w very well how she ought to have broken the news with the pious
platitudes that everything is for the best, with the whitewashed lies
that every damnable tragedy is a blessing in disguise, that every
devil-dance of fool circumstance is beneficent design, that disease is
really health in a mask and sin a joke, a misnomer, that crime is
really a trump card up Deity's sleeve to play down some wonderful trick
of good; but--was it the Indian strain in her blood back many
generations? She could not mouthe the hollow mockery of such
sophistries in the presence of Death.

"Eleanor--what is it? Why do your eyes look so strange?"

The little woman clasped both the girl's hands and gazed questioningly
up in her face. At the same moment, she began to tremble. She tried
to ask and faltered; a tremor pulsed in the upper lip. Then the
grand-daughter of the man of the iron hand had gathered the little
white haired lady in her arms as if to ward the blow.

"The outlaws drove Fordie over the Rim Rocks with the herd," she said.

"Is he dead? Is he dead?"

The little woman had drawn her body up its full height.

Eleanor tried to answer. The words would not come from her lips. She
nodded. There again she had to shut the door of memory; for, when we
break the news, it isn't the news we break; it's the news breaks us.

After what seemed an interminable quiet, Mrs. Williams was asking
through dry tearless sobs:

"What does it all mean? Have we not given our whole lives to God? How
could this thing happen--to an innocent child? There isn't any justice
or right in this whole world."

"We must _not_ be quiescent any more, Mrs. Williams. We must fight.
We have such a habit of letting things go, and things let go--go wrong.
It isn't God's fault at all: it's us--us humans: it's our fault. Every
one of us ought to have been ready to die to prevent crime; and we've
been letting things go. We mustn't be quiescent any more. We must
fight wrongs and evils. And much more;" the girl in tears, the little
woman fevered, red-eyed, gazing with glazed look into dark spaces,
kneading her clasped hands together. Once the door opened and the
shawled head of the old half-breed woman poked in.

"Ford?" Calamity asked.

"Go 'way, Calamity," whispered Eleanor.

She saw the little woman rise slowly.

"He is murdered," Mrs. Williams said, "he is murdered just as truly as
if Moyese had cut his throat with his own hand." It was not for