"You know my past, and yet you can condemn me," he said, pain and wonderment in his quiet voice. "Perhaps you are right. I haven't always been perfect. But I am not bad--Hope! Not _that_! I am a man--I try to be, before God. Surely you do not mean what you say, my girl--_Hope_!" "You know just what I mean," said Hope, in a voice strained and harsh. "And you know it would be absolutely _impossible_ for me to love you!" "Then there is nothing more to be said," replied Livingston, turning away from her. "We will not wait for the sunrise. I will go now." He walked from her with long strides. "Wait," she cried in absolute terror. "_Wait!_ Oh, you wouldn't be so rude as to leave me here--_alone_!" He stopped short, his back still toward her. "Please come back!" she begged, approaching him, "I should die of fright!" Somehow she reminded herself of Clarice. "Surely you will walk back to camp with me!" "Yes, certainly, pardon me," he replied huskily. As they turned, a horse came slowly toward them. Hope gave a little nervous exclamation. "Your horse," said Livingston, reaching for the bridle. "I thought you walked." "No--yes," replied the girl. "I walked up the hill. The horse must have followed. We will walk down and lead it. It's too steep to ride down." But Livingston had stopped short beside the animal, his head bowed, almost upon the saddle. "Come, shall we go?" asked the girl nervously. Suddenly the man turned to her, sternness expressed in every line of his figure. "Where have you been?" he commanded. "For a ride," she replied, feeling for the first time in her life the desire to scream. "_For a ride!_ Yes, it must have been a ride! Your horse is nearly dead--listen to his breathing! Crusted with foam from head to foot and still dripping. You have been----" "For the soldiers. To protect your ranch from the devils who would kill you and get rid of your sheep--this very hour!" "And you have lured me here, away from danger--away from the side of my men, away from my _duty_, with all a woman's cowardice! _But what of them!_ You have called me bad! That may be, but I am not bad enough to be grateful to you for doing this, that you may, perhaps, have intended for a kindness! Anything would have been kinder to me than what you have done to-night." "Where are you going?" she cried from the rocks where she had thrown herself. But he was running, with all his speed, down the mountain side. CHAPTER XXIX Then she knew that he was going straight into the very jaws of death. If it had been a trap set for him it could not have been any surer. In a sheep-shed far below, close to the reef of rocks above Fritz's grave, a score of men were waiting, and he was rushing toward them, down the mountain side, lighted by the white moonlight. And what was she doing, groveling there among the rocks? Like a flash she was after him, but at a speed much less than his had been.