"The--" Knowles choked back the epithet. "Yes, Mrs. Blake told us about that--and about her husband! Jumping Jehosaphat! Think of his being your brother! You must have been plumb locoed, to keep still about that! Why didn't you tell us, honey?--leastways me, your Daddy!" "I--I--But about Genevieve? Tell me. You could have come sooner if she--Was she lost? I was sure that pony--" "Better have given her a fast one. It came on so dark before he was half down the mountain that she was knocked out of the saddle by a branch. He went on down to the waterhole. She tried to catch him--couldn't. Got lost and wandered all around before she got down to the waterhole and caught him. We had got to the ranch at dusk, and all the posse had turned in for the night. She came loping down the divide just after moonrise. We started as soon as we could rake up all the picket-pins and rope. Wanted Mrs. Blake to wait and come on later; but talk about grit! We simply couldn't make her stay behind." Isobel thrust herself free from her father's arms and darted out through the circle of rugged, earnest-faced punchers and cowmen to where Genevieve lay resting with the baby clasped to her bosom. "Dear! you poor dear!" she murmured, kneeling to stroke the head of the weary young mother. "I shall soon be rested," replied Genevieve. "How about Tom? Have you kept watch of him? Has he moved?" The girl shrank back, unable to face her sister-in-law's eager look. "No--I--The fire--it--it disappeared, and I could not see." Genevieve smiled, and the reddening dawn lent a trace of color to her pale face. "It was a good sign. He could not have been suffering so much. He must have slept, and the fire died down." "Oh! you think that was it?" sighed Isobel. "I feared--" She did not say what it was she had feared. As she paused Genevieve looked up into her agitated face and asked quickly: "But Lafayette? Is he still sleeping?" "Yes, where's Lafe, honey?" inquired Knowles. "We'll have to roust him out to tell us just what way he came up." "Haven't I told you?" cried Isobel, her head still in a whirl of conflicting emotions. Then, as tersely and quietly as her father would have related it, she told the bald facts of how Ashton had been wakened by the snarl of the wolf, how he had insisted upon going back to help her brother, and how he had gone down into the darkness, the pack and lantern slung over his shoulder. "By--James!" vowed Knowles, when she had finished. "Any man on the Western Slope say that boy's not acclimated, he'd better look for another climate himself."