“She belongs there,” he concluded, “and I respect her for doing her duty.”

But she heard the murmur of voices after they had talked a few minutes, and appeared at the outer door, where she greeted her friend and listened with an intensity of interest that may be imagined to his account of his brush with the rustlers.  Although she had become accustomed to danger during her life in the West, there could be no mistaking her solicitude for him.  She said little, however, and, excusing herself, bade the two good-night.

“I tell you,” said her brother, when she was gone, “if you stay, or rather attempt to stay, in this section, Mont, it is suicide—­nothing more nor less.”

“Well, I know times are likely to be warm, but, hang it, I can’t bear the thought of being run out of Wyoming.  It’s a mighty big State, and there ought to be room enough for me.”

“You persist in treating it lightly, but it is no trifling matter; you have been warned; were shot at, when we had our flurry with the rustlers; and, even while attempting to ride across the country, had the narrowest escape of your life—­an escape so curious that it couldn’t be repeated in a hundred years.”

“It’s the unexpected that happens.”

“Not so often as the expected.  Mont, what made you leave us so abruptly to-night?”

“O, I can hardly tell,” replied the other, carelessly flinging one leg over the other and puffing at his cigar, as though the matter was of no importance.

“I know; you believed that if you stayed here you would increase the peril to us.”

“You’ve hit it exactly; that was it.”

“What sort of friends do you take us to be?”

“That isn’t it; rather, what sort of friend would I be, thus knowingly to place you and your mother and sister in danger?  If those rustlers knew where I am, a dozen would be here before sunrise.”

“What of it?  We are ready for them.”

“That’s a poor answer to my statement; you had enough of that woeful business yesterday; they hold me in such hatred that they would burn down your place, if they could reach me in no other way.”

“And yet you propose to stay in Wyoming and have it out with them?”

“I haven’t said that,” remarked Sterry, more thoughtfully; “I may soon leave for a more civilized section, much as I hate to play the seeming coward; but what you said about my parents, brothers and sisters at home, gave me something to think over while riding across the prairie to-night.”

“I shall hate to lose your company, for it is like old times to talk over our school days, but I would not be a friend to allow my selfishness to stand in the way of your good.”

Sterry smoked a moment in silence, and then flung away his cigar and turned abruptly on his companion.

“Fred, if you could have prevented what took place yesterday by sacrificing every dollar of the property you have in Wyoming, you would have done it.”