m the station she looked from her window and
saw him riding up the single street on the big paint-horse. The train
cleared the edge of the little town and passed the cattle chute. A
long white line through the sage marked the course of the Coldriver
Trail. Three wagons, each drawn by four big mules, moved toward the
cluster of buildings which comprised the town, the freighters on their
way to haul out materials for the rebuilding of the ranch.

The work was going on but she no longer had a share in it. She was
looking ahead and planning a future in which the Three Bar played no
part.

Deane was with Judge Colton, her father's old friend, to meet her at
the station. The news of the Three Bar fight had preceded her and the
press had given it to the world, including her part of it. As they
rode toward the Colton home she told the Judge she had come to stay and
Deane was content. After the strenuous days she had just passed
through she needed a long period of rest, he reflected; but the older
man smiled when he suggested this.

"What she needs now is action," he said. "And no rest at all. If it
was me I'd try to wear her down instead of resting her up--keep her
busy from first to last. Cal Warren's girl isn't the sit-around type."

Deane acted on this and no day passed without his having planned a part
of it to help fill her time. Her interest in the new life was genuine
and she was conscious of no active regret at parting from the old. It
was so different as to seem part of another world. The people she met,
their mode of life, their manner of speech; all were foreign to the
customs of the range. And this very dissimilarity kept her interest
alive until she grew to feel that she belonged.

All through the fall and early winter she had scarcely an idle hour.
Her days here were almost as fully occupied as they had been before.
And in the late winter, after having visited other school friends who
lived farther east, she found herself anticipating the return to the
Colton home as eagerly as always in the past she had looked forward to
seeing the Three Bar after a long period away from it.

The grip of winter was receding and a few of the hardier trees were
putting out buds when she returned. Every evening Deane was with her
and together they planned the next, as once she and Harris had planned
before her fireplace in the old ranch house. For the first time in her
life she was glad to be sheltered and pamp