' don't
happen to Joe."

Lawler's face was expressionless. Except for the flush in his cheeks he
seemed to be unaffected by Blackburn's words. His voice was a trifle
cold when he spoke:

"I'll attend to Hamlin. I'll stop at the Two Bar on my way to Willets.
By the time you reach town with the cattle I'll have the deal with
Warden clinched."

Blackburn nodded, and Lawler wheeled the bay, heading him northward.

As he rode, Lawler's face changed expression. He frowned, and his lips
set stiffly.

What he had been almost on the point of telling his mother was that he
knew why Ruth Hamlin had refused him. It was pride, nothing less. Lawler
suspected that Ruth knew her father was a rustler. In fact, there had
been times when he had seen that knowledge lying naked in her eyes when
she looked at her parent. Accusation and disgust had been there, but
mingling with them was the persistent loyalty that had always governed
the girl; the protective instinct, and a hope of reformation.

The pride that Mrs. Lawler had exhibited was not less strong in the
girl's heart. By various signs Lawler knew the girl loved him; he knew
it as positively as he knew she would not marry him while the stigma of
guilt rested upon her parent. And he was convinced that she was ignorant
of the fact that Lawler shared her secret. That was why Lawler had
permitted Hamlin to escape; it was why he had issued orders to his men
to suffer Hamlin's misdeeds without exacting the expiation that custom
provided. Lawler did not want Ruth to know that he knew.

He sent the big bay forward at a steady, even pace, and in an hour he
had crossed the sweep of upland and was riding a narrow trail that
veered gradually from the trail to Willets. The character of the land
had changed, and Lawler was now riding over a great level, thickly
dotted with bunch grass, with stretches of bars, hard sand, clumps of
cactus and greasewood.

He held to the narrow trail. It took him through a section of dead,
crumbling lava and rotting rock; through a little stretch of timber, and
finally along the bank of a shallow river--the Wolf--which ran after
doubling many times, through the Circle L valley.

In time he reached a little grass level that lay close to the river. A
small cabin squatted near the center of the clearing, surrounded by
several outbuildings in a semi-dilapidated condition, and a corral, in
which there were several horses.

Lawler sent Red King straight toward t