“While you were digging, Mr. Hollister saw two men up there. He pointed them out to me.” “And why didn’t you show ’em to me?” demanded her father. “What would you have done if I had?” she countered. “Done! Gone up an’ found out who they were, though I could give a good guess right now.” “And do you think they would have let you come near? We could see that one of them had a rifle. Maybe both had. They didn’t stay there long, but I was afraid every second that you’d look up and see them.” The foreman grunted appreciation of her sagacity. “Some head she’s got, Clint. You’d sure have started after them birds, me like as not trailin’ after you. An’ you’d sure never have got to ’em.” The cowman made no comment on that. “He timed it mighty close. Saw us coming, of course, an’ figured how long it would take us to reach where we did. Good guessing. An old fox, I’ll say.” “Same here.” “He didn’t miss smashing us twenty seconds,” Hollister said. “As it was, that’s no kind of snowstorm to be out in without an umbrella and overshoes.” Betty looked at him and smiled faintly. It was all very well to joke about it now, but they had missed being killed by a hair’s breadth. It made her sick to think of that cackling little demon up there on the bluff plotting wholesale murder and almost succeeding in his plan. She lived over again with a bleak sinking of the heart that five minutes when she had not known whether Tug Hollister was dead or alive. If he had been killed! She knew herself now. Justin’s instinct of selfishness had been right, after all. His niggardliness resolved itself into self-protection. He had been fighting for his own. Even his jealousy stood justified. She had talked largely of friendship, had deceived herself into thinking that it was expression of herself she craved. That was true in a sense, but the more immediate blinding truth was that she loved Hollister. It had struck her like a bolt of lightning. She felt as helpless as a drowning man who has ceased struggling. CHAPTER XXXII WITHOUT RHYME OR REASON It was an upsetting thing, this that had happened to Betty, as decided and far less explainable than a chemical reaction. It seemed to her as though life had suddenly begun to move at tremendous speed, without any warning to her whatever that Fate intended to step on the accelerator. She was caught in the current of a stream of emotion sweeping down in flood. Though it gave her a great thrill, none the less it was devastating. She wanted to escape, to be by herself behind a locked door, where she could sit down, find herself again, and take stock of the situation. To sit beside this stranger who had almost in the twinkling of an eye become of amazing import to her, to feel unavoidable contact of knee and elbow and shoulder, magnetic currents of attraction flowing, was almost more than she could bear.