prancing. That movement of the horse brought him half way around towards
the door and he was tempted mightily to look, for he knew that Betty
Neal was standing there, begging him with her eyes. But the great,
sullen pain conquered; he straightened out the mare for the gate.

Betty was indeed at the door, leaning against it in a sudden weakness,
and even in her pain she felt pride in the grace and skill of Vic's
horsemanship. The hearts of both of them were breaking, with this rather
typical difference: that Gregg felt her to be entirely at fault, and
that she as fully accepted every scruple of the blame. He had come
down tired out and nervous from work he had done for her sake, she
remembered, and if he would only glance back once--he must know that she
was praying for it--she would cry out and run down to him; but he went
on, on, through the gate.

A flash of her passion returned to her. "I shall go with Blondy--if it
kills me." And she flung herself into the nearest seat and wept.

So when he reached the road and looked back at last, the doorway yawned
black, empty, and he set his teeth with a groan and spurred down the
road for Alder. He drew rein at Captain Lorrimer's and entered with curt
nods in exchange for the greetings.

"Red-eye," he ordered, and seized bottle and glass as Lorrimer spun them
deftly towards him.

Captain Lorrimer picked up the bottle and gazed at it mournfully when
Vic had poured his drink.

"Son," he murmured, "you've sure raised an awful thirst."

Chapter IV. King Hol

There is a very general and very erroneous impression that alcohol
builds the mood of a man; as a matter of fact it merely makes his temper
of the moment fast--the man who takes his first drink with a smile ends
in uproarious laughter, and he who frowns will often end in fighting.
Vic Gregg did not frown as he drank, but the corners of his lips turned
up a trifle in a smile of fixed and acid pleasantry and his glance went
from face to face in the barroom, steadily, with a trifling pause at
each pair of eyes. Beginning with himself, he hated mankind in general;
the burn of the cheap whisky within served to set the color of that
hatred in a fixed dye. He did not lift his chaser, but his hand closed
around it hard. If some one had given him an excuse for a fist-fight or
an outburst of cursing it would have washed his mind as clean as a
new slate, and five minutes later he might have been with Betty Neal,
riotously ha