"Will the--lady he wants to marry give him another chance?"

"Don't you think she ought to--if she l-loves him?" Billy Louise studied the skyline upon the side farthest from Seabeck.

"You say he wants to pay for the cattle and--"

"He'll do anything he can to make amends," said Billy Louise, with conviction. "He'll take his medicine and go to jail if you insist," she added sorrowfully. "It will ruin his whole life, of course, and break a couple of women's hearts, but--"

"It's a bad thing, a mighty bad thing, when a man tries to get ahead too fast."

"It's a good thing when he learns the lesson without having to pay for it with his whole future," Billy Louise amended the statement.

Seabeck smiled a little behind his fingers that kept tugging at his whiskers.

"Did Charlie Fox send Miss Portia--"

"He doesn't know I had any intention of coming," Billy Louise assured him quickly and with perfect truth. "They'll both be awfully surprised when they find it out"--which was also perfectly true--"and when they see you ride up, they'll think you've got the sheriff at your back. I haven't a doubt they--"

"There are a few points I'd like to clear up, if you can help me," Seabeck interrupted. "All this rustling that has been going on for the past year and a half: are Fox and the Meilke woman mixed up in that? I want," he said, "to help the young man--and her. But if they have been operating on a large scale, I'm afraid--"

"I believe Charlie must have been influenced in some ways by bad acquaintances," Billy Louise answered more steadily than she felt. "But his--rustling--has been of a petty kind. I won't apologize for him, Mr. Seabeck. I think it's perfectly awful, what he has done. But I think it would be more awful still not to give him a chance. The other rustling is some outside gang, I'm sure. If Charlie was mixed up with them, it's very slightly--just enough to damn him utterly if he were arrested and tried. He isn't a natural criminal. He's just weak. And he's learned his lesson. It's up to you, Mr. Seabeck, to say whether he shall have a chance to profit by the lesson. And there's poor old Marthy in it, too. She just worships Charlie and would do anything--even steal for him."

Seabeck meditated for a mile, and Billy Louise watched him uneasily from the tail of her eye. To tell the plain truth, she was in a panic of fear at what she had done. It had looked so simple and so practicable when she had planned it; and now when the words were out and the knowledge had reached Seabeck and was beyond her control, she could not think of any good reason for telling him.




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