on, the
mechanical banjo plugging away on its tiresome tune. There was a gap
here and there at the rack where horses had been taken away, but most of
them seemed to be anchored there for the night, standing dejectedly with
drooping heads.

The tinkle of Alta's guitar sounded through the open window of the hotel
parlor as he passed, indicating that Taterleg was still in that harbor.
It would be selfish to call him, making the most as he was of a clear
field. Lambert smiled as he recalled the three-cornered rivalry for
Alta's bony hand.

There was a lemon-rind slice of new moon low in the southwest, giving a
dusky light, the huddling sage clumps at the roadside blotches of
deepest shadow. Lambert ruminated on the trouble that had been laid out
for him that night as he rode away from town, going slowly, in no hurry
to put walls between him and the soft, pleasant night.

He was confronted by the disadvantage of an unsought notoriety, or
reputation, or whatever his local fame might be called. A man with a
fighting name must live up to it, however distasteful the strife and
turmoil, or move beyond the circle of his fame. Move he would not, could
not, although it seemed a foolish thing, on reflection, to hang on there
in the lure of Grace Kerr's dark eyes.

What could a man reasonably expect of a girl with such people as Sim
Hargus as her daily associates? Surely she had been schooled in their
warped view of justice, as her act that day proved. No matter for Omaha
and its refinements, she must be a savage under the skin. But gentle or
savage, he had a tender regard for her, a feeling of romantic sympathy
that had been groping out to find her as a plant in a pit strains toward
the light. Now, in the sunshine of her presence, would it flourish and
grow green, or wither in its mistaken worship and die?

Vesta had warned him, not knowing anything of the peculiar circumstances
which brought him to that place, or of his discovery, which seemed a
revelation of fate, the conjunction of events shaped before his entry
upon the stage, indeed. She had warned him, but in the face of things as
they had taken place, what would it avail a man to turn his back on the
arrangements of destiny? As it was written, so it must be lived. It was
not in his hand or his heart to change it.

Turning these things in his mind, flavoring the bitter in the prospect
with the sweet of romance, he was drawn out of his wanderings by the
sudden starting of