th the lack-luster
eyes quietly informed me.

"What did you say?" I repeated, with a quavery feeling just under my
floating ribs, alarmed at the after-light of audacity that still
rested on his face, like wine-glow on a rocky mountain-tip.

"I said," Whinstane Sandy informed me with his old shoulders thrust
back and his stubby forefinger pointed to within a few inches of my
nose, "I said that I kenned her and her kind well, havin' watched the
likes o' her ridden out o' Dawson City on a rail more times than once.
I said that she was naethin' but a wanton"--only this was _not_ the
word Whinnie used--"a wanton o' Babylon and a temptress o' men and a
corrupter o' homes out o' her time and place, bein' naught but a soft
shinin' thing that was a mockery to the guid God who made her and a
blight to the face o' the open prairie that she was foulin' with her
presence. I said that she'd brought shame and sorrow to a home that
had been filled with happiness until she crept into it like the
serpent o' hell she was, and seein' she'd come into a lonely land
where the people have the trick o' tryin' their own cases after their
own way and takin' when need be justice into their own hands, she'd
have one week, one week o' seven days and no more, to gather up what
belonged to her and take herself back to the cities o' shame where
she'd find more o' her kind. And if she was not disposed to hearken a
friendly and timely word such as I was givin' her, I said, she'd see
herself taken out o' her home, and her hoorish body stripped to the
skin, and then tarred and feathered, and ridden on the cap-rail of a
corral-gate out of a settlement that had small taste for her company!"

"Whinnie!" I gasped, sitting down out of sheer weakness, "you didn't
say that?"

"I said it," was Whinnie's laconic retort.

"But what right had you to--"

He cut me short with a grunt that was almost disrespectful.

"I not only said it," he triumphantly affirmed, "but what's more to my
likin', I made her believe it, leavin' her with the mockin' laugh dead
in her eyes and her face as white as yon table-cover, white to the
lips!"

_Sunday the Twenty-seventh_

I've been just a little mystified, to-day, by Whinstane Sandy's
movements. As soon as breakfast was over and his chores were done he
was off on the trail. I kept my eye on him as he went, to satisfy
myself that he was not heading for Casa Grande, where no good could
possibly c