had done, she still felt the man's strong personality,
his virility--the compelling lure of him. She experienced a quick,
involuntary tightening of the muscles when she heard his voice--for it
intensified the regret in her--low, drawling, gentle:

"I have come in to report to you, ma'am."

"Very well," she said calmly. She leaned back in her chair, looking at
him, feeling a quick pulse of pity for him, for as she sat there and
waited, saying nothing further, she saw a faint red steal into his
cheeks. She knew that he had expected an invitation to join her on the
porch; he was entitled to that courtesy because of her treatment of him
on the occasion of his previous visit; and that when the invitation did
not come he could not but feel deeply the embarrassment of the situation.

The faint glow died out of his face, and the lines of his lips grew a
trifle more firm. This reception was not the one he had anticipated, but
then there were moods into which people fell. She was subject to moods,
too, for he remembered the night she had hurt her ankle--how she had
"roasted" him. And his face grew long with an inward mirth. She would ask
him to get off his horse, presently, and then he was going to tell her of
his feelings on that night.

But she did not invite him to alight. On the contrary, she maintained a
silence that was nearly severe. He divined that this mood was to continue
and instead of getting off his pony he swung crossways in the saddle.

"We've got the cattle all out of the hills an' the timber, an' we're
workin' down the crick toward here," he told her. "There ain't nothin'
unusual happened, except"--and here he paused for a brief instant--"that
I had to shoot a man. It was Watt Kelso, from over Lazette way. I hired
him two weeks before."

"I heard of it," she returned steadily, her voice expressionless.

"I hated like poison to do it. But I had no choice. He brought it on
himself."

"Yes, I suppose so," she said flatly. She looked at him now with the
first flash of emotion that she had allowed him to see. "If killing
people is your trade, and you choose to persist in it, I don't see how we
are to stop you."

He looked sharply at her, but his voice was low and even. "I don't shoot
folks for the fun of it, ma'am."

"No?"--with scornful disbelief. "Well, I presume it doesn't make much
difference. Dead people wouldn't appreciate the joke, anyway."

His face was serious now, for he could see that she was de