Tom Beck sat alone by the glowing remnants of the cook's fire, staring stolidly into the coals, mouth set, struggling with his pride. That quiet, inner voice continued its insistence that he yield a trifle, give Jane Hunter one more chance. "What?" it asked, "will you gain by denying her this? What, indeed, will be left for you if you persist?" But the voice was weaker than it had been early that day. The alternative it raised in his consciousness less appealing, and a determination to smother it grew steadily. He had been crossed; he had been duped! Oh, he had been a fool! he told himself. He had thrown to the winds his caution and his reserve; he had taken the biggest chance that life, the trickster, dangles before men. He had taken it blindly, against his better judgment; it left him embittered, with nothing beyond except the position which he held among men. That was a mawkish attainment now; it was so cheap and inconsequential compared to the sense of accomplishment which had been his when Jane Hunter had thrown herself into his arms and begged that he carry her into his life! Deluded though he may have been, that moment had opened to him sensations, vistas, that he had never before imagined existed. And now! All else that remained was gray and dead. He had been lifted up to see what might be, only to find that it was denied him; more, those moments of glory had taken the zest from the life that had been his before and that now remained. For long he sat there and gradually the inner voice died entirely, slowly a cold, heartless desire to cling to a dead thing like his standing in the country took its place as his chief interest in life. He had written Jane that such was all that remained to him. He had not realized as he scrawled those words what a pitiful bauble it was but now it was necessary to endow it with values that he could not truly feel. But he forced himself to believe it of consequence, for men like Tom Beck must have some one valuable thing to live for. The tee-pees were quiet when he arose, dropped his dead cigarette into the expiring embers and sought his bed. But in one tee-pee a man looked out at the faint jingle of spurs. It was Riley who, with others from the lower country, was riding with the HC wagon to help the larger outfit and, in turn, to be helped in his branding. He was bunked with Jimmy Oliver and Oliver said: "What's he doin'?" "Turnin' in." Riley settled back in his blankets and muttered: "It's funny ... damned funny, Jim." "He's like a man that's _through_. Didn't appear to have any real interest in the work today, seems like he don't give a damn. I don't understand it." "If it wasn't Tom Beck I'd say that they'd got his goat. It's hard to believe of him."