He walked the fresh tracks to the stable, looked in, came back on the trail of the horse, mounted, and followed the hoof marks into that notch. A barrier of poles lay in the mouth. The bars were down. They breasted that steep slope. Their horses were blown when they reached the plateau above. The trail in the snow turned sharply southward, skirting the canyon’s rim. It led straight to the Mather ranch and dipped into the canyon again and doubled back to the stable. Only—at a point two hundred yards above the ranch the trail stopped under a cottonwood tree. There was trampled snow there, and foot marks, as if some one had tarried there.
Smoke lifted from the stovepipe. They dismounted. A face pressed briefly at the window. Then the door opened and a girl faced them.
“Somethin’ about her gets men crazy.” Charlie remembered that. He looked at this girl and he wondered. No Helen to lure a Paris. A mop of tawny, yellow hair. White skin with freckled spots across the bridge of a straight nose. But her cheek bones were too high, her mouth too wide. Her eyes were twin heralds of temper. Steel-bright blue eyes that looked on young Bill with surprise, anger, resentment. She was like a willow for slenderness. How could that slight arm drive home a knife?
He got light on that a moment later. Bill Mather’s dark face went pale. He caught the girl by the wrists.
“What happened?” he demanded.
One quick wrench of her body and she was free. Her right hand popped on Bill’s cheek, and red welts sprang out on his dark skin. She stood poised, her hands clenched—like a young lioness.
“Dolly!” Bill’s tone was like a cry. “What happened?”
She stared at him. The blaze went out of her eyes. Her bosom heaved. The poised tensity went out of her body.
“Nothing, nothing,” she said, in a tone tremulous like a frightened child’s. “Munson an’ Jed fought, an’ your dad got scared an’ lit out. Jed beat him. After he come back an’ shot Jed through a window. That was yesterday. He took me down to his place. I got away in the evenin’. I saw the light here an’ I was afraid to come in till I saw you leave this morning. I didn’t know who it was. If you’d only stayed home, Bill!”
Young Bill put his arms around her.