They started back in silence, riding side by side. Wonder filled the door of his mind; he had only disconnected, fragmentary thoughts, upon the current of which there rose continually the realization, only half understood, that he started out to search the world for this woman, and he had found her. That he had discovered her in the part of a petty, spiteful lawbreaker, dressed in an outlandish and unbecoming garb, did not trouble him. If he was conscious of it at all, indeed, the hurrying turmoil of his thoughts pushed it aside like drifted leaves by the way. The wonderful thing was that he had found her, and at the end of a pursuit so hot it might have been a continuation of his first race for the trophy of white linen in her hand. Presently this fog cleared; he came back to the starting-point of it, to the coldness of his disappointment. More than once in that chase across the pasture his hand had dropped to his pistol in the sober intention of shooting the fugitive, despised as one lower than a thief. She seemed to sound his troubled thoughts, riding there by his side like a friend. "It was our range, and they fenced it!" she said, with all the feeling of a feudist. "I understand that Philbrook bought the land; he had a right to fence it." "He didn't have any right to buy it; they didn't have any right to sell it to him! This was our range; it was the best range in the country. Look at the grass here, and look at it outside of that fence." "I think it's better here because it's been fenced and grazed lightly so long." "Well, they didn't have any right to fence it." "Cutting it won't make it any better now." "I don't care, I'll cut it again! If I had my way about it I'd drive our cattle in here where they've got a right to be." "I don't understand the feeling of you people in this country against fences; I came from a place where everybody's got them. But I suppose it's natural, if you could get down to the bottom of it." "If there's one thing unnatural, it's a fence," she said. They rode on a little way, saying nothing more. Then she: "I thought the man they call the Duke of Chimney Butte was working on this side of the ranch?" "That's a nickname they gave me over at the Syndicate when I first struck this country. It doesn't mean anything at all." "I thought you were his partner," she said. "No, I'm the monster himself." She looked at him quickly, very close to smiling. "Well, you don't look so terrible, after all. I think a man like you would be ashamed to have a woman boss over him." "I hadn't noticed it, Miss Kerr." "She told you about me," she charged, with resentful stress. "No." So they rode on, their thoughts between them, a word, a silence, nothing worth while said on either side, coming presently to the gap she had made in the wire. "I thought you'd hand me over to the sheriff," she told him, between banter and defiance.