ve face.

"Business is business, Nell. We needn't begin that old argument.
Only, understand this: I'll play square just as long as the other side
plays square. There's going to be trouble before long and you know
why. It won't begin on the west side of the Concho."

"Good-bye, John," said the girl, reining her pony around.

He raised his hat. Then he wheeled Chinook and loped toward the ranch.

Eleanor Loring, riding slowly, thought of what he had said. "He won't
give in an inch," she said aloud. "Will would have given up the cattle
business, or anything else, to please me." Then she reasoned with
herself, knowing that Will Corliss had given up all interest in the
Concho, not to please her but to hurt her, for the night before his
disappearance he had asked her to marry him and she had very sensibly
refused, telling him frankly that she liked him, but that until he had
settled down to something worth while she had no other answer for him.

She was thinking of Will when she rode in to the rancho and turned her
horse over to Miguel. Suddenly she flushed, remembering John Corliss's
eyes as he had held her in his arms.

CHAPTER VI

THE BROTHERS

As Corliss rode up to the ranch gate he took the mail from the little
wooden mail-box and stuffed it into his pocket with the exception of a
letter which bore the postmark of Antelope and his address in a
familiar handwriting. He tore the envelope open hastily and glanced at
the signature, "Will."

Then he read the letter. It told of his brother's unexpected arrival
in Antelope, penniless and sick. Corliss was not altogether surprised
except in regard to the intuition of Eleanor, which puzzled him, coming
as it had so immediately preceding the letter.

He rode to the rancho and ordered one of the men to have the buckboard
at the gate early next morning. He wondered why his brother had not
driven out to the ranch, being well known in Antelope and able to
command credit. Then he thought of Eleanor, and surmised that his
brother possibly wished to avoid meeting her. And as it happened, he
was not mistaken.

On the evening of the following day he drove up to the Palace Hotel and
inquired for his brother. The proprietor drew him to one side. "It's
all right for you to see him, John, but I been tryin' to keep him in
his room. He's--well, he ain't just feelin' right to be on the street.
Sabe?"

Corliss nodded, and turning, climbed the stairs. He knock