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“I ain’t taxin’ my brains no more,” sneered the other. “I’d a heap ruther take as a subjec’ a fool foreman which goes around askin’ box-head questions.”

Billings sniffed sarcastically, but subsided.

Blanche Le Claire did not approach the Harkless ranchhouse from the direction of the Diamond Bar. That might have made her plan transparent, if by any chance Kathleen Harkless should happen to see her coming. She made a wide detour, and came upon the ranchhouse from the mountain trail.

She was seen, too, she noted with a quick compression of the lips; Kathleen Harkless was standing on the front porch of the ranchhouse watching her intently.

It was the first time the women had seen each other, yet each was certain of the identity of the other, and their quick, probing, appraising glances met, crossed—and each knew the other for what she was.

“Cat!” was Miss Harkless’ vicious judgment, voiced internally.

“Sensible—and pretty,” decided Blanche Le Claire. “I must be careful.”

Since tradition and, perhaps, a wise Providence, have ordained that the female of the human species be not battle-muscled nor ferocious to the point of fight-hunger when in the presence of a rival, these two knew that their battle was to be one of wits, and of honeyed stings, and velvet-garbed, soul-searching thrusts that would hurt quite as much as the baser, though less cruel, weapons of the males.

Miss Le Claire’s advantage was sophistication, and ability to conceal her wounds. Already, in Miss Harkless’ pale face, stiff lips and tortured eyes, the Le Claire woman could see signs of distress. They but made her more sure of herself—her smile, as she dismounted and walked toward her rival, was smooth and superior, with a delicate hint of condescension thinly concealed in it.

“This is Miss Harkless, isn’t it?” she said—and held out a white, limp hand which Miss Harkless took, jerkily—and then dropped, as though the contact burned her. Miss Le Claire’s laugh showed that she had taken cognizance of the movement.

“I hope you will pardon my neglect of you, my dear. I should have ridden over, ages ago. I am Miss Le Claire. But it is so far, to Bozzam’s place, from here. Your father has told you about me—I am sure.”

“Yes,” said Kathleen, not entirely concealing her hostility under the other’s smiling scrutiny. Is the Colonel at home?” My father has gone to Bozzam City.”

“Good!” smiled Miss Le Claire. “Then we can visit without fear of a male listener. Men are a bother—aren’t they, dear?”

Kathleen wondered, and gazed, unsmiling, at her visitor.

Miss Le Claire crossed the porch and seated herself in a big rocker, crossed her legs and clasping her hands over a knee rocked back and forth comfortably, with a curious disregard for convention that brought frank wonder to Kathleen’s eyes. The other noted it, and laughed.

“Don’t be shocked, my dear,” she said. She looked keenly at the girl. “Has Hame Bozzam visited you—yet?”

Kathleen nodded. “When?” asked Blanche. Kathleen told her that Bozzam had been there the day before, and Blanche laughed lightly.

“Yesterday?” she said. “Why, he told me he had been here several times!”

“So he said. I happened to be absent—each time.”

“At the Diamond Bar, I suppose? It is quite enterprising and considerate of you to spend so much of your time, and patience, with Jane Carter.” She looked reflectively at the girl. “He is crazy over you,” she smiled.

Kathleen’s heart pounded hard, and some color leaped into her pale cheeks. Could it be that she had judged prematurely, and that Gawne and Blanche Le Claire had never achieved that intimacy of which the Colonel had so definitely hinted? She had some difficulty in keeping her voice steady, but felt that she managed it.

“I hadn’t noticed,” she said.

Blanche laughed oddly. “Of course not!” she returned; “how could you—when you have seen him only once?”

“Once?” said Kathleen. A glance at the other’s face convinced her of her error—there was a malicious glint in the woman’s eyes, and Kathleen saw that she had been deliberately led into the pitfall. This woman was too worldly wise and crafty for her to cope with, and she suddenly felt impotent and helpless, and utterly defeated.

“I—I thought—you meant—”

“Jeff Gawne?” laughed the other, heartlessly. “Why, bless the child! What made you think—Why, my dear; Jeff Gawne amuses himself—as nearly all men do. I don’t hold it against him. For all men—especially all of those with whom I have come in contact—are hunters. But Jeff Gawne! Let us not be rivals, my dear—for Jeff Gawne is promised to me. He’s been mine for years, my dear, and I should feel very evilly toward you if you should try—” She laughed, not finishing, as though the thought were one that would not bear serious consideration.

White and shaking, the girl stood, dismayed. When she could find her voice she was astonished at the queer sound it made—it did not seem to belong to her at all.

