pecking desultorily about their feeding-ground in
expectation of the wheat that Jean or Lite would fling
to them later on. Not a thing seemed unusual.

Yet Lite stood just outside the stable, and the
sensation that something was wrong grew keener. He was
not a nervous person,--you would have laughed at the
idea of nerves in connection with Lite Avery. He felt
that something was wrong, just the same. It was not
altogether the hurried departure of Aleck Douglas,
either, that made him feel so. He looked at the house
setting back there close to the bluff just where it began
to curve rudely out from the narrowest part of the
coulee. It was still and quiet, with closed windows and
doors to tell there was no one at home. And yet, to
Lite its very silence seemed sinister.

Wolves were many, down in the breaks along the
river that spring; and the coyotes were an ever-present
evil among the calves, so that Lite never rode abroad
without his six-shooter. He reached back and loosened
it in the holster before he started up the sandy path
to the house; and if you knew the Lazy A ranch as
well as Lite knew it, from six years of calling it home,
you would wonder at that action of his, which was
instinctive and wholly unconscious.

So he went up through the sunshine of late afternoon
that sent his shadow a full rod before him, and he
stepped upon the narrow platform before the kitchen