XLII. THE IMPERATIVE URGE





CHAPTER I

IN THE DANGER ZONE


She stood on the crown of the hill, silhouetted against a sky-line of
deepest blue. Already the sun was sinking in a crotch of the plains
which rolled to the horizon edge like waves of a great land sea. Its
reflected fires were in her dark, stormy eyes. Its long, slanted rays
were a spotlight for the tall, slim figure, straight as that of a boy.

The girl's gaze was fastened on a wisp of smoke rising lazily from a
hollow of the crumpled hills. That floating film told of a camp-fire
of buffalo chips. There was a little knitted frown of worry on her
forehead, for imagination could fill in details of what the coulée
held: the white canvas tops of prairie schooners, some spans of oxen
grazing near, a group of blatant, profane whiskey-smugglers from
Montana, and in the wagons a cargo of liquor to debauch the Bloods and
Piegans near Fort Whoop-Up.

Sleeping Dawn was a child of impulse. She had all youth's capacity for
passionate indignation and none of the wisdom of age which tempers
the eager desire of the hour. These whiskey-traders were ruining her