s on broncs
an' hit the trail."

Fragments of the facts had drifted out to the boys from the sick-room.

Dud tried an experiment. "Where'll we hunt for her--up toward Piceance?"

Houck deliberated before answering. If he were to tell the truth--that
she had escaped from him in the hills nine miles down the river--these
men would know he had been lying when he said he was taking June to her
father. If he let the search party head toward Piceance, there would be
no chance for it to save the girl. The man was no coward. To his credit,
he told the truth.

A half-circle of hostile faces hemmed him in, for the word had spread
that this was the man who had carried off June Tolliver. He was the focus
of a dozen pairs of eyes. Among the cattlemen of the Old West you will
still look into many such eyes, but never among city dwellers will you
find them. Blue they are for the most part or gray-blue, level, direct,
unfearing; quiet and steady as steel, flinging no flags of flurry,
tremendously sure of themselves. They can be very likable eyes, frank and
kind, with innumerable little lines of humor radiating from the corners;
or they can be stern and chill as the Day of Judgment.

Jake Houck found in them no gentleness. They judged him, inexorably,
while he explained.

"Where was you takin' her?" asked Larson, of the Wagon Rod outfit.

In spite of his boldness, of the dominating imperiousness by means of
which he had been used to ride roughshod over lesser men, Houck felt a
chill sensation at his heart. They were too quiet--too quiet by half.

"We was to have been married to-day," he said surlily. "This Dillon boy
got her to run off with him. He was no good. I rode hell-for-leather into
town to head 'em off."

Blister brought him back to the question of the moment. "An' you were
t-takin' her--?"

"To Brown's Park."

"Forcin' her to go. Was that it?" Hollister broke in.

"No, sir. She went of her own accord."

"Asked you to take her there, mebbe?"

"None o' yore damn business."

"How old is she, Mr. Houck?" Larson questioned.

"I dunno."

"I do. Sixteen coming Christmas," said Dud. "Dillon told me."

"An' how old are you, Mr. Houck?" the quiet, even voice of the owner of
the Wagon Rod pursued.

"I d'no as that's got anything to do with it, but I'm forty-three," Jake
retorted defiantly.

"You meant to live with her?"

"I meant to treat her right," was the sullen reply.

"But livin' with her, an' her another