The next moment Purdy was lifting her into the saddle, and without a
backward glance the two rode out across the flat.

The girl was a devoted horsewoman and with the feel of the horse under
her, her spirits revived and she drew in a long breath of the fragrant
night. There was a living tang to the air, soft with the balm of June,
and as they rode side by side the cowboy pointed toward the east where
the sharp edge of the bench cut the rim of the rising moon. Alice
gasped at the beauty of it. The horses stopped and the two watched in
silence until the great red disc rose clear of the clean-cut sky-line.

About the wreck torches flared and the night was torn by the clang and
rattle of gears as the great crane swung a boxcar to the side. The
single street was filled with people--women and men from the wagons,
and cowboys who dashed past on their horses or clumped along the wooden
sidewalk with a musical jangle of spurs.

The dance-hall was a blaze of light toward which the people flocked
like moths to a candle flame. As they pushed the horses past, the girl
glanced in. Framed in the doorway stood a man whose eyes met hers
squarely--eyes that, in the lamplight seemed to smile cynically as they
strayed past her and rested for a moment upon her companion, even as
the thin lips were drawn downward at their corners in a sardonic grin.

Unconsciously she brought her quirt down sharply, and her horse, glad
of the chance to stretch his legs after several days in the stall,
bounded forward and taking the bit in his teeth shot past the little
cluster of stores and saloons, past the straggling row of houses and
headed out on the trail that wound in and out among the cottonwood
clumps of the valley. At first, the girl tried vainly to check the