in
those halcyon days of the Cheyenne Club that the members rode from the
range, white with the dust of the desert, to enjoy greater luxuries than
those procurable at their clubs in New York.

Nor was it all feasting and merrymaking. A heroic band it was that battled
with the wilderness, riding the range with heat and cold, starvation and
death, and making small pin-pricks in that empty blotch of the United
States map that is marked "Great Alkali Desert" blossom into settlements.
When the last word has been said about the pioneers of these United
States, let the cow-boy be remembered in the universal toast, that bronzed
son of the saddle who lived his little day bravely and merrily, and whose
real heroism is too often forgotten in the glamour of his own
picturesqueness.

Judith was ten years old when her father, his wife, and their children
moved from Dakota--they were not so particular about North and South
Dakota, in those days--to take up a claim on Sweetwater, Wyoming. Judith
gave scant promise of the beauty that in later life became at once her
dower and her misfortune, that which was as likely to bring wretchedness
as happiness. In Wyoming she was destined to find an old friend, Mrs.
Atkins, who, as the bride of the young lieutenant, had been present at the
marriage of Sally Tumlin and Warren Rodney, and who had always felt a
wholly unreasonable sense of guilt at witnessing the ceremony and
contributing a lace handkerchief to the bride. Her husband, now Major
Atkins, was stationed at Fort Washakie, Wyoming. Mrs. Atkins happening
again on the Rodney family, and her husband having increased and
multiplied his army pay many times over by a successful venture in cattle,
the scheme of Judith's convent education was put through by the major's
wife, who had kept her New England conscience, the discomforts of frontier
posts notwithstanding.

So Judith went to the nuns to school, and stayed with them till she was
eighteen. Mrs. Atkins would have adopted her then; but Judith by this time
knew her family history in all its sordid ramifications, and felt that
duty called her to her brother, who had not improved his unfortunate start
in life, though his step-mother did not spoil him for the staying of the
rod.

VII

Chugg Takes The Ribbons

Chugg, comforted with liquids and stayed with a head-plaster, presented
himself at the Dax ranch just twenty-four hours after he was due. His mie