he Colonel" to the White House. "What manner
of ruler is this who is ready to strike down the man whose very name means
conservation, and who in a few years would have made this body of forest
rangers the most effective corps of its size in the world?" He groaned
again, and his throat ached with the fury of his indignation.

"Dismissed for insubordination," the report said. "In what way? Only in
making war on greed, in checking graft, in preserving the heritage of the
people."

The lash that cut deepest was the open exultation of the very men whose
persistent attempt to appropriate public property the chief had helped to
thwart. "Redfield will go next. The influence that got the chief will get
Hugh. He's too good a man to escape. Then, as Swenson says, the thieves
will roll in upon us to slash, and burn, and corrupt. What a country! What
a country!"

As he reached the end of this line of despairing thought, he came back to
the question of his remaining personal obligations. Wetherford must be
cared for, and then--and then! there was Virginia waiting for him at this
moment. In his weakness he confessed that he had never intended to marry
her, and yet he had never deliberately intended to do her wrong. He had
always stopped short of the hideous treachery involved in despoiling her
young love. "And for her sake, to save her from humiliation, I will help
her father to freedom."

This brought him back to the hideous tragedy of the heights, and with that
thought the last shred of faith in the sense of justice in the State
vanished.

"They will never discover those murderers. They will permit this outrage
to pass unpunished, like the others. It will be merely another 'dramatic
incident' in the history of the range."

His pony of its own accord turned, and by a circuitous route headed at
last for the home canon as if it knew its master's wavering mind. Cavanagh
observed what he was doing, but his lax hand did not intervene. Helpless
to make the decision himself, he welcomed the intervention of the homing
instinct of his horse. With bent head and brooding face he returned to the
silence of the trail and the loneliness of the hills.

XII

CAVANAGH'S LAST VIGIL BEGINS

On his solitary ride upward and homeward the ranger searched his heart and
found it bitter and disloyal. Love had interfered with duty, and pride had
checked and defeated love. His path, no longer clear and definite, looped
away aimlessly, lost in