the malignance that seized him whenever he thought of Rand.
"He's a skinny, ugly gawk with pink hair an' an eye like a fish!" he declared. "He's tall an' awkward, with a pigeon chest an' a woman's waist. He's got a nose like an eagle's beak an' a grin like a sneakin' tomcat! That's Rand —Beau Rand!"
"Why, Daddy!" she said, reprovingly, frankly mocking him.
"Look here, Ellie!" said Seddon, earnestly. "He's done me dirt, an' I don't like him. Mebbe he ain't just the buzzard I've described him; but I don't want you to get thick with him — he's poison, sure enough!"
"Thick!" she said. "Why, Father!"
"That's all right, Ellie; I didn't mean that," he said as he placed an arm about her waist and led her toward the house.
Chapter II. A Timber Wolf
AMOS SEDDON said no more to his daughter about Beaudry Rand. Seddon had caught certain expressions in the girl's eyes during his first talk about the man, and those expressions had warned him that he might talk too much, and thus arouse the girl's suspicions.
Already, he divined from the way she had looked at him several times, she was wondering why he exhibited so much feeling toward Rand. He didn't want her to ask questions, for some of them might have embarrassed him. And so for two days following the talk about the Three Bar owner, he did not again refer to him.
Besides, various activities engaged Seddon's attention. It was the time of the late spring round-up, and Seddon was compelled to spend much of his time with the Bar S outfit. He wanted Eleanor to accompany him on some of his rides, to watch the men at work, but range work was no novelty to the girl, and she smilingly refused.
However, she spent little of her time at the ranchhouse. Her favorite horse — which she had ridden much before leaving the ranch for Denver, four years before — she found had been pasturing during most of the interval of her absence, and when one morning she went down to the far pasture and looked at him through the rails of the fence, she saw that he had grown fat and slow and old.
She called to him — the old, familiar and peculiar whistle with which she had summoned him years before. He answered, whinnying, approaching the fence haltingly ; and when he stuck his muzzle between the rails she patted it and talked to him, renewing their friendship.
But she did not ride him. From the horse corral near the stable she selected a gray, rangy beast, which her father had pointed out to her, recommending him as "reliable." "Silver," Seddon had named him.
Silver was reliable. It did not take the girl long to discover that. She knew horses, and during her rides she tested the gray animal in various ways; and at last patted him admiringly and confided into his ears that he would "do."
The four-year interval of her absence had not made the far timber less alluring; nor had she taken her father's warning seriously. She had never taken the wolf story literally—it had been a childhood bogey by w T hich both her father and mother had tried to keep her from exploring the timber.
For, despite their warnings, she had gone there many times, impressed by its vastness, awed by the solemn silence that reigned there; a religious reverence stealing over her whenever she traversed its majestic aisles, with the towering, tapering trees, like cathedral spires, thrusting into the azure blue above.
On this morning—three days after Seddon had talked to her about Beaudry Rand, she watched her father mount his horse and ride away. Shortly after he vanished westward to join the outfit she saddled Silver and headed him toward the river trail.
Familiar landmarks came into view as she rode. She did not travel fast, for there were some things she wished to see—a shady nook at the edge of a sheer butte that fringed the river, where she had spent many hours; a "hole" in the river, far down in a shallow canon — where she had bathed, with no danger of discovery; and other well-remembered places with which were connected incidents that were still vivid in her recollection.
This tour of memory-exploration took time. It was nearly noon when she reached the edge of the timber, and she smilingly reflected that she had consumed several hours in riding about twelve miles.
Memories thrilled her as she entered the timber—following a faint trail that she remembered well — for she had not seen the timber in four years. Those four years, she saw, had not brought much change in the aspect of the forest. Over here, as she entered a narrow aisle and sent Silver loping along it, descended the atmosphere of mystery that had always encompassed her — the lingering, whispering, sighing voices of the trees, bearing a threat or a promise — she had never been able to decide which.
She spent some hours in the forest; though she penetrated no farther than she had gone many times in the past. For she rode only those trails she remembered — cattle paths, made by refractory steers that insisted upon betraying yearnings to revert to type.
She reflected that some of the most marvelous profanity she had ever heard had been provoked among the Bar S men by the predilection of some range steers for the mazes and tangle of timber. When they went in — as some of them would — the men had to get them out.
It was a vast forest. Eleanor had never ridden far enough eastward to reach its edge in that direction; though she had almost attained its northern radius — and she always entered the timber from the south.
And she did not attempt today to reach the eastern limits; she rode as far as she had ridden other times, and twice almost lost herself— for most of the trails she had known were overgrown with wild brush and carpeted with the fallen leaves of past seasons, and she had some trouble to find them.
She was in no hurry. Her father, she knew, would not return until late in the evening—probably not until late tomorrow, for she had heard him tell the straw-boss that the distance to where the outfit was going was "pretty far." So she had no fear that he would discover where she had gone.
As for that she was nearly twenty, and the spirit of independence in her had grown and flourished during her four years' absence. She had always been self-reliant. Not aggressively self-reliant—she disliked a mannish woman. She preferred to feel that she was merely confident— confident of her ability to take care of herself. Certainly she had spirit enough to demonstrate that trait — her trip to the timber despite her father's warning proved that!
She smiled, remembering her father's gravity.
"Worse than wolves," he had said; "there's Beau Rand!"
Her smile grew. Beau Rand, according to her father, might be some prehistoric monster roaming the timber, seeking to devour pygmy humans — herself especially! She laughed aloud.
Later, reaching a small clearing where some wild flowers grew, delicately tinted, their stems frail and transparent, she dismounted and began to gather them.
Engrossed in the task, the bunch of tinted beauties in her hand growing larger and larger, she spent much time in the clearing — more time than she realized. For when, after a while, she stood erect, satisfied with the size of the fragrant bunch in her hands, she discovered that Silver was nowhere to be seen!
She gasped, astonishment confounding her, until she remembered that she had forgotten to trail the reins over Silver's head!
Every
