was an
idealist. Was he down and out? Was Right the sport of fools?

CHAPTER XXII

A DOWNY-LIPPED YOUTH IN GRAY FLANNELS

I suppose it was owing to the fact that she was woman and he was man
that she spent that first night of the home-coming in dumb hurt wonder
that he had not come immediately to her; and that he passed the night
in restless fevered fury, knowing well that you cannot both control
fire and fan it, fuse metals molten and expect them not to forge, keep
a resolution and break it. She had listened eagerly to the old
frontiersman's account of the adventures on the trail, up the Pass
precipice, crossing the snow slide and in the desert, where the Ranger
had refused to save his own life by abandoning his companion; and the
narrative lost nothing in Matthews' recital with his Scottish-Canadian
R's rolling out sonorous and strong, where he was moved to admiration
or anger. The sheep rancher sat silent through the stirring story with
only an occasional glint of fire from his black eyes gazing aimlessly
at the floor.

"'Cast your bread upon the waters and after many days it shall return
to you again.' 'Minds me of what A saw you do for this woman you call
Calamity, in our old Rebellion Days."

Eleanor was sitting on the arm of her father's leather chair. The
sheepman glanced up warningly, but Matthews was going ahead full steam.

"We're both older than we were in those days, MacDonald, older an'
wiser, an' for m'self, A should add, a good bit steadier! You, y' were
always a sober-faced secret lad, MacDonald; an' till yon day in front
o' th' Agency house, A don't think, A hardly think, we men knew what a
devil was in y'! A can see y' yet as y' kicked th' gun out o' yon
blackguard's hand an' let him take the load o' buckshot square between
th' shoulders! 'Twas a handsome thing o' you to take th' poor buddy in
an' give her a shelter! How does she come to call herself Calamity?"

MacDonald's foot came down on the floor with a clamp, and he rose.
"She didn't. 'Twas the miners in the Black Hills. She used to bring
in so many hard-luck chaps, shot up by the Sioux, bring 'em in on her
shoulders from the hills to the camp, that the boys got to calling her
Calamity. She had lost her good looks, and--" MacDonald shot a glance
of warning in the direction of his daughter--"and the same old story, I
guess; she was off the market! One of my trips to the mining camps up
state, I found her in a mess of r