was Jake Houck? What had become of him? The shell that had been his
was here. But where was the roaring bully that had shaken his fist
blasphemously at God and man?

It came to him, with a queer tug at the heartstrings, that Houck had once
been a dimpled baby in a mother's arms, a chirruping little fat-legged
fellow who tottered across the floor to her with outstretched fingers.
Had that innocent child disappeared forever? Or in that other world to
which Jake had so violently gone would he meet again the better self his
evil life had smothered?

Bob loosened the bandanna from his throat and with it covered the face of
the outlaw. He straightened the body and folded the hands across the
breast. It was not in his power to obliterate from the face the look of
ghastly, rigid terror stamped on it during the last terrible moments.

The young husband went back to his waiting wife. He stood by her stirrup
while she looked down at him, white-faced.

"Who was it?" she whispered.

"Jake Houck," he told her gravely. "The Utes did it--because he killed
Black Arrow, I reckon."

She shuddered. A cloud had come over the beautiful world.

"We'll go on now," he said gently. "I'll come back later with your
father."

They rode in silence up the long hill. At the top of it he drew rein and
smiled at his bride.

"You'll not let that spoil the day, will you, June? He had it coming, you
know. Houck had gone bad. If it hadn't been the Utes, it would have been
the law a little later."

"Yes, but--" She tried to answer his smile, not very successfully. "It's
rather--awful, isn't it?"

He nodded. "Let's walk over to the cabin, dear."

She swung down, into his arms. There she found comfort that dissipated
the cloud from her mind. When she ran into the house to throw her arms
around Pete Tolliver's neck, she was again radiant.

"Guess! Guess what!" she ordered her father.

Pete looked at his daughter and at the bashful, smiling boy.

"I reckon I done guessed, honeybug," he answered, stroking her rebellious
hair.

"You're to come and live with us. Isn't he, Bob?"

The young husband nodded sheepishly. He felt that it was a brutal thing
to take a daughter from her father. It had not occurred to him before,
but old Pete would feel rather out of it now.

Tolliver looked at Bob over the shoulder of his daughter.

"You be good to her or I'll--" His voice broke.

"I sure will," the husband promised.

June laughed. "He's the one o