The Forbidden Trail

"Now, Mr. von Minden," said Roger sternly. "I tell you quite frankly, that you're not welcome here. If Miss Preble hadn't interceded for you, I'd hand you over to the authorities."

Crazy Dutch nodded affably. "You're quite right. I deserve it. But I've had a touch of the sun and for a moment I was out of my head. In this lonely country we must bear with each other."

"The way you bear with your wife, I suppose," suggested Ernest.

Von Minden looked half apprehensively over his shoulder at his wife's tent, then he said in a confidential whisper, "Now she is crazy and has been for years. Only she's crazy all the time so the only thing to do is to keep away from her. She was a very good, hard working woman, once."

"So I should judge from what she tells us," Roger's voice was grim. "It strikes us that you treated her as if she were a horse and not a woman. But that's not our business. Why did you come back here, Von Minden?"

"I came to apologize."

"Well, I accept the apology. Now you had better go on about your business and I'll get your wife back to Phoenix, some way."

Von Minden drew himself up. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Moore, I'm not in the habit of being spoken to in this manner. Apologize at once!"

Roger turned red. "Why you infernal little shrimp--" he began.

But Ernest interrupted. "Keep your temper, Rog. All this isn't worth seeing red for."

"Of course it isn't," said the little German briskly. "Now I'm planning to spend the evening with the Prebles and then I'll go on into the range. Peter, my dear, I'll give you a drink now. We were out in all this storm, gentlemen, but we don't mind them, Peter and I. There is a beauty about them, these passions of the desert. How are the Prebles?"

The two men started. "We were going up there," said Ernest. "Dick just went driving by at a gallop, without a word, toward Archer's Springs."

Von Minden scowled, started to speak, was silent, then said: "What do you think was the matter?"

"Let's go find out," urged Ernest.

The three men, Peter trailing at the rear, started hurriedly along the half obliterated trail toward the ranch.

The stillness after the day of warfare was heavenly. The violet of the sky had changed to the blue of larkspur, that now was shot with lacey streamers, rose pink from the setting sun. An oriole, balancing itself on Dick's line fence, poured forth a melody of transporting sweetness.

"O, by Jove!" exclaimed Roger suddenly, "look at Dick's alfalfa!"