Of Bill Steele, the impudent, of whom she had heard nothing directly for some days, Beatrice was growing in the way of being forgetful, so filled was her mind with other matters. Two occurrences, however, were to recall him to her vividly.
The first was the arrival of Joe Embry at the ranch house the morning after her friends had gone, bringing news.
"I would have hailed a lesser matter than this eagerly as a good and sufficient excuse for seeing you again," he said, by way of greeting. "It's going to be hard, when I've got a home here somewhere, not to be running in on you all the time."
In spite of her and, so she told herself, without good and sufficient excuse, Beatrice coloured warmly under Embry's eyes. In all the days she had known him he had never come quite so close, whether by word of mouth or steady look, to the border line of love-making.
"What is it" she asked quickly, conscious that he had noted the slight colour rising in her cheeks and angry with herself for it.
"It's Steele again," he told her, shifting his look to his hands which today seemed unusually white and sensitive. "It seems that he and one of his men, the fellow Turk Wilson you discharged recently, have been fighting with three of your men."
Beatrice looked up sharply, wonderingly.
"Tell me about it," she said eagerly. Embry smiled.
"It happened yesterday," he said easily. "By now I imagine news of it has spread all over the country. And I frankly wish that it had not gained so much
