Pretty good guess, Pete Purdy."

"Don' call me that," begged Tolliver.

Houck showed his teeth in an evil grin. "I forgot. What I was sayin' was
that nobody knows you're here but me. Most folks have forgot all about
you. You can fix things so 's to be safe enough."

"You wouldn't give me away, Jake. You was in on the rustlin' too. We was
pals. It was jes' my bad luck I met up with Jas that day. I didn't begin
the shooting. You know that."

"I ain't likely to give away my own father-in-law, am I?"

Again the close-set, hard eyes clamped fast to the wavering ones of the
tortured outlaw. In them Tolliver read an ultimatum. Notice was being
served on him that there was only one way to seal Houck's lips.

That way he did not want to follow. Pete was a weak father, an
ineffective one, wholly unable to give expression to the feeling that at
times welled up in him. But June was all his life now held. He suffered
because of the loneliness their circumstances forced upon her. The best
was what he craved for her.

And Jake Houck was a long way from the best. He had followed rough and
evil trails all his life. As a boy, in his cowpuncher days, he had been
hard and callous. Time had not improved him.

June came to the door of the cabin and called.

"What is it, honey?" Tolliver asked.

"He's got my shoe. I want it."

Pete looked at the brogan sticking out of Jake's pocket. The big fellow
forestalled a question.

"I'll take it to her," he said.

Houck strode to the house.

"So it's yore shoe after all," he grinned.

"Give it here," June demanded.

"Say pretty please."

She flashed to anger. "You're the meanest man I ever did meet."

"An' you're the prettiest barelegged dancer on the Creek," he countered.

June stamped the one shoe she was wearing. "Are you going to give me that
brogan or not?"

"If you'll let me put it on for you."

Furious, she flung round and went back into the house.

He laughed delightedly, then tossed the heavy shoe into the room after
her. "Here's yore shoe, girl. I was only foolin'," he explained.

June snatched up the brogan, stooped, and fastened it.

CHAPTER V

JUNE ASKS QUESTIONS

Houck, an unwelcome guest, stayed at the cabin on Piceance nearly two
weeks. His wooing was surely one of the strangest known. He fleered at
June, taunted her, rode over the girl's pride and sense of decorum, beat
down the defenses she set up, and filled her bosom with apprehension. It
wa