"That's about all. You see, it's an ugly story, and it paints Lester pretty black. But I've thought the thing over a great many times, and can't blame him very much, after all, for it really was the result of my father's stern and narrow policy. The boy was in his most impressionable years, and was left to face the music alone. It seemed to age him mightily." "But what will happen now?" asked Julie anxiously. "Aren't the other two still alive? Can't they make trouble?" "Yes, but I don't think they will. I have the drop on Smithy now, and he will either write a full dismissal of the matter for all three of them or he will swing with the rustlers. And if I know my Smithy Caldwell, he won't be able to get pen and paper fast enough." "But can you save him, even at that cost, do you think? The cowmen won't understand all this." "That will rest with your father, dear," replied Bud, getting to his feet. "Now, let's go over and see him, for I have something else I want to ask him." His face that had been clouded during his recital was suddenly flooded with the sunlight of his smile, and Julie realized for the first time what it had cost him to lay bare again these painful memories of a past he had sought to bury. When he had helped her to her feet she went to him and laid her hands on his shoulders, looking up into his face with eyes that brimmed with the loosed flood of her love, so long pent up. "Can I ever be worth what I have cost you to-day?" she asked humbly. Tenderly he gathered her to him. "In love there is no such word as cost," he said. CHAPTER XXV THE THREADS MEET It could not have been later than ten o'clock in the morning when a puncher with sharp eyes might have seen two figures approaching the Bar T ranch house on horseback. They rode needlessly close together and swung their clasped and gauntleted hands like happy children. One was a girl into whose radiant eyes a new wonder had come, and the other a handsome, tanned young man bathed in a deliriously happy expression. "Isn't it jolly to be married without anyone's knowing?" cried Julie. "Oh, but won't they be surprised at home?" "Rather!" remarked Bud, with a sobered expression. "I only hope your father doesn't widow you just as I ride into the yard with the olive branch." "Stop it, Bud! What puts such awful thoughts into your head?" "Experience. Your father was so mad about my getting the sheep across the river that he started his punchers walking home that same night, and nobody has seen him since." Larkin spoke the truth, but little exaggerated. Beef Bissell, humiliated, beaten, and forced to accept the small end of a deal for once in his life, had started from the useless cowmen's camp by the Gray Bull the very night of the crossing. He ordered the men to follow and round up their stampeded horses and then to ride home.