known to the town, for he was one of those whose
tongues reveal their degradation as soon as they are intoxicated. He
boasted of his exploits in the city and of the women he had brought to
his ranch, and these revelations made him the hero of a certain type of
loafer. His cabin was recognized as a center of disorder and was
generally avoided by decent people.

As he felt his dominion slipping away, as he saw the big farmers come in
down below him and recognized the rule of the Federal government above
him, he grew reckless in his roping and branding. He had not been
convicted of dishonesty, but it was pretty certain that he was a
rustler; in fact, the whole Shellfish community was under suspicion. As
the ranger visited these cabins and came upon five or six big, hulking,
sullen men, he was glad that he had little business with them. They were
in a chronic state of discontent with the world and especially with the
Forest Service.

With the almost maniacal persistency of the drunkard, Watson now fixed
his mind upon the mysterious woman at the head of the valley. He talked
of no one else, and his vile words came to Hanscom's ears. Watson's
cronies considered his failure to secure even a word with the woman a
great joke and reported that he had found the door locked when he
finally followed her home.

Hanscom, indignant yet helpless to interfere, heard with pleasure that
the old man had threatened Watson with bodily harm if he came to his
door again, that with all his effrontery Watson had not yet been able to
set his foot across the threshold, and that he had gone to Denver on
business. "He'll forget that poor woman, maybe," he said.

Thereafter he thought of her as freed from persecution, although he knew
that others of the valley held her in view as legitimate quarry.

His was a fine, serious, though uncultivated nature. A genuine lover of
the wilderness, he had reached that time of life when love is cleansed
of its devastating selfishness, and his feeling for the lonely woman of
the Shellfish held something akin to great poetry.

His own solitary, vigorous employment, his constant warfare with wind
and cloud, had made him a little of the seer and something of the poet.
Woman to him was not merely the female of his species; she was a
marvelous being, created for the spiritual as well as for the material
need of man.

In this spirit he had lived, and, being but a plain, rather shy farmer
and prospector, he had co