Judith’s eyes sought his. "Why don’t you and Leander form a coalition for
the overthrow of the enemy?" His voice had dropped a tone lower than in
his parley with Mrs. Dax; it might have implied special devotion, or it
might have implied but the passing tribute to a beautiful woman in a
country where women were few—the generic admiration of all men for all
women, ephemerally specialized by place and circumstance.

But Judith, harassed at every turn, heart-sick with anxiety, had
anticipated in Peter’s coming, if not a solution of her troubles, at least
some evidence of sustaining sympathy, and was in no mood for resuscitating
the perennial pleasantries anent Leander and his masterful lady.

The shrilling of the locusts emphasized their silence. She spoke to him
casually of his change of plan, but he turned the subject, and Judith let
the matter drop. She was too simple a woman to stoop to oblique measures
for the gaining of her own ends. If he was here to hunt down her brother,
if he was here to see the Eastern woman at the Wetmore ranch—well, "life
was life," to be taken or left. Thus spoke the fatalism that was the
heritage of her Indian blood.

The thought of Miss Colebrooke at Wetmore’s reminded her of a letter for
Peter that had been brought that morning by one of the Wetmore cow-boys.

"I forgot—there’s a letter for you." She went to the pigeon-holes on the
wall that held the flotsam and jetsam of unclaimed mail, and brought him a
square, blue linen envelope—distinctly a lady’s letter.

Peter took it with rather a forced air of magnanimity, as if in neglecting
to present it to him sooner she drew heavily on his reserve of patience.
Tearing open the envelope, he read it voraciously, read it to the