particular job. Sneed is some handy. He rounded up thet little Mexican
cat fer me."

Stillwell did not hear the sheriff; he was gazing at Stewart in a kind
of imploring amaze.

"Gene, you ain't goin' to stand fer them handcuffs?" he pleaded.

"Yes," replied the cowboy. "Bill, old friend, I'm an outsider here.
There's no call for Miss Hammond and--and her brother and Florence to be
worried further about me. Their happy day has already been spoiled on my
account. I want to get out quick."

"Wal, you might be too damn considerate of Miss Hammond's sensitive
feelin's." There was now no trace of the courteous, kindly old rancher.
He looked harder than stone. "How about my feelin's? I want to know
if you're goin' to let this sneakin' coyote, this last gasp of the old
rum-guzzlin' frontier sheriffs, put you in irons an' hawg-tie you an'
drive you off to jail?"

"Yes," replied Stewart, steadily.

"Wal, by Gawd! You, Gene Stewart! What's come over you? Why, man, go in
the house, an' I'll 'tend to this feller. Then to-morrow you can ride in
an' give yourself up like a gentleman."

"No. I'll go. Thanks, Bill, for the way you and the boys would stick to
me. Hurry, Hawe, before my mind changes."

His voice broke at the last, betraying the wonderful control he had kept
over his passions. As he ceased speaking he seemed suddenly to become
spiritless. He dropped his head.

Madeline saw in him then a semblance to the hopeless, shamed Stewart of
earlier days. The vague riot in her breast leaped into conscious fury--a
woman's passionate repudiation of Stewart's broken spirit. It was not
that she would have him be a lawbreaker; it was that she could not bear
to see him deny his manhood. Once she had entreated him to become her
kind of a cowboy--a man in whom reason tempered passion. She had let him
see how painful and shocking any violence was to her. And the idea had
obsessed him, softened him, had grown like a stultifying lichen upon his
will, had shorn him of a wild, bold spirit she now strangely longed
to see him feel. When the man Sneed came forward, jingling the iron
fetters, Madeline's blood turned to fire. She would have forgiven
Stewart then for lapsing into the kind of cowboy it had been her blind
and sickly sentiment to abhor. This was a man's West--a man's game.
What right had a woman reared in a softer mold to use her beauty and
her influence to change a man who was bold and free and strong? At that
moment, with h