Boyle's dust had not settled before Smith came by, jangling a road-scraper behind his team. He was coming from his labor of leveling a claim, skip one, up the river. He drew up, his big red face as refulgent as the setting sun, a smile on it which dust seemed only to soften and sweat to illumine. He had a hearty word for her, noting the depression of her spirit. After passing the commonplaces, a ceremony which must be done with Smith whether one met him twice or twenty times a day, he waved his hand down the river in the direction that Boyle had gone. "Feller come past here a little while ago?" he asked, knowing very well that Boyle had left but a few minutes before. "He has just gone," she told him. "Jerry Boyle," nodded Smith; "the Governor's son. He ain't got no use for me, and I tell you, if I had a woman around the place----" Smith hung up his voice there as if something had crossed his mind. He stood looking down the valley in a speculative way. "Yes?" she inquired, respectfully recalling him. "Yes," repeated Smith. "If I had a woman around the house I'd take a shot at that feller as quick as I would at a lobo-wolf!" Smith jangled on, his scraper making toadish hops and tortoise-like tips and amblings over the inequalities in the way. She looked after him, a new light shining from her eyes, a new passion stirring her bosom, where his words had fallen like a spark upon tinder. So that was the estimation in which men held Jerry Boyle--men like Smith, who moved along the lower levels of life and smoothed over the rough places for others to pass by and by! It must be but the reflection of thought in higher planes--"If I had a woman around the place!" Such then was the predatory reputation of Jerry Boyle, who was capable of dishonorable acts in more directions than one, whose very presence was a taint. And he would ride back there tomorrow evening, perhaps after the sun had set, perhaps after darkness had fallen, to receive the answer to his dishonorable proposal that she sacrifice her friend to save herself from his spite, and the consequences of her own misguided act. "If I had a woman around the place!" The spark in the tinder was spreading, warming, warming, glowing into a fierce, hot flame. Like a wolf--like a wolf--Smith would take a shot at him--like a wolf! Smith had compared him to a wolf; had said he could be as mean as a wolf--and if there was a woman around the place! She went into the tent, the blood rising hot to her temples, beating, singing in her ears. The revolver which she had brought with her on the doctor's advice hung at the head of her cot. With it strapped around her she went back to her stove, which she fed with a wild vigor, exulting in seeing the flames pour out of the pipe and the thin sides grow red. "Like a wolf--like a wolf!" The words pounded in her mind, leaped through her circulation like quickening fire. "Like a wolf--if there was a woman around the house----"