as to be merely endured. You have real reasons. You have heard things. I should like to know what they are—and to correct the error of them."
"Remember, Mr. Woolfridge, it is a woman's privilege not to be cross-examined."
He hardly bothered to conceal the irritation. "You are pleased to be mysterious again. And elusive. I once opened to you the doors of myself. Does that not imply the return courtesy? Miss Thatcher, you must give me some opportunity. I have that right. Really, I have."
"I doubt it. I never asked for your confidences. As for myself, I have never yet found the man in whom I cared to place my confessions. It is getting late—and I have a trip to make down to Melotte's."
It was somehow an omen to the girl that Woolfridge, through all the interview, held a tight grip to the bridle. He was that sure of his own strength and his own right. He had not begged her to stop; he had simply checked her from going by the grip he had of the bridle. Nor did he immediately withdraw it; rather he took his time, studying the girl's clear dark eyes at some length. He did not carry himself with the same arrogant command that he used toward his subordinates, but the self-contained confidence had quite the same effect on her.
"You have better access to Melotte's than I have, evidently," said he. "I wish you luck. Perhaps you may find the answer to a question that greatly interests me—the whereabouts of Jim Chaffee."
She betrayed herself then; all of a sudden her eyes were flashing and anger was in her throat. "If I find out, Mr. Woolfridge, you can be sure I will never tell you."
He released his grip on the bridle and stepped back a pace, once more in full command of himself; he smiled—a smile that outraged her. "I understand quite completely," said he, bowing his head. "Now I have something to argue against. When you return I want to show you my side of the case. I am sure I will convince you."
She galloped down the street, not replying. Yet he caught the state of mind she was in—angry at herself and at him, a little confused and much disturbed, and perhaps touched by a minute fear. He watched her go until the pony carried her around the curve of the trail. Then he closed both hands, snapping them like the blades of a jackknife, and walked back to the land office. "She will find I am not a man to be disregarded, nor lightly placed aside. She must listen to me. She must see all that I am, and all that I will be. I can convince her. Why not? I have made myself a power. Is a woman any more stubborn than a county full of men? What I have deliberately started and deliberately carried on I have never yet failed in. I won't with her. It may take time, but she will accept me by and by."
In the office he wrote a brief note to his man at the capital—that man in whom he had placed the business of getting out the advertisements.
Hunnewell:
Find out all that you can about the past life and history of Gay Thatcher. She comes from your city. Find out also what her connections are and why she is down here. This is to be your first and immediate business. Get at it and secure the facts. —W. W. WOOLFRIDGE
A man in love with a woman would never have written such an amazing order, never would have allowed it in his head for a moment. But William Wells Woolfridge, tremendously drawn to Gay Thatcher by her clear eyes and the fine carriage of her body as well as by the maturity of her mind, was not in love with her. He was in love with an obsession—the obsession of personal conquest, the exhilaration of scaling forbidding peaks and knocking over open resistance. Gay Thatcher, whatever else she meant to him, meant more than anything a beautiful acquisition to his gallery of rare objects at Wolf's Head.
Gay Thatcher rode rapidly toward Melotte's on the broad trail bearing the imprint of the recent stirring events. And as she traveled she grew more and more angry at having shown weakness before Woolfridge. For it was weakness to defy him. He was the kind of a man who seized upon such lapses of judgment and made weapons of them. She had given him a point of attack, just as others by some small slip of tongue or some still smaller act had played into his hands. It seemed to her he had the skill the patience of an Oriental, to which was added the Oriental's disposition to finally end some long drawn situation by a single stroke of the blade. It was incredible that so strong a man as Dad Satterlee could have crumbled overnight when faced against Woolfridge; and it was equally incredible that at the turn of an hour a whole county should somehow pass into the man's control. It amounted to that. Gay, rehearsing all that she had learned, felt the warning of fear. She could not dismiss Woolfridge. He wouldn't be dismissed.
So thinking, she came to Melotte's and rode down the yard—a yard resembling an armed camp by the number of Flying M and ex-Stirrup S men loitering about. Going into the house she went to the room where Mack Moran lay. Mack had been in pretty bad shape from a bullet through the shoulder, it had pulled the solid flesh off him and whitened his naturally ruddy cheeks. But he was past danger now and he smiled cheerfully up to the girl as she sat down beside the bed.
"Able to sit up and take nourishment yet?" she asked him, smiling back.
"This family will shore make a hawg out o' me, ma'am. Imagine chicken with dumplin's—corn bread with pear preserves. Gosh, I wish I'd been shot a couple years ago. They certainly is somethin' crooked about a universe which lays a man flat on his back before he discovers the institution of home cookin'."
"If you were married that is the way you'd eat every day," she said. "Something good has to be saved for the fellow who throws away his freedom, you know."
"Yeah," agreed Mack, and pondered over the matter with a scandalously matter-of-fact air. "All three of Melotte's girls are shore fine. One brings breakfast', one spells out with dinner, and the third sits in for supper. How's a man to decide which he ought to propose to? I'm plumb willin', but I can't nowise seem to decide."
"Possibly they may decide among themselves for you," she replied, trying to keep a straight face.
To Mack Moran that had all the earmarks of a splendid idea. "Now there's the whole thing boiled down. Wouldn't that be simple? Gosh, I even get chocolate to drink before I fall off to sleep. The oldest one—the one with the pritty hair—always fixes that for me. Chocolate—can yuh tie that, now?"
"Perhaps it has already been decided," said she, and then hoped he hadn't understood.
He muttered "yeah," staring out of the window. His mind was on other things. "Jussasame, I'd like to be on a horse. Ain't had a letter from Jim yet, and he said he'd drop a line right off."
"Mack," said she, the words tumbling headlong out of her mouth, "which way did he go, was he hurt, did—did he tell you anything I might like to know?"
Mack reached for his tobacco and answered the last question first. "He ain't a man to spread himself out loud, ma'am. Not even to me, which is his best friend. Way back—shore seems like ten years—when he saw yuh a-passin' on the street he said to me, 'Mack, I've got to meet that girl.' I reckon yuh'd like to know it. An' when Jim said that he meant a whole lot."
"Thank you," murmured Gay, and looked down to her lap. "I—I am glad to hear that."
"As for bein' hurt—you bet. Lee put some buckshot in his shoulder. That's been a-worryin' me ever since. And he was awful tired. Dunno as I ever saw him look more tired. Goin' down the canyon is a year's work piled up into a few blamed excitin' minutes. I ain't anxious to try again. Not me. But we shore made history. And he hated to leave. Felt like he was runnin' away. I had the daggondest time arguin' with him. The fool woulda rammed his head plumb into a loop. But I ain't had a letter—"
"Where did he go?"
"He aimed for the pass. Meant to cross over and into Bannock City. It's snowin' heavy up thataway. I can see it from the winda here. When it's white clear down to Sawyer Rock it means the pass is fifteen feet deep in drifts. Daggone."
"What would happen—what possibly might happen to him, Mack?" asked the girl, anxiety showing through.
"Nothin', as long as he's got two feet an' two hands. That boy can take care uh himself. But some o' that gang might 'a' winged him. And that buckshot could cause an awful lot of trouble. Son- of-a-gun, I wish I was able to ride a horse!"
She