da confronting her husband. For a
moment her courage well-nigh failed her. Jeff was standing with his
back turned toward the sunset. The ranchman was no longer there. He
had gone to the barn to order a fresh saddle horse for the master of
the Obar. Apparently Jeff had turned to repass into the house.

His fair strong face, serious and cold, was turned directly upon the
beautiful figure of his wife, and it was the coldness of it that
daunted her now.

"Well?"

The bitterness of that frigid, surprised inquiry was crushing. Elvine
looked into his eyes for one single shadow of softening. She could
find none. It shocked the hope she had been steadily building in her
heart.

She had no words in which to answer. She stood thus for one uncertain
moment. Then she thrust out her hand. It contained the threatening
message.

"Will you read that--at once?"

His cold regard dropped from her face. The man noted the dirty paper
in her soft white hand. Then he took it. Nor did their hands come
into contact.

"Is it a matter of importance?"

Elvine could have cried out with the stab of the question. Only some
matter of vital importance justified her action in his eyes. Her gaze
was averted to hide her pain.

"I should not have come to you otherwise."

The man moved to the edge of the veranda to obtain more of the dying
light. At that moment the ranchman approached with two saddle horses.
Elvine scrutinized him carefully. He was a complete stranger to her.

Jeff had read the note. He stood regarding the ranchman. Suddenly his
voice broke sharply.

"Leave my horse at the tying post. Wait for me at the barn."

He watched the man secure his horse. Then he watched him return to the
barn. Nor did he speak again till he was out of earshot.

At last he turned back to the waiting woman.

"Who sent this? When did you get it? How?" The questions came
rapidly.

"It came the night you were at Orrville. It was flung in through the
open window late at night. I'd fallen asleep in my chair--waiting. It
hit me on the face. They'd made it fast around a grass-tuft."

"Who sent it?"

"It must have been the man, Sikkem, who's just sent in word to you
he's--shot up."

"Sikkem? Why?"

Suddenly the restraint Elvine was exercising gave way. Even her
husband's deliberate coldness was powerless to stem the tide of
conviction which had steadily mounted up within her. The one thought
in her mind was that h