“Why so sober, old-timer?”

“Overwork!” exclaimed Douglas.  “Jude, will you come up and help me with the handful of steers I want to dehorn?”

“What’s the matter with Old Gentlemen’s Home?” asked Judith with her impish smile.

“They are taken up with reforming each other,” replied Douglas; adding more seriously, “they are too old to be much help with the rope, Jude.”

“I know,” she nodded.  “I’ll come right along.”

It was not until they had nearly reached Doug’s corral that he found courage to tell her about the death of Prince.  She said nothing, for a moment, but she brought the mare up close to the Moose and laid her hand on Douglas’ knee.

“Dear old boy!” she said.  “I know!” Then she sobbed for a moment against his shoulder.  But when he would have put his arm about her she straightened herself and said, “But weren’t you glad you were strong enough to thrash him!”

“Yes!” replied Douglas.

They said no more about it, but after the dehorning was done, Douglas saw Judith stand for a long time beside the chapel.  He knew how her heart was aching, for she too was a lover of dogs.

CHAPTER XIV

THE BATTLE OF THE BULLS

“The free plains were wonderful, but Judith’s hand on my bit is more wonderful.”

—­The Little Wild Mare.

Douglas felt somehow, after this day, that Judith was nearer to him.  Not that she changed in her manner at all, but there was an indefinable something about her that gave him hope:  hope strong enough at least to put up a creditable struggle with the despair that was forever creeping upon him at unguarded moments.

He slept in the chapel on Saturday night, just to make sure that no mischief was done under cover of the darkness.  And on Sunday, Mr. Fowler preached an uninterrupted sermon.  Scott was present, giving apparently an undivided ear to the preacher’s discourse.  Charleton was there, too.  He ignored Douglas entirely.  He had probably told no one of his trouble with Douglas and, knowing Douglas, he apparently felt that Lost Chief would remain in ignorance of the fight.  So his saturnine face was as serenely insolent as ever, barring the remains of a very black eye.

Considered from an entirely detached point of view, the sermon was a thing of exceeding beauty.  Inez should have been satisfied.  The old preacher had a fine voice and he spoke without notes.  Many a noted interpreter of the gospel might have envied him his control of voice and language.

The text was one of the most intriguing in the Bible.  “Jesus said, I will not leave you comfortless.  I will come to you.  Yet a little while and the world seeth me no more.  But ye see me.  Because I live, ye shall live also.”  Around about this, Mr. Fowler wove picture after picture of passionate faith in an hereafter.  He told of the death of his own father, who with the death-rattle in his throat had sat erect in his bed crying, “O Christ, I see your face at last!”