Her eyes blazed on him like live coals. "Have you forgotten the calf you left with your brand on it?" She had startled him at last. "With my brand on it?" he repeated, his voice dangerously low and soft. "You know as well as I do. You had got the F just about finished when I called. You dropped the running iron and ran." "Dropped it and ran, did I? And what did you do?" "I reheated the iron and blurred the brand so that nobody could tell what it had been." He laughed harshly without mirth. "I see. I'm a waddy and a thief, but you're going to protect me for old times' sake. That's the play, is it? I ought to be much obliged to you and promise to reform, I reckon." His bitterness stung. She felt a tightening of the throat. "All I ask is that you go away and never come back to me," she cried with a sob. "Don't worry about that. I ain't likely to come back to a girl that thinks I'm the lowest thing that walks. You're not through with me a bit more than I am with you," he answered harshly. Her little hand beat upon the rock in her distress. "I never would have believed it. Nobody could have made me believe it. I--I--why, I trusted you like my own father," she lamented. "To think that you would take that way to stock your ranch--and with the cattle of my father, too." His face was hard as chiseled granite. "Distrust all your friends. That's the best way." "You haven't even denied it--not that it would do any good," she said miserably. There was a sound of hard, grim laughter in his throat. "No, and I ain't going to deny it. Are you ready to go yet?" His repulse of her little tentative advance was like a blow on the face to her. She made a movement to rise. While she was still on her knees he stooped, put his arms around her, and took her into them. Before she could utter her protest he had started down the trail toward the house. "How dare you? Let me go," she ordered. "You're not able to walk, and you'll go the way I say," he told her shortly in a flinty voice. Her anger was none the less because she realized her helplessness to get what she wanted. Her teeth set fast to keep back useless words. Into his stony eyes her angry ones burned. The quick, irregular rise and fall of her bosom against his heart told him how she was struggling with her passion. Once he spoke. "Tell me where it was you saw this rustler--the exact place near as you can locate it." She answered only by a look. The deputy strode into the living room of the ranch with her in his arms. Lee was reading a newspaper Jack had brought with him from Mesa. At sight of them he started up hurriedly. "Goddlemighty, what's the matter, Jack?" "Only a ricked ankle, Champ. Slipped on a stone," Flatray explained as he put Melissy down on the lounge. In two minutes the whole house was upset. Hop Ling was heating water to bathe the sprain. A rider from the bunkhouse was saddling to go for the doctor. Another was off in the opposite direction to buy some liniment at Mammoth.