“You mean—then—that Hame Bozzam—likes—me? That Mr. Gawne—Then it is true—what father said—that you and Mr. Gawne—”

“Quite true, my dear,” interrupted the other; “Jeff Gawne and I have been very dear friends for—for many years.”

“And Bozzam,” went on Kathleen, stiff with a growing composure, now determined to reach an understanding with this woman despite the tortuous method. She was now as pitilessly frank as the other. “You have broken with Bozzam? Why?”

The woman’s smile was maddeningly calm. “Bozzam and I were never temperamentally suited to each other. I endured him, though—for reasons. But when Jeff Gawne was hurt, when he told me with his last words, before He became unconscious, that he wanted me to go to the Diamond Bar with him—to stay—why, I decided to desert Bozzam.”

“Mr. Gawne asked you?” said Kathleen, slowly.

“Do you think I should have gone with him, otherwise? Does a woman of any spirit run after a man? Does she accept anything that the man does not willingly give her? Would you? Would you—in my position—have gone with Jeff Gawne unless you knew he wanted you—unless he told you that he wanted you?”

“I would never permit myself to get into the position you refer to,” Kathleen’s voice was coldly contemptuous. She felt repaid for the other’s clever jibes: she had scored once, at least.

She realized how heavily, when she saw the other’s face flush under the rouge. Miss Le Claire’s lips, tight-pressed, took on hard lines; her eyes gleamed with malicious bitterness. Yet she laughed; it was a fairly good counterfeit of nonchalant mirth.

“Well,” she said, “we understand each other, now, my dear. I really did not think that you had gone so far with Jeff as to be vicious about it. I know your nature, my dear. Sharing him with another would not do for you. It will be hard for you, at first. But, my dear child, seek consolation. All disappointed women seek it. You will not have to seek long—or far. Twenty miles. Hame Bozzam would go through hell to get you. No—he didn’t tell me,” she went on, smiling at the fearing, dismayed look in Kathleen’s eyes; “but we were discussing you—and he said some things—and he has a picture of you, that your father gave him, and I have seen him studying it for hours. And he has been here four times in as many weeks—and that is more times than he has been here in that many years before.”

Kathleen straightened. “I do not find the pleasure of consoling myself quite so easy as—some people find it,” she said, looking straight at the other.

“Meaning me, of course,” said Miss Le Claire, calmly. She rose and smiled chillingly. “I had hoped that we might be friends. Miss Harkless. Believe me, I feel rather offended over your haughty attitude.” She laughed, shrilly, with real mirth, now, for she had won her battle, and walked to her horse. Sitting in the saddle, she laughed again, disdainfully. “I think you are rather too good for Gawne, even if he did want you. He was telling me yesterday that women of your type made him tired.”

She urged her animal on, toward the Diamond Bar trail, her derisive laugh stinging Kathleen with its recurring cadences like separate and distinct lashes of a whip.

Hame Bozzam, likewise, had a visitor. Colonel Harkless was sitting on the big front porch of the H-B ranchhouse, his head bowed, his shoulders hunched up, listening to Bozzam.

The big man’s voice was sharp and cold, his manner that of the master.

“It comes to this, Harkless,” he was saying. “I want her—as a wife—if I can get her that way. If I can’t, I’ll take her the other way. Suit yourself. It’s up to you. If you’ve told her what I told you to tell her about Gawne and Blanche, you’ve made a start. Now tell her about yourself. Tell her this—it’s the Gospel truth—that if she doesn’t take me Reb Haskell will hang you from the highest tree that he can get a rope to!”

“My God!” exclaimed the Colonel, his face blanching, his eyes staring as they met the naked passion in the gaze of the other. “You won’t let Haskell do that!”

Bozzam laughed vibrantly, with mirthless earnestness. “Try me!” he warned.

The Colonel shivered and cringed. The clammy, damnable chills were running over him. Once, when Bozzam had opened this conversation, he had steeled himself against the sacrifice. He had felt the iron of resolution turn to putty under Bozzam’s words; but he knew now, with the fear and dread of death menacing him, that he was going to yield.

“Give me time,” he quavered. He would have called the thing a sacrifice now, but he was afraid to offend Bozzam even to that extent. “It can’t be done in a minute; it will take a week, a month, maybe.”

“Take a month,” grinned Bozzam. “But that’s the limit My house is as empty as my heart—and both need a woman!” He laughed, deep in his throat, and left the Colonel alone on the porch.

CHAPTER XVII

LOVER’S COURIER

By the time Gawne was able to get out of bed the Harkless trail—so far as Gawne could see it—was as familiar to him as the fingers on his good hand. Not for an instant, willingly, had he removed his gaze from it during his waking hours, and at night, so long as the trail was discernible, he kept his vigil at the window. His imagination played tricks on him sometimes. He would stare at the point where the trail seemed to melt into the horizon, until he was certain that a pony and rider were taking form there. Never had pony and rider materialized; Kathleen Harkless had not come.

