Bowers's rhapsody ended abruptly. He drew a hand across his eyes to clear his vision. Down below, where he was wont to look for the white top of the wagon, there was nothing but scattered wreckage! He heard the sound now that had awakened him--the detonation of a charge of dynamite! There was no need to go closer to learn the rest of the story. Bowers's face twisted in a queer grimace. He cried brokenly in a grief that can be understood fully only by the lonely: "Pore little Mary! Pore little feller! Pore little innercent sheep that never done no harm to nobody!" CHAPTER XX THE FORK OF THE ROAD It would have looked, to any casual passerby, a pleasant family group that occupied the front porch at the Scissor Ranch house one breezy morning. There was Mrs. Rathburn in a wide-brimmed hat, plying her embroidery needle and looking, from afar, the picture of contentment. Equally serene, to all outward appearances, was her daughter, with her head swathed in veiling against the complexion-destroying wind as she rocked to and fro while bringing her already perfect nails to the highest degree of polish with a chamois-skin buffer. Hugh Disston sat on the top step cleaning and oiling his shotgun with the loving care of the man who is fond of firearms. But if the Casual Passerby had ridden closer he might have observed that Mrs. Rathburn was thrusting her needle back and forth through the taut linen inside the embroidery hoop with a vigor which amounted to viciousness; that Miss Rathburn drew the buffer so briskly across her nails that the encircling flesh was all but blistered with the friction; and that Disston as he oiled and rubbed let his gaze wander frequently to the distant mountains and rest there wistfully. Furthermore, the Casual Passerby--a blood relative of the Innocent Bystander--would have been apt to notice that this act of Disston's seemed automatically to accelerate the movements of the embroidery needle and the chamois buffer, and speed up the rocking chairs. Propinquity was not doing all that Mrs. Rathburn had anticipated. There were moments like the present when, with real pleasure, she could have run her needle to the hilt, as it were, in any convenient portion of Disston's anatomy. She seethed with resentment, and took it out upon the climate, the inhabitants, the customs of the country, and Teeters--who gave her the careful but unenthusiastic attention he would have given to a belligerent porcupine. Pique and disappointment smouldered also in the bosom of her fair daughter, who, if she had been less fair, might have been called sullen, since these emotions evidenced themselves in a scornful silence, which was not alleviated by the fact that Disston did not appear to notice it.