“Can your horse carry you so far, Scott?” asked Judith.

Scott nodded, with something curiously like tears in his hard hazel eyes.  “You take the bull, Jude,” he said.  “I’d like for you to have him.  He’s standard bred.”

Judith’s eyes shone like stars.  “If Dad’ll only let me!  Do you think he will, Doug?”

Douglas shrugged his shoulders.  The bull was tied to the fence and Scott rode slowly away with his escort.  When John returned from telephoning he gave a grudging consent to Judith’s taking the bull, and the dehorning went on.  Not until the blue velvet shadow of Falkner’s Peak lay heavy on the incarnadined corral and the last bellowing steer had found solace at the haystacks did the riders start homeward.  Douglas followed Judith, as she led the scare-crow bull.

“He’s a good mate for Swift,” he said.

“You’re just jealous!” retorted Judith.

“Of what?” demanded Douglas.

“Of me starting a herd before you do!”

“Ha!  Ha!” ejaculated Doug, without a smile, and nothing more was said until they reached the house.

At supper that night John asked Judith why she had shown so much friendship for Scott Parsons.

“I was sorry for him,” she replied.

“But he killed our old neighbor!” exclaimed John.

“Yes, and Oscar had a notch on his gun, Dad; and you have one on yours.”

“We put those notches there in the early days,” returned John, “when every cowman carried the law on his hip.  It’s different now.  You’re altogether too highty-tighty, Jude, for a girl.  You keep away from Scott Parsons, or I’ll make you regret it.”

Judith made no reply.

Scott’s trial took place in April.  It was a matter of deep interest, of course, to Lost Chief, and every one who could get to Mountain City by horse, wagon, or automobile, attended the court sessions.  Judith and Douglas were chief witnesses and were royally entertained by young Jeff, who had returned to Lost Chief a week or so after his father’s funeral.

Scott was acquitted on the plea of self-defense but he did not return at once to Lost Chief.  The attitude of young Jeff did not make an early return seem diplomatic.

Douglas, when he came home from the trial, had a curious feeling that the winter just passed had ended his boyhood.  He did not know why.  He was not old enough to realize that when the fires of desire and the fear of death begin to sear a boy’s mind, adolescence is passing and manhood has all but arrived.

Judith, who had accomplished her fifteenth birthday in March, a day or so before Doug arrived at the dignity of seventeen, had changed too.  She had been less profoundly affected by the murder than Douglas; not that she was less sensitive or intelligent than he, but she was far less introspective than her foster-brother.  And Judith had two unfailing foods for all hungers of the mind.  One was her love of reading, the other, her love of riding; both absorbing, to the elimination of self investigation.