right—and the woman.





VI


A Daughter Of The Desert


Judith knew that the name of the girl whose letter sent Peter Hamilton
vaulting to the saddle was Katherine Colebrooke. There had been a deal of
letter-writing between her and the young cow-puncher of late, of which
perforce, by a singular irony of fate, the postmistress had been the
involuntary instrument. The correspondence had followed a recent hasty
journey to New York, undertaken somewhat unwillingly by Hamilton in the
interest of certain affairs connected with the settlement of an estate.

The precipitancy of this latest turn of events bewildered Judith; but yet
a little while—a matter of weeks and days—and her friendship with Hamilton
had been of that pleasantly indefinite estate situated somewhere on the
borderland of romance, a kingdom where there is no law but the mutual
interest of the wayfarers. Judith and Peter had been pitifully new at the
game of life when the gods vouchsafed them the equivocal blessing of
propinquity. Judith was but lately come from the convent at Santa Fé, and
Hamilton from the university whose honors availed him little in the
trailing of cattle over the range or in the sweat and tumult of the
branding-pen. It was a strange election of opportunity for a man who had