ce
you, no matter what you done." And then the grim philosophy of the
plains-woman asserted itself. "I never can understand why women feed their
pride on their heart's blood; it never was my way."

He did not like to remember that he had given her cause for a way.
"There's a lot of women as wouldn't exactly regard me as a Merino, or a
Southdown, either;" he gulped the coffee to ease the tightness in his
throat.

"They'd be women of no judgment, then," she said, with conviction.

Jim's head was tilted back, resting in the palm of his hand. His profile,
sharpened by anxiety, more than suggested his quarter-strain of Sioux
blood. He might almost have been old Chief Flying Hawk himself, as he
looked steadily at the woman who had been a young girl and reckless, when
he had been a boy and reckless; who had paid her woman's penalty and come
into her woman's kingdom; who had made a man of him by the mystery of her
motherhood, and who had uncomplainingly gone with him into the wilderness
and become an alien and an outcast.

These things unmanned him as the sight of the gallows and the rope for his
hanging could not have done. Shielding himself with an affected roughness,
he asked:

"What the hell's the matter with you? I've been drinking like a beast of
an Indian, and you give me coffee instead of a tongue-lashing."

The color had all gone out of her face. She gasped the words:

"Jim, I dreamed it last night--they came for you!"

She cowered at the recollection.

"Did they get me?" he asked. There was no surprise in his tone. He spoke
as one who knew the answer.

"Yes, the children saw. The noise woke them."

"You mustn't let 'em see, when--they come. They've a right to a fair start;
we didn't get it, old girl."

"The children gave it to us," and she faced him.

"Yes, yes, but we want them to have it from the start, like good folks."

They looked into each other's eyes. The memory of dead and gone madness
twinkled there a moment, then each remembered:

"You must hurry, Jim. You haven't a moment to lose. I dreamed it was to be
to-night--they'll come to-night!"

"The game's all up, old girl! If I had a month I couldn't get away.
Morrison's been looking for me over to the Owl Creek Range; he's
back--Stevens told me yesterday. He'll be heading here soon. The price on
my head is a strain on friendship."

"Have the sheep-men gone back on you?"

"Yes, damn them! A thousand dollars is big money, and they've had har