y note the points of some precious purchase he is about to make, or
a glutton may contemplate a favorite dish. He saw nothing in her face
of the effects of the strain through which she had passed. To him her
eyes were the same wonderful, passionate depths that had first drawn
his reckless manhood to flout every risk in hunting his quarry down.
Her lips were the same rich, moist, enticing lips he had pressed to
his in those past moments of passion. The rounded body was unchanged.
Yes, she was very desirable.

But he was too sure of his ground to notice that there was no
responsive admiration in the woman's eyes. And perhaps it was as well.
She was looking at him with eyes wide open to what he really was, and
all the revolting of her nature was uppermost. She loathed him as she
might some venomous reptile. She loathed him and feared him. His body
might have been the body of an Apollo, his face the most perfect of
God's creations. She knew him now for the cold-blooded murderer he
was, and so she loathed and feared him.

There were stains upon his cotton shirt-sleeves, upon the bosom of it
showing between the fronts of his unbuttoned waistcoat. There were
stains upon his white moleskin trousers.

"Blood," she said, pointing. And something of her feelings must have
been plain to any but his infatuated ears.

He laughed. It was a cruel laugh.

"Sure," he cried. "It was a great scrap. We took nigh a hundred head
of Sid Morton's cattle and burnt him out."

"And the blood?"

"Guess it must be his, or--Luke Tedby's." His face suddenly darkened.
"That mutton-headed gambler over on Suffering Creek did him up. I had
to carry him to shelter--after he got away."

But Jessie paid little attention. She was following up her own
thought.

"It isn't--Conroy's?"

James' eyes grew cold.

"That seems to worry you some," he cried coldly. Then he put the thing
aside with a laugh. "You'll get used to that sort of talk after you've
been here awhile. Say, Jes--"

"I can never get used to--murder."

The woman's eyes were alight with a somber fire. She had no idea of
whither her words and feelings were carrying her. All her best
feelings were up in arms, and she, too, was touched now with the
reckless spirit which drove these people. There was no hope for her
future. There was no hope whithersoever she looked. And now that she
had seen her children were still safe from the life she had flung
herself into, she cared very little what