“You both talk as if I had no mind of my own!” Judith said indignantly.  “If you knew the temptations I’d withstood, you’d not be so free with your comments about me.  And if all I’m going to get when I come up here is criticism, I’m not coming any more.  Don’t you follow me, Douglas!” and Judith, in her short khaki suit, swept out of the cabin with a grace and dignity that would have done credit to a velvet train.

The preacher was deeply perturbed.  He rose and paced the floor.  “Douglas, I’ve tried to play this thing your way.  But now I am through compromising.  There can be no compromise with God.  I’m no longer going to keep silence when events like those this afternoon take place.  Undoubtedly my stay in Lost Chief will be short.  But while I’m here I am going to stand openly and vehemently for the ten commandments.”

Douglas tilted his chair back, folded his arms on his chest, and dropped his chin.  “Something’s wrong with your religion,” he said.

“Nothing is wrong with my religion,” retorted the preacher.  “But Lost Chief is more wrong than most places.  It’s a transplanted New England community, and people who come from Puritan stock can’t get along without God.  They are worse than any one else without Him.”

“I’m sick of worrying about it!” cried Douglas irritably.

“Do you mean you are sick of the fight?  That you are going to let Inez have Judith?”

Douglas straightened up.  “No, by God!  Not if I have to shoot Inez!  You go ahead and preach your own way.  I’ll see that you are not hurt.”

And this was his last word on the subject that night.

CHAPTER XV

THE FLAME IN THE VALLEY

“The coyote is a coward, so his bite is the nastiest.”

—­Old Sister, the dog.

The next day when Douglas went down to the ranch to help out with a day’s work for which John had asked him, Judith obviously avoided him.  Douglas made no attempt to enforce a tête-à-tête until mid-afternoon.  Then he followed Jude into the empty cow stable.

“Jude, I can’t bear to have you think I’m not fair about Inez.  If that’s what you are sore about.”

Judith laid carefully back the eggs she had taken out of the manger.  Her face was set when she turned to him.  “It doesn’t matter much, I suppose, whether you are fair to Inez or not.  She can take care of herself.  What I’m angry about is your being so stupid with me, always picking at me about the things that don’t count and so wrapped up in your own ideas that you can’t see what I really need, and why I am so terribly restless.”

Douglas leaned against the door-post, his face eager, his breath a little quickened.  Now, at last, perhaps he was to win past the threshold and gaze upon Judith’s inner solitude.  But he would not crowd her.

“What is it that makes you so restless, Judith?” he asked gently.