re drawn into a common sympathy of
determination; he had paused there to help her because she was
outmatched, fighting a brave battle against unscrupulous forces. He was
taking pay from her, and there could not be admitted any thought of
romance under such conditions.

But the girl whose challenge he had accepted at Misery that day was to
be considered in a different light. There was a pledge between them, a
bond. He believed that she was expecting him out there somewhere,
waiting for him to come. Often he would halt on a hilltop and look away
into the west, playing with a thousand fancies as to whom she might be,
and where.

He was riding in one of these dreams one mid-afternoon of a hot day
about six weeks after taking charge of affairs on the ranch, thinking
that he would tell Vesta in a day or two that he must go. Taterleg might
stay with her, other men could be hired if she would look about her. He
wanted to get out of the business anyway; there was no offering for a
man in it without capital. So he was thinking, his head bent, as he rode
up a long slope of grassy hill. At the top he stopped to blow old
Whetstone a little, turning in the saddle, running his eyes casually
along the fence.

He started, his dreams gone from him like a covey of frightened quail.
The fence was cut. For a hundred yards or more along the hilltop it was
cut at every post, making it impossible to piece.

Lambert could not have felt his resentment burn any hotter if it had
been his own fence. It was a fence under his charge; the defiance was
directed at him. He rode along to see if any cattle had escaped, and
drew his breath again with relief when he found that none had passed.

There was the track of but one horse; the fence-cutter had been alone,
probably not more than an hour ahead of him. The job finished, he had
gone boldly in the direction of Kerr's ranch, on whose side the
depredation had been committed. Lambert followed the trail some
distance. It led on toward Kerr's ranch, defiance in its very boldness.
Kerr himself must have done that job.

One man had little chance of stopping such assaults, now they had begun,
on a front of twenty miles. But Lambert vowed that if he ever did have
the good fortune to come up on one of these sneaks while he was at work,
he'd fill his hide so full of lead they'd have to get a derrick to load
him into a wagon.

It didn't matter so much about the fence, so long as they didn't get any
of the