ride."

The girl buried her face in her hands. Lowell put his arm about her
waist, and she drooped toward him, but recovered herself with an effort.
Putting his arm away, she said:

"You make matters harder and harder for me. Please forget what I have
said and what you have said, and don't come to see me any more."

She spoke with a quiet intensity that amazed Lowell.

"Not come to see you any more! Why such an extreme sentence?"

"Because there is an evil spell on the Greek Letter Ranch. Everybody who
comes there is certain to be followed by trouble--deep trouble."

The girl's agitation increased. There was terror in her face.

"Look here!" began Lowell. "This thing is beyond all promises of
silence. I--"

"Don't ask what I mean!" said the girl. "You might find it awkward. You
say you are in love with me?"

"I repeat it a thousand times."

"Well, you are the kind of man who will choose honor every time. I
realize that much. Suppose you found that your love for me was bringing
you in direct conflict with your duty?"

"I know that such a thing is impossible," broke in Lowell.

Helen smiled, bitterly.

"It is so far from being impossible that I am asking you to forget what
you have said, and to forget me as well. There is so much of evil on the
Greek Letter Ranch that the very soil there is steeped in it. I am going
away, but I know its spell will follow me."

"You are going?" queried Lowell. "When?"

"When these men now charged with the murder are acquitted. They will be
acquitted, will they not?"

The eager note in her question caught Lowell by surprise.

"No man can tell," he replied. "It's all as inscrutable as that mountain
wall over there."

Helen shaded her eyes with her gauntleted hand as she looked in the
direction indicated by Lowell. Black clouds were pouring in masses over
the mountain-range. The sunshine was being blotted out, as if by some
giant hand. The storm-clouds swept toward them as they turned the horses
and started back along the ridge. A huge shadow, which Helen
shudderingly likened to the sprawling figure of Talpers in the
lamplight, raced toward them over the plains.

"There isn't a storm in all that blackness," Lowell assured her. "It's
all shadow and no substance. Perhaps your fears will turn out that way."

The girl regarded him gravely.

"I've tried to hope as much, but it's no use, especially when you've
felt the first actual buffetings of the storm."

The approac