The suspense and anxiety grew intolerable. On the morning of a day about a week after Kathleen’s visit, Gawne could stand it no longer, and called Billings.

“Take this over to Miss Harkless.” He gave the foreman a note that he had written. It’s tone betrayed his impatience:

Jane’s education is being neglected. I feel neglected myself. Have you ever been kept to a confounded bed while some one you love has been gallivanting around in the open—perhaps not even thinking of you? Answer that, my Lady! I take that back if you have been sick. But if you are well and you do not come right over I’ll ride Meteor tomorrow if it kills me. So, if you care anything for me—please come.

“Yours,

“Gawne.”

Billings went out, smiling on the side of his face that was not visible to Gawne. He was gone an unconscionably long time, and when he dismounted at the door of the Diamond Bar ranchhouse Gawne faced him eagerly.

Billings’ face was troubled and perplexed as he returned Gawne’s note, unopened.

“Wasn’t she there?” asked Gawne.

“I reckon she was—plenty. And some! She was as proud an’ stiff as one of them train-bearers which them furrin’ Kings has hangin’ around. Or, it’s a Queen, mebbe. Anyhow, she was proud an’ scornful-like. She spurned the note—as Scriptus would say—spurned it complete. ‘Is that for me?’ she asts. An’ I says: ‘Ma’am, your powers of observation is tremenjous.’ She sniffs an’ casts-a witherin’ eye on me. ‘Tell your master,’ she says, ‘that I’ll have no further communication with him. Furthermore, I never wish to see him again.’ ”

“Was that all, Billings?” Gawne’s face was ashen.

“All?” said the foreman. “If she’d gone on at that rate for another minute she’d have choked to death—she was that near cryin’.”

“She gave no reason?”

“Not none. But I seen the reason, I reckon.”

“Saw it?” said Gawne. “What do you mean?”

“Bozzam’s black horse—turned loose in the corral.”

Gawne winced. Billings watched him until he walked to the bed and sat on its edge, turning the note over and over. Then Billings went his way, grumbling.

It was three o’clock in the afternoon of the next day before Gawne’s pride surrendered to his desires. Thoughts that had tortured him back in the days when he had discovered Marie Calvert’s duplicity had recurred; those gnawing, tearing passions he had felt then, came again—doubts, suspicions, hideous imaginings, raged and grew, died and revived. He went out, told Billings to get Meteor ready, and mounted the animal. Later, he halted the gray on the edge of the cut-bank, down which he had escorted Miss Harkless on the day of her coming. From here he could be clearly seen from the Harkless ranchhouse. Still more clearly could he be seen from the porch—where stood the slender, graceful figure of a woman. She was not looking toward Gawne, however; her gaze was fixed on the river trail, and Gawne involuntarily turned. A mile or so distant went a horse and rider. Gawne recognized the horse as Bozzam’s black, and he paled and stiffened.

Intent, he watched the progress of the black horse for a full minute, perhaps, a riot of dark passion gripping him. Then he turned toward the porch. He saw Kathleen straighten, draw herself slowly erect, and face him. For an instant she stood, looking at him, and then, when he urged Meteor down the cut-bank, she turned, her chin held high, walked across the porch and went into the house, slamming the door behind her.

Gawne pulled Meteor to a halt so quickly that the gray stood on his hind legs, wheeled him and sent him scampering up the slope of the cut-bank to the plains.

He rode a mile, to a point from which he could see Bozzam, on the black horse, traveling the river trail. He watched Bozzam out of sight. Then he spoke hoarsely to Meteor, and rode toward the Diamond Bar, a cold, twisting, bitter grin on his lips.

Billings saw him come in. Two hours later, at a cow-camp near the river, the foreman was talking with a Diamond Bar puncher.

“Scriptus,” he said; “how far along did you git with that high-brow story of yourn?”

“Four chapters—when I runs low on inspiration—an’ chucks it.” He sniffed belligerently. “What for you askin’?”

“For the moral good of the damned outfit!” declared Billings, savagely. “The boss is broodin’ again—an’ seein’ red. If you’re goin’ to try to compose somethin’ to soothe him again, you’d better make it sorta blood-thirsty—it’ll come pretty close to ringin’ his bell then!”

CHAPTER XVIII

THE ODDS OF THE GAME

From behind the lace curtains of a window, Kathleen watched Gawne ride away. There were tears in her eyes, and a queer, breathless regret gnawed at her heart, but pride was the emotion that ruled her at that instant and steadied her step when at last she walked from the window—after Gawne’s figure had dwindled to a dot on the plains.