Now that he had gone from her on a mission that was fulfilling this very purpose of regeneration, although she had not sent him upon it for his own sake, but her own--Echo knew that, after all, she was a woman. She loved Jack Payson with the unreasoning and unrestrained passion that sways even the highest of her sex. By the balance of natural law she was lowering herself to meet him as he was coming up in the moral scale, and thus preparing for herself and her husband a happy union of a mutual understanding of weaknesses held in common. Were Echo to remain always on the heights and Jack in the valley, sooner or later a cloud would have separated them, a ghostly miasma rising from the grave of Dick Lane, whom Echo would have idealized as the nobler man. She very sensibly took refuge from these perplexing problems by jumping into the active life of the ranch. Faithfully she tried to perform all that she thought Jack would have done. Her father and mother wanted her to come back to her old home until he returned. There she would have more company and fewer memories of Jack surrounding her. Each offer, each suggestion was kindly but firmly put aside. When Jack returned she must be the first to welcome him, the first to greet him at his threshold, whether it was broad daylight or in the silent watches of the night. From her lips he must learn he had been forgiven; she alone must tell him how much she loved him, and that together they must go through life until the last round-up. Echo and her father, who was looking after his own cattle on the round-up, rode up to the chuck-wagon, after Parenthesis and Sage-brush crossed the valley to mete out justice to Peruna and fight out any attempts at a rescue. Dismounting, Echo walked wearily to the fire and sat down on a box. Bravely though she tried to conceal it, the strain was beginning to tell upon her. The tears would come at times, despite her efforts to fight them off. The burden was so heavy for her young shoulders to bear. A note from Slim, written at Fort Grant, with a lead-pencil, on a sheet of manila paper, told her briefly that he was going into the Lava Beds with the troops--as the Apaches were out. Dick and Jack, he wrote, were somewhere in the Lava Beds, and he would bring them back with him. She dared not let herself think of the Apaches and the horrors of their cruelties. "Better let me get you somethin' to eat," said her father, returning from picketing the horses. Echo smiled wanly at her father's solicitude. "I am not hungry, Dad." Jim seated himself by the fire. He recognized his helplessness in this trouble. There was nothing he could do. If one of the boys was what Allen would have called it, "down on his luck," he would have asked him to have a drink, but with Josephine and the girls he was at his wit's end. The sufferings of his loved daughter cut deeply into his big heart.