before the sharp, menacing voice so little in tune with its reputation
for giggling, and stepping back, he let Louise pass. Then he plunged
forward out of the doorway.

"That's right. Come outside," said Orlando scornfully. "Come out into
the open." His voice became lower. There was something deadly in it,
boy as he was. "Come out, you hypocrite, and listen to what I've got to
say. Listen to the truth I've got to tell you. If you don't listen,
I'll horsewhip you, that'd horsewhip a woman, till you can't stand--you
loathsome old dog. . . . Yes, he took his horsewhip to her
yesterday," he added to the spectators, who muttered angrily, for the
West is chivalrous towards women.

Something near to madness possessed Orlando. No one had ever seen him
as he was at that moment. Down through generations had come to him some
iron thing that suddenly revealed itself in him, as something had just
suddenly revealed itself in Louise.

The other three men--two in the wagon and one beside his horse-stared at
him as though they had seen him for the first time. They were unready
for the passion that possessed him. Not a muscle of his body appeared to
move; he was as motionless as the trunk of a tree. But in his eyes and
his voice there was, as one of the ranchers said afterwards, "Hell--and
then some more."

"Listen to me," he said again, and his voice was low and husky now.
"Yesterday I was broncho-busting--"

Thereupon he told the whole story of what had happened since he had seen
Louise thrown from her chestnut on the prairie. He told how Louise was