Then she came out of the blackness, the ends of a white nubia and a little shoulder cape snapping in the wind, her breath coming short in a sound that was a mixture of exhaustion and sobs. "I was afraid I couldn't find you till daylight. I heard a bell, but I didn't know where to go, it's such a dark night. I ran all the way, nearly, till I played out." "What's the row?" he asked gently. She slipped both arms through one of his and hugged it convulsively, while in a kind of hysteria she begged: "Don't send me back, Mister! I won't go! I'll kill myself first. Take me with you--please, please let me go with you!" "Tell me what it's all about." She did not answer, and he urged: "Go on. Don't be afraid. You can tell me anything." She replied in a strained voice: "Pete Mullendore, he--" A gust of wind blew the shoulder cape back and he saw her bare arm with the sleeve of her dress hanging by a shred. "--he did this?" "Yes. He--insulted--me--I--can't--tell--you--what--he--said." "And then?" "I scratched him and bit him. I fought him all over the place. He was chokin' me. I got to a quirt and struck him on the head--with the handle. It was loaded. He dropped like he was dead. I ran to my room and clum out the window--" "Your mother--" "She--laughed." "God!" He stooped and picked up the little bundle she had dropped at her feet. "Come along, Partner. You are going into the sheep business with 'Mormon Joe.'" CHAPTER II AN HISTORIC OCCASION The experienced ear of Major Stephen Douglas Prouty told him that he was getting a hot axle. The hard dry squeak from the rear wheel of the "democrat" had but one meaning--he had forgotten to grease it. This would seem an inexcusable oversight in a man who expected to make forty miles before sunset, but in this instance there was an extenuating circumstance. Immediately after breakfast there had been a certain look in his hostess's eye which had warned him that if he lingered he would be asked to assist with the churning. Upon observing it he had started for the barn to harness with a celerity that approached a trot. Long years of riding the grub-line had developed in the Major a gift for recognizing the exact psychological moment when he had worn out his welcome as company and was about to be treated as one of the family and sicced on the woodpile, that was like a sixth sense. It seldom failed him, but in the rare instances when it had, he had bought his freedom with a couple of boxes of White Badger Salve--unfailing for cuts, burns, scalds and all irritations of the skin--good also, as it proved, for dry axles, since he had neglected to replenish his box of axle grease from that of his host at the last stopping place.