rifle and devoted his
attention to Alice.

"Breakfast is ready, Miss Mackenzie. This way, please."

The outlaw led her to the dining room, where the young woman met a
fresh surprise. The table was white with immaculate linen and shone with
silver. She sat down to breakfast food with cream, followed by quail on
toast, bacon and eggs, and really good coffee. Moreover, she discovered
that this terror of the border knew how to handle his knife and fork,
was not deficient in the little niceties of table decorum. He talked,
and talked well, ignoring, like a perfect host, the relation that
existed between them. They sat opposite each other and ate alone, waited
upon by the Mexican woman. Alice wondered if he kept solitary state when
she was not there or ate with the other men.

It was evening before Hardman returned from the mission upon which he
had been sent in place of the obstinate Neil. He reported at once to
Leroy, who came smilingly to the place where she was sitting on the
porch to tell her his news.

"Webb Mackenzie's going to raise that thirty thousand, all right. He's
promised to raise it inside of three days," he told her triumphantly.

"And shall I have to stay here three whole days?"

He looked with half-shut, smoldering eyes at her slender exquisiteness,
compact of a strange charm that was both well-bred and gypsyish. There
was a scarce-veiled passion in his gaze that troubled her. More than
once that day she had caught it.

"Three days ain't so long. I could stand three months of you and wish
for more," he told her.

Lightly she turned the subject, but not without a chill of fear. Three
days was a long time. Much might happen if this wolf slipped the leash
of his civilization.

It was next day that an incident occurred which was to affect the course
of events more than she could guess at the time. A bunch of wild
hill steers had been driven down by Hardman, Reilly, and Neil in the
afternoon and were inclosed in the corral with the cows from the Rocking
Chair Ranch. Just before sunset Leroy, who had been away all day,
returned and sauntered over from the stable to join Alice. It struck the
girl from his flushed appearance that he had been drinking. In his eye
she found a wild devil of lawlessness that set her heart pounding. If
Neil and he clashed now there would be murder done. Of that she felt
sure.

That she set herself to humor the Wolf's whims was no more for her own
safety than for that of the