"If you always serve Alexander Hendrie as loyally as I have served him, and shall continue to serve him, you'll have little enough on your conscience. Maybe I was foolish to come to you at all. Anyway, I'm never likely to do so again. And I'll just ask you always to remember I did come to you and asked a simple favor, which carried with it no disloyalty to your husband. I want you to remember that, and to remember you refused me—for no sound reason."
He lifted his reins, and, crushing both heels into the flanks of his raw-boned broncho, galloped off without waiting for a reply.
Monica looked after him; and, somehow, as her thoughtful eyes followed him out of sight, his challenge still rang in her ears; just his challenge, that was all. His veiled, final threat had left her wholly unnerved.
"If you always serve Alexander Hendrie as loyally as I have served him, and shall continue to serve him, you'll have little enough on your conscience."
Whatever had been his purpose the words were not without effect upon her. They left her feeling uncomfortable, they left her nervous and irritable, and she felt that her dislike for this man was little less than his evident dislike for her.
CHAPTER XI
WHICH DEALS WITH A CHANCE MEETING
Monica was more disconcerted than she knew, and finally set her horse at a gallop across country, regardless of whither her course might take her. Nor did she pause to consider her whereabouts until the wheat lands were left several miles behind her, and she found herself entering the woods which lined the deep cutting of a remote prairie creek. Here she drew rein and glanced about her for guidance.
She looked back the way she had come, but the wheat fields were lost behind a gently undulating horizon of grass. Ahead of her, far as the eye could see, the wide-mouthed cutting of the creek stretched away toward a ridge of purple hills. To the right of her was the waving grass of the prairie, miles and miles of it, without the tiniest object on it to break the green monotony.