“Home to-night?”

“Reckon not.”

“What deviltry are you and Brad up to now?  This will be the third night you’ve been away—­and before that it was Jeff.”

“S-sh!” Ned flashed a warning look in the direction of her guest.

But Beulah was angry.  Tighe had warned her to be careful what she told Street.  She distrusted the cripple profoundly.  Half the evil that went on in the park was plotted by him.  There had been a lot of furtive whispering about the house for a week or more.  Her instinct told her that there was in the air some discreditable secret.  More than once she had wondered whether her people had been the express company robbers for whom a reward was out.  She tried to dismiss the suspicion from her mind, for the fear of it was like a leaden weight at her heart.  But many little things contributed to the dread.  Rutherford had sent her just at that time to spend the week at Battle Butte.  Had it been to get her out of the way?  She remembered that her father had made to her no explanation of that scene in which she and Dave Dingwell had played the leading parts.  There had been many journeyings back and forth on the part of the boys and Charlton and her uncle, Buck Rutherford.  They had a way of getting off into a corner of the corral and talking low for hours at a time.  And now Street had come into the tangle.  Were they watching him for fear he might be a detective?

Her resentment against him and them boiled over into swift wrath.  “You’re a fine lot—­all of you.  I’d like to wash my hands clean of the whole outfit.”  She turned on her heel and strode limping to the house.

Ned laughed as he swung to the back of one of the two broncos waiting with drooped heads before the porch.  He admired this frank, forthright sister who blazed so handsomely into rage.  He would have fought for her, even though he pretended to make a joke of her.

“Boots sure goes some.  You see what you may be letting yourself in for, Brad,” he scoffed good-naturedly.

Charlton answered with cool aplomb.  “Don’t you worry about me, Ned.  I travel at a good lick myself.  She’ll break to double harness fine.”

Without touching the stirrup this knight of the chaparreras flung himself into the saddle, the rowels of his spurs whirring as he vaulted.  It was a spectacular but perfect mount.  The horse was off instantly at a canter.

Roy could not deny the fellow admiration, even though he despised him for what he had just said.  It was impossible for him to be contemptuous of Charlton.  The man was too virile, too game for that.  In the telling Western phrase, he would go through.  Whatever he did was done competently.

Yet there was something detestable in the way he had referred to Beulah Rutherford.  In the first place, Roy believed it to be a pure assumption that he was going to marry her.  Then, too, he had spoken of this high-spirited girl as if she were a colt to be broken and he the man to wield the whip.  Her rebellion against fate meant nothing more to him than a tantrum to be curbed.  He did not in the least divine the spiritual unrest back of her explosion.