ng it
about. The law would not justify him in going out to seek these men and
shooting them down where overtaken. Time and circumstance must be ready
to his hand before he could strike and wipe out that disgraceful score.

It was not to be believed that they would allow the matter to stand
where it was; that was a comforting thought. They would seek occasion to
renew the trouble, and push it to their desired conclusion. That was the
day to which he looked forward in hot eagerness. Never again would he be
taken like a rabbit in a trap. He felt that, to stand clear before the
law, he would have to wait for them to push their fight on him, but he
vowed they never would find him unprepared, asleep or awake, under roof
or under sky.

He would get Taterleg to oil up a pair of pistols from among the number
around the bunkhouse and leave them with him that night. There was
satisfaction in the anticipation of these preparations. Dwelling on them
he fell asleep. He woke late in the afternoon, when the sun was yellow
on the wall, the shadow of the cottonwood leaves quivering like
dragonflies' wings.

On the little table beside his bed, near his glass, a bit of white paper
lay. He looked at it curiously. It bore writing in ink and marks as of a
pin.

_Just to say hello, Duke._

That was the message, unsigned, folded as it had been pinned to the
wire. Vesta had brought it and left it there while he slept.

He drew himself up with stiff carefulness and read it again, holding it
in his fingers then and gazing in abstraction out of the window,
through which he could pick up the landscape across the river, missing
the brink of the mesa entirely.

A softness, as of the rebirth of his old romance, swept him, submerging
the bitter thoughts and vengeful plans which had been his but a few
hours before, the lees of which were still heavy in him. This little
piece of writing proved that Grace was innocent of anything that had
befallen him. In the friendly good-will of her heart she thought him, as
she doubtless wished him, unharmed and well.

There was something in that girl better than her connections would seem
to guarantee; she was not intractable, she was not beyond the influence
of generosity, nor deaf to the argument of honor. It would be unfair to
hold her birth and relationship against her. Nobility had sprung out of
baseness many times in the painful history of human progress. If she was
vengeful and vindictive, it was wha