Peter Hamilton, bowed in his saddle and flogging forward inhumanely, bred rife speculation as to his destination among the group that watched him from the Daxes’ front door.  Mrs. Dax, who entertained so profound a respect for her own omniscience that she disdained to arrive at a conclusion by a logical process of deduction, was “plumb certain that he had gone after ‘rustlers!’” Leander, who had held no opinions since his marriage except that first and all-comprehensive tenet of his creed—­that his wife was a person to be loved, honored, and obeyed instantly—­agreed with his lady by a process of reflex action.  The fat lady, who had a commonplace for every occasion, didn’t “know what we were all coming to.”  Miss Carmichael, who was beginning to find her capacity for amazement overstrained, alone accepted this last incident with apathy.  Mr. Hamilton might have gone in swift pursuit of cattle thieves or he might be riding the mare to death for pure whimsy.  Only Judith Rodney, who said nothing, felt that he was spurring across the wilderness at breakneck speed to see a girl at Wetmore’s.  But her lack of comment caused no ripple of surprise in the flow of loose-lipped speculation that served, for the time being, to inject a casual interest into the talk of these folk, bored to the verge of demoralization by long waiting for Chugg.

Judith preferred to confirm her apprehensions regarding Hamilton’s ride, alone.  She knew—­had not all her woman’s intuitions risen in clamorous warning—­and yet she hoped, hoped despairingly, even though the dread alternative to the girl at the Wetmore ranch threatened lynch law for her brother.  Her very gait changed as she withdrew from the group about the door, covertly gaining her vantage-ground inch by inch.  The heels of her riding-boots made no sound as she stole across the kitchen floor, toeing in like an Indian tracking an enemy through the forest.  The small window at the back of the kitchen commanded a view of the road in all its sprawling circumlocution.  Seen from this prospect, it had no more design than the idle scrawlings of a child on a bit of paper; but the choice of roads to Good and Evil was not fraught with more momentous consequences than was each prong of that fork towards which Hamilton was galloping.

The right arm swung towards the Wetmore ranch, where at certain times during the course of the year a hundred cow-punchers reported on the stock that grazed in four States.  At certain seasons, likewise, despite the fact that the ranch was well into the foot-hill country, there might be found a New York family playing at life primeval with the co-operation of porcelain bath-tubs, a French chef, and electric light.