ded to remember and also to forget some things; for life was a hard,
dull drab in Boise, with nothing to lighten it, save a vicarious hope
that did not comfort.

Billy Louise was not stupid. She saw through the vagueness of the
doctors; and besides, she was so hungry for her hills that she felt
like beating the doctors with her fists, because they did nothing to
make her mommie well enough to go home. She grew to hate the nurse and
her neutral cheerfulness.

That is how the fall passed for Billy Louise, and the early part of the
winter.

CHAPTER XV

"YOU WON'T GET ME AGAIN"

One day late in the fall, Ward was riding the hills off to the north
and west of his claim, looking at the condition of the range there and
keeping an eye out for Y6 cattle. He had bought another dozen head of
mixed stock, over toward Hardup, and they were not yet past the point
of straying off their new range. So, having keen eyes and the
incentive to use them, he paid attention to stock tracks in the soft
places, and he saw everything within the sweep of his vision; and,
since the day was clear and fine, his range of vision, when he reached
a high point, extended to the Three Buttes away out in the desert.

By sheer accident he rode up to the canyon where the little corral lay
hidden at the end, and looked down. And since he rode up at an angle
different from the one Billy Louise had taken, the corral was directly
beneath him--so directly, in fact, that half of it was hidden from
sight. He saw that there were cattle within it, however, and two men
at work there. And by chance he lifted his eyes and saw the nose of a
horse beyond a jutting ledge sixty yards or so away, and the crown of a
hat showing just above the ledge; a lookout, he judged instantly, and
pulled Rattler behind the rock he had been at some pains to ride around.

Ward was a cowpuncher. He knew the tricks of the trade so well that he
did not wonder what was going on down there. He knew. He was tempted
to do as Billy Louise had done--ride on and pass up knowledge which
might be disagreeable; for Ward was not one to spy upon his fellows,
and the man whom he would betray into the hands of a sheriff must be
guilty of a most heinous crime. That was his code: To let every fellow
have a chance to work out his own salvation or damnation as he might
choose. I don't suppose there was anything he hated worse than an
informer.

He got behind the rock, since he had no