Again she stopped him with the imperative little gesture.
"Did you see them do it?"
"Naturally, no one saw them do it. But it was done, nevertheless."
She rose and faced him fairly.
"You found my note last evening—when you were returning with Sheriff Beckwith?"
"I found an unsigned note on a little barrier of tree-branches on the trail; yes."
"I wrote it and put it there," she declared. "I told you you were about to commit an act of injustice, and you have committed it—a very great one, indeed, Mr. Ballard."
"I am open to conviction," he conceded, almost morosely. She was confronting him like an angry goddess, and mixed up with the thought that he had never seen her so beautiful and so altogether desirable was another thought that he should like to run away and hide.
"Yes; you are open to conviction—after the fact!" she retorted, bitterly. "Do you know what you have done? You have fallen like a hot-headed boy into a trap set for you by my father's enemies. You have carefully stripped Arcadia of every man who could defend our cattle—just as it was planned for you to do."
"But, good heavens!" he began, "I——"