the vindictive creed which she had
pronounced against the nesters but a little while before.

"I'm afraid you're starved, honey," she said, in genuine solicitude,
thus expressing the nearest human sympathy out of her full-feeding
soul.

"I'm hungry, but far from starving," Frances told her, knowing that
the confession to an appetite would please her hostess better than a
gift. "When do you expect Mr. Chadron home?"

"I don't know, honey, but you don't need to worry; them rustlers can't
pass our men Saul left camped up the valley."

"I wasn't thinking of that; I'm not afraid."

Mrs. Chadron chuckled. "Did I tell you about Nola?" she asked. Then,
answering herself, before Frances could more than turn her head
inquiringly; "No, of course, I never. It was too funny for anything!"

"What was it?" Frances asked, in girlish eagerness. Mrs. Chadron's
smile was reflected in her face as she sat straight, and turned
expectantly to her hostess.

"The other evening when she and her father was comin' home from the
postoffice over at the agency they run acrosst that sneak Macdonald,
afoot in the road, guns so thick on him you couldn't count 'em. Saul
asked him what he was skulkin' around down this way for, and the
feller he was kind of sassy about it, and tried to pass Nola and go
on. He had the gall to tip his hat to her, just like she was low
enough to notice a brand-burner! Well, she give him a larrup over the
face with her whip that cut the hide! He took hold of her bridle to
shove her horse out of the way so he could run, I reckon, and she
switched him till he squirmed like a puppy-dog! I laughed till I
nearly split when Saul told me!"

Mrs. Chadron surrendered again to her keen appreciation of the humor
in that situation. Frances felt now that she understood the attitude
of the cattlemen toward the homesteaders as she never had even sensed
it before. Here was this motherly woman, naturally good at heart and
gentle, hardened and blinded by her prejudices until she could discuss
murder as a thing desired, and the extirpation of a whole community as
a just and righteous deed.

There was no feeling of softness in her breast for the manful
strivings of Alan Macdonald to make a home in that land, not so much
for himself--for it was plain that he would grace a different world to
far better advantage--but for the disinherited of the earth. To Mrs.
Chadron he was a thing apart from her species, a horrible, low, grisly
monste