he hill and out of sight over the top.
When he was gone, she caught Blue and saddled him; then, with her gun
buckled around her hips and her rope coiled beside the saddle-fork, she
rode dismally up the canyon.

CHAPTER XII

THE LITTLE DEVILS OF DOUBT

Wolverine canyon, with the sun shining down aslant into its depths, was
a picturesque gash in the hills, wild enough in all conscience, but to
the normal person not in the least degree gloomy. The jutting crags
were sunlit and warm. The cherry thickets whispered in a light breeze
and sheltered birds that sang in perfect content. The service berries
were ripening and hung heavy-laden branches down over the trail to
tempt a rider into loitering. The creek leaped over rocks, slid thin
blades of swift current between the higher bowlders, and crept
stealthily down into shady pools, where speckled trout lay motionless
except for the gently-moving tail and fins that held them stationary in
some deeper shadow. Not a gloomy place, surely, when the peace of a
sunny morning laid its spell upon the land.

Billy Louise, however, did not respond to the canyon's enticements.
She brooded over her own discouragements and the tantalizing little
puzzles which somehow would not lend themselves to any convincing
solution. She was in that condition of nervous depression where she
saw her finest cows dead of bloat in the alfalfa meadows--and how would
she pay that machinery note, then? She saw John Pringle calling
unexpectedly and insistently for his "time"--and where would she find
another man whom she could trust out of her sight? John Pringle was
slow, and he was stupid and growled at poor Phoebe till Billy Louise
wanted to shake him, but he was "steady," and that one virtue covers
many a man's faults and keeps him drawing wages regularly.

Her mother had been more and more inclined to worry as the hot weather
came on; lately her anxiety over small things had rather gotten upon
the nerves of Billy Louise. She felt ill-used and down-hearted and as
if nothing mattered much, anyway. She passed her cave with a mere
glance and scowl for the memories of golden days in her lonely
childhood that clung around it. She passed Minervy's cave, and her
lips quivered with self-pity because that childhood was gone, and she
must not waste time or energy upon romantic "pretends," but must
measure haystacks and allow so much for "settling," and then add and
multiply and divide all over tw