NEARING had come home after dark that evening, harassed as Alma never had seen him before. He labored under a wild constraint that bordered on insanity, his courage completely crushed. Supper had been waiting for him; Alma was already dressed for the ball at Four Corners, to which she intended to ride with Findlay, according to her promise.
Ordinarily, Nearing had a cheerful word, even & bantering passage or two, for his niece, who watched for him and sprang to greet his coming always as eagerly as a daughter might have done. But this evening he had no cheer in his gloomy heart, no welcome, no gladness, in his wild, fearful eyes. He had gone at once to his room, whence the issue of voices presently, told that his wife had joined him.
Alma heard the drone of his distressed voice, and wailing exclamations of despair from her Aunt Hope, such anguished sounds as if their souls had been thrown into the mill of the inexorable gods and were being shredded from their living hearts.
It had come the time of the year when the herds were being shifted down from the higher mesas to the fattening grass in the valleys, many cattle being now on the range near the ranch. As a consequence of this activity, men were quartered again in the long bunkhouse,
