She exclaimed that, full-voiced and hard, with dry, hot eyes on her friends. Roy reached out to take her hand, speaking huskily. Helen did not distinguish what he said. The frightened old woman knelt, with unsteady fingers fumbling over the rents in Helen's dress. The moment came when Helen's quivering began to subside, when her blood quieted to let her reason sway, when she began to do battle with her rage, and slowly to take fearful stock of this consuming peril that had been a sleeping tigress in her veins. “Oh, Miss Helen, you looked so turrible, I made sure you was hurted,” the old woman was saying. Helen gazed strangely at her bruised wrists, at the one stocking that hung down over her shoe-top, at the rent which had bared her shoulder to the profane gaze of those grinning, beady-eyed Mexicans. “My body's--not hurt,” she whispered. Roy had lost some of his whiteness, and where his eyes had been fierce they were now kind. “Wal, Miss Nell, it's lucky no harm's done.... Now if you'll only see this whole deal clear!... Not let it spoil your sweet way of lookin' an' hopin'! If you can only see what's raw in this West--an' love it jest the same!” Helen only half divined his meaning, but that was enough for a future reflection. The West was beautiful, but hard. In the faces of these friends she began to see the meaning of the keen, sloping lines, and shadows of pain, of a lean, naked truth, cut as from marble. “For the land's sakes, tell us all about it,” importuned Mrs. Cass. Whereupon Helen shut her eyes and told the brief narrative of her expulsion from her home. “Shore we-all expected thet,” said Roy. “An' it's jest as well you're here with a whole skin. Beasley's in possession now an' I reckon we'd all sooner hev you away from thet ranch.” “But, Roy, I won't let Beasley stay there,” cried Helen. “Miss Nell, shore by the time this here Pine has growed big enough fer law you'll hev gray in thet pretty hair. You can't put Beasley off with your honest an' rightful claim. Al Auchincloss was a hard driver. He made enemies an' he made some he didn't kill. The evil men do lives after them. An' you've got to suffer fer Al's sins, though Al was as good as any man who ever prospered in these parts.” “Oh, what can I do? I won't give up. I've been robbed. Can't the people help me? Must I meekly sit with my hands crossed while that half-breed thief--Oh, it's unbelievable!” “I reckon you'll jest hev to be patient fer a few days,” said Roy, calmly. “It'll all come right in the end.” “Roy! You've had this deal, as you call it, all worked out in mind for a long time!” exclaimed Helen. “Shore, an' I 'ain't missed a reckonin' yet.” “Then what will happen--in a few days?” “Nell Rayner, are you goin' to hev some spunk an' not lose your nerve again or go wild out of your head?” “I'll try to be brave, but--but I must be prepared,” she replied, tremulously.