conclusion by a logical process of deduction, was "plumb certain that he
had gone after ’rustlers!’" Leander, who had held no opinions since his
marriage except that first and all-comprehensive tenet of his creed—that
his wife was a person to be loved, honored, and obeyed instantly—agreed
with his lady by a process of reflex action. The fat lady, who had a
commonplace for every occasion, didn’t "know what we were all coming to."
Miss Carmichael, who was beginning to find her capacity for amazement
overstrained, alone accepted this last incident with apathy. Mr. Hamilton
might have gone in swift pursuit of cattle thieves or he might be riding
the mare to death for pure whimsy. Only Judith Rodney, who said nothing,
felt that he was spurring across the wilderness at breakneck speed to see
a girl at Wetmore’s. But her lack of comment caused no ripple of surprise
in the flow of loose-lipped speculation that served, for the time being,
to inject a casual interest into the talk of these folk, bored to the
verge of demoralization by long waiting for Chugg.

Judith preferred to confirm her apprehensions regarding Hamilton’s ride,
alone. She knew—had not all her woman’s intuitions risen in clamorous
warning—and yet she hoped, hoped despairingly, even though the dread
alternative to the girl at the Wetmore ranch threatened lynch law for her
brother. Her very gait changed as she withdrew from the group about the
door, covertly gaining her vantage-ground inch by inch. The heels of her
riding-boots made no sound as she stole across the kitchen floor, toeing
in like an Indian tracking an enemy through the forest. The small window
at the back of the kitchen commanded a view of the road in all its
sprawling circumlocution. Seen from this prospect, it had no more design
than the idle scrawlings of a child on a bit of paper; but the choice of
roads to Good and Evil was not fraught with more momentous consequences
than was each prong of that fork towards which Hamilton was galloping.