LITMIR.BIZ

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to members of the former Mrs. Bosky’s sex, and, as Leander said, “the flask in his innerds held more.” And these were the only traces of tragedy in the life of Lemuel Chugg, stage-driver.

      Judith had continued her unquiet pacing in the blinding glare while the group within doors, somnolent from the heat and the incessant shrilling of the locusts, droningly discussed the faithlessness of Mountain Pink, dozed, and took up the thread of the romance. Each time she turned Judith would stop and scan the yellow road, shading her eyes with her hand, and each time she had turned away and resumed her walk. Mary, who gave the postmistress no unstinted share of admiration for the courage with which she faced her difficulties, and who had been seeking an opportunity to signify her friendship, and now that she saw the last of the gallants depart, inquired of Judith if she might join her.

      They walked without speaking for several minutes, enjoying a sense of comradeship hardly in keeping with the brevity of their acquaintance; a freedom from restraint spared them the necessity of exchanging small-talk, that frequently irritating toll exacted as tribute to possible friendship.

      The desert lay white and palpitating beneath the noonday glare, and from the outermost rim of desolation came dancing “dust-devils” whirling and gliding through the mazes of their eerie dance. “I think sometimes,” said Judith, “that they are the ghosts of those who have died of thirst in the desert.”

      Mary shuddered imperceptibly. “How do you stand it with never a glimpse of the sea?”

      “You’ll love it, or hate it; the desert is too jealous for half measures. As for the sea”—Judith shrugged her fine shoulders—“from all I’ve heard of it, it must be very wet.”

      Each felt a reticence about broaching the subject uppermost in her thoughts—Judith from the instinctive tendency towards secretiveness that was part of the heritage of her Indian blood; Mary because the subject so closely concerned this girl for whom she felt such genuine admiration.

      Judith finally brought up the matter with an abruptness that scarce concealed her anxiety.

      “You saw my brother yesterday at Mrs. Clark’s eating-house; will you be good enough to tell me just what happened?”

      Mary related the incident in detail, Judith cross-examining her minutely as to the temper of the men at table towards Jim. Did she know if any cattle-men were present? Did she hear where her brother had gone?

      Mary had heard nothing further after he had left the eating-house; the only one she had talked to had been Mrs. Clark, whose sympathy had been entirely with Jim. Judith thanked her, but in reality she knew no more now than she had heard from Major Atkins.

      Judith now stopped in their walk and stood facing the road as it rolled over the foot-hills—a skein of yellow silk glimmering in the sun. Then Mary saw that the object spinning across it in the distance, hardly bigger than a doll’s carriage, was the long-delayed stage. She spoke to the postmistress, but apparently she did not hear—Judith was watching the nearing stage as if it might bring some message of life and death. She stood still, and the drooping lines of her figure straightened, every fibre of her beauty kindled. She was like a flame, paling the sunlight.

      And presently was heard the uncouth music of sixteen iron-shod hoofs beating hard from the earth rhythmic notes which presently grew hollow and sonorous as they came rattling over the wooden bridge that spanned the creek.

      “Chugg!” exclaimed Leander, rushing to the door in a tumult. There was something crucial in the arrival of the delayed stage-driver. His delinquencies had deflected the course of the travellers, left them stranded in a remote corner of the wilderness; but now they should again resume the thread of things; Chugg’s coming was an event.

      “’Tain’t Chugg, by God!” said Leander, impelled to violent language by the unexpected.

      “It’s Peter Hamilton!” exclaimed Mrs. Dax.

      “Land’s sakes, the New-Yorker!” said the fat lady. Only Judith said nothing.

      Mr. Hamilton held the ribbons of that battered prairie-stage as if he had been driving past the judges’ bench at the Horse Show. Furthermore, he wore blue overalls, a flannel shirt, and a sombrero, which sartorial inventory, while it highly became the slim young giant, added an extra comedy touch to his rôle of whip. He was as dusty as a miller; close-cropped, curly head, features, and clothes were covered with a fine alkali powdering; but he carried his youth as a banner streaming in the blue. And he swung from the stage with the easy flow of muscle that is the reward of those who live in the saddle and make a fine art of throwing the lariat.

      They greeted him heartily, all but Judith, who did not trust herself to speak to him before the prying eyes of Mrs. Dax, and escaped to the house. Chugg’s latest excursion into oblivion had resulted in a fall from the box. He was not badly hurt, and recuperation was largely a matter of “sleeping it off,” concluded Peter Hamilton’s bulletin of the condition of the stage-driver. So the travellers were still marooned at Dax’s, and the prospect of continuing their journey was as vague as ever.

      “Last I heard of you,” said Mrs. Dax to Hamilton, with a sort of stone-age playfulness, “you was punching cows over to the Bitter Root.”

      “That’s true, Mrs. Dax”—he gave her his most winning smile—“but I could not stay away from you long.”

      Leander grimaced and rubbed his hands in an ecstasy of delight at finding a man who had the temerity to bandy words with Mrs. Dax.

      “Hum-m-m-ph!” she whinnied, with equine coquetry. “Guess it was rustlers brought you back as much as me.”

      Judith, who had entered the room in time to hear Mrs. Dax’s last remark, greeted him casually, but her eyes, as they met his, were full of questioning fear. Had he come from the Bitter Root range to hunt down her brother? The thought was intolerable. Yet, when he had bade her good-bye some three weeks ago, he had told her that he did not expect to return much before the fall “round-up.” She had heard, a day or two before, that he was again in the Wind River country, and her morning vigil beneath the glare of the desert sun had been for him.

      Mrs. Dax regarded them with the mercilessness of a death-watch; she remembered the time when Hamilton’s excuses for his frequent presence at the post-office had been more voluble than logical. But now he no longer came, and Judith, for all her deliberate flow of spirits, did not quite convince the watchful eyes of Leander’s lady—the postmistress was a trifle too cheerful.

      “Mrs. Dax,” pleaded Peter, boyishly, “I’m perishing for a cup of coffee, and I’ve got to get back to my outfit before dark.”

      “Oh, go on with you,” whinnied the gorgon; but she left the room to make the coffee.

      Judith’s eyes sought his. “Why don’t you and Leander form a coalition for the overthrow of the enemy?” His voice had dropped a tone lower than in his parley with Mrs. Dax; it might have implied special devotion, or it might have implied but the passing tribute to a beautiful woman in a country where women were few—the generic admiration of all men for all women, ephemerally specialized by place and circumstance.

      But Judith, harassed at every turn, heart-sick with anxiety, had anticipated in Peter’s coming, if not a solution of her troubles, at least some evidence of sustaining sympathy, and was in no mood for resuscitating the perennial pleasantries anent Leander and his masterful lady.

      The shrilling of the locusts emphasized their silence. She spoke to him casually of his change of plan, but he turned the subject, and Judith let the matter drop. She was too simple a woman to stoop to oblique measures for the gaining of her own ends. If he was here to hunt down her brother, if he was here to see the Eastern woman at the Wetmore ranch—well, “life was life,” to be taken or left. Thus spoke the fatalism that was the heritage of her Indian blood.

      The thought of Miss Colebrooke at Wetmore’s reminded her of a letter for Peter that had been brought that morning by one of the Wetmore cow-boys.

      “I forgot—there’s a letter for you.” She went to the pigeon-holes on the wall that held the flotsam

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