se of the cool night air.
In all the weeks and months since her vanishing, in all his thoughts of
her, this thing had never occurred to him. He had regarded her as the
innocent, unfortunate daughter of a bad man.

Now, however, he sought an excuse for her.

"He was your father, and you had to protect him. You could not betray
your own father. You must have suffered."

"You're too kind, too generous," she hoarsely explained. "It was no
effort on my part to keep his secret. I knew what business he followed
long years before I ever saw you. I knew it long before he purchased the
Flying Dollars. Down in Texas he was a rustler, but, unlike other
rustlers, he did not squander his money. He saved it and sent me to
school. In a boarding school I was regarded as the daughter of a wealthy
ranchman. I was popular with my girl schoolmates. No one of them ever
suspected that my father was a cattle thief and that I knew it."

"For Heaven's sake, stop!" commanded Carson. "Don't seek to degrade
yourself in my eyes! Don't try to turn me against you in this manner!"

"I'm simply telling you the truth, Berlin Carson. Do you wonder why I
vanished after my father's death? Do you wonder why I never faced you
again? You knew a part of the miserable truth. Had I been compelled to
see you again, I knew I would tell you all, and I likewise knew what
that meant."

"What it meant?"

"Yes."

"You thought----"

"I knew it would shock you beyond words. I knew the effect it must have
upon you. I could not bring myself to meet you, well knowing that you
would shudder and shrink from me."

He lifted his hand.

"No, no, never!" he declared. "You were wrong, Bessie. You were
frightfully mistaken. The trouble was that you did not understand
me--you did not know me."

"It cannot be that you----"

"I should have pitied you, and I should have loved you all the more,
even as I do now," he asserted. "Why not? It was not your fault that
your father was a criminal. Of course you had to keep his secret. It was
a cruel fate that placed you in such a position."

"Wait a little longer," she urged. "You must know the truth, every bit
of it. I admired my father. I loved the danger and the thrill of that
wild life. Not only did I know what he did, but more than once, in the
darkness of night, I aided him and his men in their work. I was dressed
as a boy, and only Injun Jack and my father knew I was not a boy. Now
you know what sort of girl you have fa