"If I saw you riding one of my horses, say, and I'd lost one, and you couldn't tell me where you'd got it, and wouldn't give it up, perhaps I'd think you stole it. Perhaps I'd run you into the jug until you could tell where you got it." "And that's what you think has happened to Rob?" "M-h'm!" he assented. "What?" Harry's voice rang. She drew herself erect, and in the luminous darkness of the summer night the two in the seat of the jolting wagon stared at each other. "Tell me," she demanded sharply, "tell me what you know--what you think!" And still staring at him, she waited for his reply. "I know that your brother was riding my horse. I saw him on it." CHAPTER VII For a minute they jogged on in silence. Then, in a voice that was clear with scorn, Harry said: "So you sent my brother to jail just for riding your miserable old horse!" But although her voice was cold and hard, there was a note of fatigue and distress in it that Garnett was quick to understand. He flushed hotly, and a wave of sympathy for the girl swept over him. Those few indignant words of hers made him certain that she knew no more who the real horse thief was than he did himself. She was just what she had appeared that first time in the train--a sweet, gay, warm-hearted little girl, amusingly ignorant of everything Western! "I reckon you think hanging's too good for me," he said. Harry did not answer, and in a moment he went on. "It's like this. My job is up in the reserve--keeping tabs on everything that goes on up there in the timber, where the sheep and cattle men take their herds in summer. You can see I wouldn't keep my job long if I was to believe everything fellows tell me about how honorable and noble-minded they are. I'm deputy sheriff, too--have to be in case of trouble, we're so far from town. I was running down one of those Bascoes when that pony of mine disappeared. I traced it out to the Boise base line,--this road we're on now--when I met a fellow that saw him traveling this way in a string of colts. I was on his trail when I struck your place. You see, I was kind of suspicious about that 'boarding' yarn, and yet I didn't see, honestly, how you could frame up a tale like that yourself." "Why didn't you come back the next day and ask my brother about your horse?" "That's what I meant to do; but I got word to go back to the reserve quick. The sheep were coming in, and I didn't have another chance to get down here until the day I met your brother hunting his cow. He had my horse, and I thought the best thing to do was to give him a chance to explain to Judge Raeburn. That's the way of it." There was a long, strained silence. Garnett had never been so uncomfortable and unhappy in his life. Here he was, showing himself in the worst possible light to the nicest girl he had ever met.