after McCloud and his men
left the Stone Ranch with their work done. The trail is a good three
hours long, and they reached Sinclair's place at about ten o'clock. He
was waiting for Marion--she had sent word she should come--and he came
out of the front door into the sunshine with a smile of welcome when
he saw Dicksie with her. Dicksie, long an admirer of Sinclair's, as
women usually were, had recast somewhat violently her opinions of him.
She faced him now with a criminal consciousness that she knew too
much. The weight of the dreadful secret weighed on her, and her
responsibility in the issue of the day ahead did not help to make her
greeting an easy one. One thing only was fixed in her mind and
reflected in the tension of her lips and her eyes: the resolve to keep
at every cost the promise she had given. For Dicksie had fallen under
the spell of a man even more compelling than Sinclair, and felt
strangely bounden to what she had said.

Sinclair, however, had spirit enough to smooth quite away every
embarrassment. "Bachelor's quarters," he explained roughly and
pleasantly, as he led the two women toward the house. "Cowmen make
poor housekeepers, but you must feel at home." And when Dicksie,
looking at his Indian rugs on the floors, the walls, and the couches,
said she thought he had little to apologize for, Sinclair looked
gratified and took off his hat again. "Just a moment," he said,
standing at the side of the door. "I've never been able to get Marion
over here before, so it happens that a woman's foot has never entered
the new house. I want to watch one of you cross the threshold for the
first time."

Dicksie, moving ahead, retreated with a laugh. "You first, then,
Marion."

"No, Dicksie, you."

"Never! you first." So Marion, quite red and wretchedly ill at ease,
walked into the ranch-house first.

Sinclair shone nowhere better than as a host. When he had placed his
guests comfortably in the living-room he told them the story of the
building of the house. Then he made a cicerone of himself, and
explained, with running comments, each feature of his plan as he
showed how it had been carried out through the various rooms.
Surprised at the attractiveness of things, Dicksie found herself
making mental notes for her own use, and began asking questions.
Sinclair was superb in answering, but the danger of admiring things
became at once apparent, for when Dicksie exclaimed over a handsome
bearskin, a rich dark br