Nan's face turned white with anger. Before she could speak her uncle took up the words. "Hold on," he shouted. "Don't tell me she lies." He launched another hot expletive. "I know she doesn't lie!" Gale jumped forward, his finger pointed at Nan. "Look here, do you deny you are meeting Henry de Spain all over the desert?" Nan's anger supported her without a tremor. "Who are you to ask me whom I meet or don't meet?" "You've been meeting de Spain right along, haven't you? You met him down the Sleepy Cat trail near Black Cap, didn't you?" Nan stood with her back against the end of the table where her uncle's first words had stopped her, and she looked sidewise toward her cousin. In her answer he heard as much contempt as a girl's voice could carry to a rejected lover. "So you've turned sneak!" Gale roared a string of bad words. "You hire that coyote, Sassoon, to spy for you, do you?" demanded Nan coolly. "Aren't you proud of your manly relation, uncle?" Duke was choking with rage. He tried to speak to her, but he could not form his words. "What is it you want to know, uncle? Whether it is true that I meet Henry de Spain? It is. I do meet him, and we're engaged to be married when you give us permission, Uncle Duke--and not till then." "There you have it," cried Gale. "There's the story. I told you so. I've known it for a week, I tell you." Nan's face set. "Not only," continued her cousin jeeringly, "meeting that----" Almost before the vile epithet that followed had reached her ears, Nan caught up the whip. Before he could escape she cut Gale sharply across the face. "You coward," she cried, trembling so she could not control her voice. "If you ever dare use that word before me again, I'll horsewhip you. Go to Henry de Spain's face, you skulker, and say that if you dare." "Put down that quirt, Nan," yelled her uncle. "I won't put it down," she exclaimed defiantly. "And he will get a good lashing with it if he says one more word about Henry de Spain." "Put down that quirt, I tell you," thundered her uncle. She whirled. "I won't put it down. This hulking bully! I know him better than you do." She pointed a quivering finger at her cousin. "He insulted me as vilely as he could only a few months ago on Music Mountain. And if this very same Henry de Spain hadn't happened to be there to protect me, you would have found me dead next morning by my own hand. Do you understand?" she cried, panting and furious. "That's what he is!" Her uncle tried to break in. "Stop!" she exclaimed, pointing at Gale. "_He_ never told you that, did he?" "No; nor you neither," snapped Duke hoarsely.