He stooped over the child and wrapped the blankets closer.  The muscles of his tanned face twitched.  Long he held the warm, slender body of the boy as close to him as he dared for fear of wakening him.

The man lay tense and rigid, his set face staring up into the starry night.  It was his hour of trial.  A rising tide was sweeping him away.  He had to clutch at every straw to hold his footing.  But something in the man—­his lifetime habit of facing the duty that he saw—­held him steady.

“You got to stand the gaff, Jack Beaudry.  Can’t run away from your job, can you?  Got to go through, haven’t you?  Well, then!”

Peace came at last to the tormented man.  He fell asleep.  Hours later he opened his eyes upon a world bathed in light.  It was such a brave warm world that the fears which had gripped him in the chill night seemed sinister dreams.  In this clear, limpid atmosphere only a sick soul could believe in a blind alley from which there was no escape.

But facts are facts.  He might hope for escape, but even now he could not delude himself with the thought that he might win through without a fight.

While they ate breakfast he told the boy about the mother whom he had never seen.  John Beaudry had always intended to tell Royal the story of his love for the slender, sweet-lipped girl whose grace and beauty had flooded his soul.  But the reticence of shyness had sealed his lips.  He had cared for her with a reverence too deep for words.

She was the daughter of well-to-do people visiting in the West.  The young cattleman and she had fallen in love almost at sight and had remained lovers till the day of her death.  After one year of happiness tragedy had stalked their lives.  Beaudry, even then the object of the rustlers’ rage, had been intercepted on the way from Battle Butte to his ranch.  His wife, riding to meet him, heard shots and galloped forward.  From the mesa she looked down into a draw and saw her husband fighting for his life.  He was at bay in a bed of boulders, so well covered by the big rocks that the rustlers could not easily get at him.  His enemies, scattered fanshape across the entrance to the arroyo, were gradually edging nearer.  In a panic of fear she rode wildly to the nearest ranch, gasped out her appeal for help, and collapsed in a woeful little huddle.  His friends arrived in time to save Beaudry, damaged only to the extent of a flesh wound in the shoulder, but the next week the young wife gave premature birth to her child and died four days later.

In mental and physical equipment the baby was heir to the fears which had beset the last days of the mother.  He was a frail little fellow and he whimpered at trifles.  But the clutch of the tiny pink fingers held John Beaudry more firmly than a grip of steel.  With unflagging patience he fended bogies from the youngster.

But the day was at hand when he could do this no longer.  That was why he was telling Royal about the mother he had never known.  From his neck he drew a light gold chain, at the end of which was a small square folding case.  In it was a daguerreotype of a golden-haired, smiling girl who looked out at her son with an effect of shy eagerness.