Conrad looked about him and saw that he was on the road to Golden. Then came the flashing idea that he was on his way to kill Lucy's father. Instantly his feeling revolted. Whirling the mare's head he struck off across the plain to the eastward and after some miles struck the road to Randall. By that time he was pondering painfully the matter of Lucy and Homer. That evening, without doubt, Homer would come home, proud and happy, and tell him that he and Lucy were engaged. And this would be his wedding present to the girl he loved and the brother he had cared for almost since babyhood--the dead body of her father! Then came pelting back the memory of his own wrongs, and Brown Betty was sent scudding down the road as remembrance and habit again lashed his heart. He turned about and raced back along the road toward Golden, hot with the old memories and sore with the newly discovered duplicity of his friend. "Even if I don't kill him," he thought, "I'll tell him what he is! I'll throw his villainy and his cowardice in his face! I'll tell him he's a sneak and a coward, and to draw if he dares!" His imagination rushed on through the scene and showed him, at the end, Bancroft's bleeding body at his feet. With a shudder he wheeled the mare abruptly, turned from the road, and went galloping across the plain to the south. He began to understand that he could not kill Lucy's father. A sudden bright recollection came to him of how she looked that Spring afternoon when she and Bancroft had stopped at the ranch; how she turned to him in the wind, holding her wide hat down beside her face, and said gayly, "I assure you, Mr. Conrad, the most superior quality of father to be found anywhere in the United States!" And Bancroft seemed as fond of her as she was of him. Yes; there was unusual love and devotion between them. Brown Betty was walking more slowly now; and after a while Curtis realized that she was standing still in the middle of the plain with the road nowhere in sight. And at the same time it was borne in upon him that he did not wish to kill Lucy's father, that the idea had become repugnant to him.