“I’m going there to see that you arrive safe and sound, but I had no intention of going when I left camp. You’ve brought me a good twenty miles out of my way, not to mention accusing me of ulterior motives. Now, aren’t you penitent?” He smiled at her, boyish and irresistible. To Judith it was more reassuring than an oath. “It’s like dogs fighting over a picked bone; the meat’s all gone. The range is overworked; it needs a good, long rest.” He turned towards Judith, speaking slowly. “What you have said is true. We’re friends before we’re partisans of either faction. I’m on my way to a round-up. There’s been an unexpected order to fill a beef contract—a thousand steers. We’re going to furnish five hundred, the XXX two hundred and fifty, and the “Circle-Star” two hundred and fifty. Men have been scouring the enemy’s country for days rounding up stragglers. It will go hard with the rustlers after this round-up, Judith.” She felt a great wave of penitence and shame sweep over her. She had not trusted him; in her heart she had nourished hideous suspicions of him, and he was telling her, quite simply, of the plans of his own faction, trusting her, as, indeed, he might, but as she never expected to be trusted. “Peter, do you know that sometimes I think Jim has gone quite mad with these range troubles. He’s acted strangely ever since his sheep were driven over the cliff. He’s not been home to Alida and the children since he has been out of jail, and you know how devoted to them he has always been! He spends all his time tracking Simpson. Alida wrote me that she expects him to-night, and I’m going there on the chance.” “It’s the devil’s own hole for desolation that he’s come to.” Peter looked about the cup-shaped valley that was but a _cul-de-sac_ in the mountains. Its approach was between the high rock walls of a cañon. Passing between them, the rise of temperature was almost incredible. The great barrier of mountain-range, that cut it off from the rest of the world, seemed also to cut it off from light and air. The atmosphere hung lifeless, the occasional bellow of range-cattle sounded far-off and muffled. Vegetation was scant, the sage-brush grew close and scrubby, even the brilliant cactus flowers seemed to have abandoned the valley to its fate. A lone group of dead cotton-woods grew like sentinels close to the rocky walls. Their twisted branches, gaunt and bare, writhed upward as if in dumb supplication. There was about them a something that made Judith come closer to Peter as they passed them by. The night wind sang in their leafless branches with a long-drawn, shuddering sigh. The despair of a barren, deserted thing seemed to have settled on them. “Those frightful trees, how can Alida stand them?” She looked back. “Oh, I wish they were cut down!”