"Yes. I'm going to send Alan with a letter to Farnum. I don't think there will be any opposition to my crossing it when my object is understood," he smiled. Melissy watched him ride away, strong and rugged and ungraceful, from the head to the heel of him a man. Life had gone hard with him. She wondered whether that were the reason her heart went out to him so warmly. As she moved about her work that day and the next little snatches of song broke from her, bubbling forth like laughter, born of the quiet happiness within, for which she could give no reason. After the stage had gone she saddled her pony and rode toward the head of the pass. In an hour or two now the sheep would be pouring across the divide, and she wanted to get a photograph of them as they emerged from the pass. She was following an old cattle trail which ran into the main path just this side of the pass, and she was close to the junction when the sound of voices stopped her. Some instinct made her wait and listen. The speakers were in a dip of the trail just ahead of her, and the voice of the first she recognized as belonging to the man Boone. The tone of it was jubilantly cruel. "No, sir. You don't move a step of the way, not a step, Mr. Alan McKinstra. I've got him right where I want him, and I don't care if you talk till the cows come home." Alan's voice rang out indignantly, "It's murder then--just plain, low-down murder. If you hold me here and let Morse fall into a death trap without warning him, you're as responsible as if you shot him yourself." "All right. Suits me down to the ground. We'll let it go at that. I'm responsible. If you want the truth flat and plain, I don't mind telling you that I wouldn't be satisfied if I wasn't responsible. I'm evening up some little things with Mr. Morse to-day." Melissy needed to hear no more to understand the situation, but if she had, the next words of Boone would have cleared it up. "When I met up with you and happened on the news that you was taking a message to Farnum, and when I got onto the fact that Morse, as you call him, was moving his sheep across the dead line, _relying on you having got his letter to the cattlemen to make it safe_, it seemed luck too good to be true. All I had to do was to persuade you to stay right here with me, and Mr. Morse would walk into the pass and be wiped out. You get the beauty of it, my friend, don't you? _I'm_ responsible, but it will be Farnum and his friends that will bear the blame. There ain't but one flaw in the whole thing: Morse will never know that it's me that killed him." "You devil!" cried the boy, with impotent passion. "I've waited ten years for this day, and it's come at last. Don't you think for a moment I'm going to weaken. No, sir! You'll sit there with my gun poked in your face just as you've sat for six hours. It's my say-so to-day, sir," Boone retorted, malevolence riding triumph in his voice.