"If I try right. You beast!" The words came through her lips laden with unutterable loathing. She put her hands before her eyes to shut out the sight of him and turned back into the room, throwing out her arms in despair. "What can I do?" she asked passionately; and again: "What can I do?" * * * * * To Tex, grimly watchful in the bar-room of the Why-Not, her coming brought a shock. He remembered her as she appeared when publicly denouncing him for a crime he had not committed, a memory that ill prepared him for the all-pervading charm of her beauty. Approaching rapidly, a glorious figure, sitting the powerful black with unaffected grace, her grave loveliness smote him with a sort of wonder. Plunging through the ford in a series of magnificent leaps, the rifted spray flashed about her in the sunlight like bursting clouds of jewels. The solid ground once more under his feet, the black settled into his stride and they were away, the blue sky above the distant hills set wide for them, a gateway of the gods. "When she had passed it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music," murmured Tex. Dutch Fred laughed genially at his companion’s interest. They two were alone in the room. "Der French Rose, a fine voman, yes," he remarked, with open and honest admiration. "You like her?" Tex stared steadily out of the window as he answered: "’Had she been true If Heaven had made me such another world Of one entire and perfect chrysolite I ’d not have sold her for it.’" "Sold her! Sold her for a—vot? Vot you talk, anyvay?" "That, my friend, is what the nigger said when the shoe pinched. There ’s a h—l of a lot of tight shoes in th’ world, Fred." Fred walked to the door and gazed solemnly after Tex as he rode away; then he walked back to the bar and solemnly mixed himself a fancy drink, which he compounded with the judgment of long experience. He set down the glass and admonished it with a pudgy forefinger: "How _he_ know she vear tight shoes, vat?" But the glass had already given up all it contained. Swallow, meanwhile, was putting the trail behind him with praiseworthy speed, and brought Rose within hailing distance of the ranch house just as Jake, with his carefully concealed stones, re-entered the kitchen. As she dropped from her horse Buck appeared at the door and sprang forward to greet her, his stern face aglow with pleasure. "Why, ma’am, I ’m right glad to see you," he declared, appreciative of the firm clasp of the hand she gave him. "Honest as a man’s," was his thought. "Jake! O-o, Jake!" he called.