ght
bring me luck." And Dora had smiled at his superstition.

Ralston would have turned back had it not been too late: his horse's feet
among the rocks had caused them to look up. As he passed Dora replied to
some commonplace, with heightened color, and Smith stared in silent
triumph.

Ralston cursed himself and the mischance which had taken him to that
spot.

"She'll think I was spying upon her, like some ignorant, jealous fool!" he
told himself savagely. "Why, why, is it that I must always blunder upon
such scenes, to make me miserable for days! Can it be--can it possibly
be," he asked himself--"that she cares for the man; that she encourages
him; that she has a foolish, Quixotic notion that she can raise him to her
own level?"

Was there really good in the man which he, Ralston, was unable to see? Was
he too much in love with Dora himself to be just to Smith, he wondered.

"No, no!" he reiterated vehemently. "No man who would abuse a horse is fit
for a good woman to marry. I'm right about him--I know I am. But can I
prove it in time to save her?--not for myself, for I guess I've no show;
but from him?"

With a heartache which seemed to have become chronic of late, Ralston
followed the Indians' lead up hill and down, through sand coulees and
between cut-banks, at a leisurely pace. They seemed in no hurry, nor did
they make any apparent effort to conceal themselves. They rode through
several herds of cattle, and passed on, drifting gradually toward the
creek bottom close to the reservation line, where both Bar C and I. D.
cattle came to drink.

Ralston wondered if they would attempt to stand him off; but his heart was
too heavy for the possibility of a coming fight to quicken his pulse to
any great extent. He believed that he would be rather glad than otherwise
if they should make a stand. The thought that the tedious waiting game
which he had played so long might be ended did not elate him. The ambition
seemed to have gone out of him. He had little heart in his work, and small
interest in the glory resulting from success.

He thought only of Dora as he lay full length on the ground, plucking
disconsolately at spears of bunch-grass within reach, while he waited for
the sound of a shot in the creek bottom, or the reappearance of the
Indians.

He had not long to wait before a shot, a bellow, and another shot told him
that the time for action had come. He pulled his rifle from its scabbard,
and laid it in fron