utes.

Beaudry watched her with hungry eyes. What was the use of denying to
himself that he loved her? If he had not known it before, the past
half-hour had made it clear to him. With those wan shadows below her
long eye-lashes and that charming manner of shy dependence upon him,
she was infinitely more attractive to him than she had ever been before.

Beulah Rutherford was not the kind of girl he had thought of as a
sweetheart in his daydreams. His fancies had hovered hazily about some
imaginary college girl, one skilled in the finesse of the rules that
society teaches young women in self-defense. Instead, he had fallen in
love with a girl who could not play the social game at all. She was
almost the only one he had known who never used any perfume; yet her
atmosphere was fragrant as one of the young pines in her own mountain
park. The young school-teacher was vital, passionate, and--he
suspected--fiercely tender. For her lover there would be rare gifts in
her eyes, wonderful largesse in her smile. The man who could qualify
as her husband must be clean and four-square and game from the soles of
his feet up--such a man as Dave Dingwell, except that the cattleman was
ten years too old for her.

Her husband! What was he thinking about? Roy brought his bolting
thoughts up with a round turn. There could be no question of marriage
between her father's daughter and his father's son. Hal Rutherford had
put that out of doubt on the day when he had ridden to the Elephant
Corral to murder Sheriff Beaudry. No decent man could marry the
daughter of the man who had killed his father in cold blood. Out of
such a wedding could come only sorrow and tragedy.

And if this were not bar enough between them, there was another.
Beulah Rutherford could never marry a man who was a physical coward.
It was a dear joy to his soul that she had broken down and wept and
clung to him. But this was the sex privilege of even a brave woman. A
man had to face danger with a nerve of tested iron, and that was a
thing he could never do.

Roy was stretched on the moss face down, his chin resting on the two
cupped palms of his hands. Suddenly he sat up, every nerve tense and
alert. Silently he got to his feet and stole down into the aspen
grove. With great caution he worked his way into the grove and peered
through to the hillside beyond. A man was standing by the edge of the
prospect hole. He was looking down into it. Young Beaudr