Deane planned with her of evenings but the planning was all of play. No word of work crept into it. If only he would accept her as wholly into that part of his life as he did into the rest. She suddenly felt that he was excluding her from something it was her right to share. Their planning together was not constructive but something which led nowhere, a restless, hectic rush for amusements which she enjoyed but which could not make up the whole of her life. Always she had said that men went to extremes and made of their wives either drudges or little tinsel queens. They never followed the middle course and made them full partners through thick and thin. And suddenly she longed to sit for just one evening before the fire and plan real work with Cal Harris. He had been the one man she had known who had asked that she work with him, instead of insisting that she work for him,--or that he should work for her. She had drifted along, expecting that that same state of affairs would go on indefinitely, believing that he filled the void left by old Cal Warren. But now she knew he held that place he had created for himself. They had worked together and she had deserted the sinking ship to play the part of the tinsel queen. The men would be just in from the horse round-up and breaking out the remuda, preparatory to starting after the calves. She pictured Waddles bawling the summons to feed from the cook-house door. She was conscious of a flare--half of resentment, half of apprehension--toward Harris for not having sent a word of affairs at the ranch. "There's millions of miles of sage just outside," she quoted. "And millions of cows--and girls." Perhaps he had gone in search of them. Perhaps, after all, he had found that the road to the outside was not really closed as he had once told her it was. Judge Colton entered the room and interrupted her reverie by handing her a paper. In the first black headline she saw Slade's name and Harris's; an announcement of the last chapter of the Three Bar war. The first line of the article stated that Slade, the cattle king, had been released. There was insufficient proof to convict on any count. She felt a curious little shiver of fear for Harris with Slade once more at large. The article retold the old tale of the fight and portrayed Slade, on his release, viewing the range which he had once controlled and finding a squatter family on every available ranch site. She had a flash of sympathy for Slade as she thought his sensations must have been similar to her own when she had looked upon the ruins of the Three Bar. But this was blotted out by the knowledge that he had only met the same treatment he had handed to so many others; that he had dropped into the trap he had built for her. She found no real sympathy for Slade,--only fear for Harris since Slade was freed. The old sense of responsibility for her brand had been worn too long to be shed at will. She knew that now.