land she lived in; Jean was in the mood to combat
anything that came in her way.



CHAPTER V


JEAN RIDES INTO A SMALL ADVENTURE


At the mouth of the coulee, she turned to the left
instead of to the right, and so galloped directly
away from the Bar Nothing ranch, down the narrow
valley known locally as the Flat, and on to the hills that
invited her with their untroubled lights and shadows
and the deep scars she knew for canyons.

There were no ranches out this way. The land was
too broken and too barren for anything but grazing,
so that she felt fairly sure of having her solitude
unspoiled by anything human. Solitude was what she
wanted. Solitude was what she had counted upon having
in that little room at the Lazy A; robbed of it
there, she rode straight to the hills, where she was most
certain of finding it.

And then she came up out of a hollow upon a little
ridge and saw three horsemen down in the next coulee.
They were not close enough so that she could distinguish