big
money, if you can get the right kind of a stand-in with the police. No
cheap joint, but a high-toned dance hall in some burg where you can get
a liquor license. That's my advice to you."

"It's what I thought you meant, but I wanted to be sure of it!" Her
voice came between her teeth, guttural, and the face into which his
startled eyes looked was the face of Jezebel of the Sand Coulee. "I'd
kill you if I had anything to do it with, but, so help me God, you
shan't say that to me and get away with it!"

The girl struck him full across the face with such force that he
recoiled under it, while the prints of her fingers stood out like scars
on his sallow cheek for a full minute. She was gone before he recovered,
but curses followed her as she ran panting in her blind rage down the
narrow stairway.

Kate felt as though liquid fire were racing through her veins, like some
one rushing from a house with his clothes on fire, as she tore open the
knot of the bridle reins and swung into the saddle. She did not need to
hear the words to know that the guffaw which reached her from a group on
the sidewalk was inspired by some coarse witticism concerning her.

There was not a single friendly pair of eyes, or one pair that was even
neutral, among the many that looked at her and after her as she gave her
horse its head and let it clatter at a gallop that was all but a run
down the main street and over the road that led out of Prouty.

It was a crisis, and intuitively she recognized it--one of those
emotional climaxes that sear and burn and leave their scars forever.

The powerful horse bounded up the steep grade without slackening, but at
the top she checked it, and from the edge of the bench stood looking
down upon the crude town sprawling on the flat beneath her. It
represented one antagonistic personality to her, and as such she
addressed it aloud, with deliberately chosen words, as one throwing down
the gauntlet to an enemy.

"You've hurt me! You've never done anything else but hurt me, and I've
forgiven and forgotten and tried to make myself believe you didn't mean
it. Now I know better.

"You still have it in your power to hurt me, to anger me, sometimes to
defeat me. I am one and you are many, but you can't crush me, you can't
break my heart or spirit; you can't keep me down! I'll succeed! I may be
years in doing it, but I'll win out over you. I'll be remembered when
you're rotten in your graves, and if I can live lo