--it's a terrible--dreadful story," came her faltering comment.

"Terrible? Dreadful?" The man emitted a sound that might have been a
laugh. A shudder passed down the woman's back as it fell upon her
ears. "But it's nothing to the reality, Evie. Oh, I've no sympathy
for his crimes. I hate rustlers like the poison they are. But he was
twin to me, and I loved him. It made no difference to me. You see, he
was part of me. Now--now I only hope the good God'll let me come up
with the man who took the price of his blood. For four years I've
dreamed that way, and I guess it don't matter if it's fifty more. I'll
never change. There's some one, somewhere, who's lower down than the
worst cattle rustler ever lived."

There was no response as the man ceased speaking. Elvine had not
stirred from her place at the window. The moments passed. Swift,
poignant moments, in which two people were enduring an agony of
recollection.

The man's relentless expression never changed. His eyes were gazing
straight ahead. And though his vision was obstructed by the perfect
contours of his wife's figure, he was gazing through her, and beyond
her, upon a scene which had for its central interest the suspended
figure of a man with his head lolling forward and sideways, and his
dead eyes bulging from their sockets.

Elvine never stirred. Her gaze was upon the crowded thoroughfare
beyond. But like her husband, she was gazing through and beyond. She
was watching the tongues of flame as they licked up the resinous trunks
and foliage of a great pine bluff.

At length it was the w