your reason.
Whether he kills anybody to-night or not, it's too late now to make a
row about it," exclaimed Lance, throwing his cigar angrily away. "He
won't kill us."

"And you expect me to sit by and fold my hands while that wretch sheds
more blood, do you?"

"It can't be helped."

"I say it can be helped! I can help it--I will help it--as you could
have done if you had wanted to. I will ride to Medicine Bend to-night
and help it."

Lance jumped to his feet, with a string of oaths. "Well this is the
limit!" He pointed his finger at her. "Dicksie Dunning, you won't stir
out of this house to-night."

Her face hardened. "How dare you speak in that way to me? Who are you,
that you order me what to do, where to stay? Am I your cowboy, to be
defiled with your curses?"

He looked at her in amazement. She was only eighteen; he would still
face her down. "I'll tell you who I am. I am master here, and you will
do as I tell you. You will ride to Medicine Bend to-night, will you?"
He struck the table with his clinched fist. "Do you hear me? I say, by
God, not a horse shall leave this ranch in this storm to-night to go
anywhere for anybody or with anybody!"

"Then I say to you this ranch is my ranch, and these horses are my
horses! From this hour forth I will order them to go and come when and
where I please!" She stepped toward him. "Henceforward I am mistress
here. Do you hear me? Henceforward _I_ give orders in Crawling Stone
House, and every one under this roof takes orders from me!"

"Dicksie, what do you mean? For God's sake, you're not going to try to
ride----"

She swept from the room. What happened afterward she could never
recall. Who got Jim for her or whether she got the horse up herself,
what was said to her in low, kindly words of warning by the man at
Jim's neck when she sprang into the saddle, who the man was, she could
not have told. All she felt at last was that she was free and out
under the black sky, with the rain beating her burning face and her
horse leaping fearfully into the wind.

No man could have kept the trail to the pass that night. The horse
took it as if the path flashed in sunshine, and swung into the
familiar stride that had carried her so many times over the twenty
miles ahead of them. The storm driving into Dicksie's face cooled her.
Every moment she recollected herself better, and before her mind all
the aspects of her venture ranged themselves. She had set herself to a
race, and