one, tho’ his heart was hard as his hand, and his hand was iron—­Bras de Fer, Arm of Iron, the Indians called him; for his left hand, he lost in a duel; and his false hand was a true hand of iron metal that made many a lazy voyageur bite the dust.  Bless me, but you are a MacDonald to your dainty feet—­” holding her off from him at arm’s length.  “Eyes true to pedigree, and the curly hair, and the short upper lip, the only one of all the MacDonalds that’s kept the race type.  ’Tis good to see you!  A’m right glad to see you!  A’m gladder than you know-”

Eleanor did not wait for any second thought.  “And did you know my mother’s people, too?”

The old man sat back in his corner.  “No, A cannot say A did!  A had left the Company an’ was building railway bridges in the Rockies when your father left Canada.”

She felt the hot flush mount.

“Such an absurd thing, Eleanor,” Mrs. Williams was explaining.  “Mr. Matthews came by the Holy Cross last night.  Mr. Wayland told Calamity to show him which way to turn; and she sent him the wrong way, to the cow-boy camp, you know!  He had to sleep out all night at our very door.  Such a shame!  That put him so late that he missed Mr. Williams.  You know they have gone to the Upper Pass and can’t possibly be back for weeks—­excuse me, some of my school people seem to want me,” and she flitted from the room.  To Eleanor, her life seemed a constant flitting at the beck of bootless duties, nagging duties that only an expert time keeper of Heaven could credit.

“Yes!  Sent me a mile along the road in the wrong direction—­into a nest of mid-night birds.  A nice bunch o’ beauties, too, hatching some Devil plot to ruin the poor sheepmen!  A man in a white vest was there, who by the same token didn’t belong; tho’ A’m no so sure he was any better than his company.  They didn’t see me!  A didna’ just speak to them, but A heard them plain enough,—­’leave for the South at once;’ and ’crowd ’em to beat Hell,’ and ’send ’em over without a push’ an’ ’see that no harm comes to the boy’—­Eh, why, what is the matter?”

Eleanor had sprung forward with white lips.

“It’s Fordie!  He’s taking the sheep to the Rim Rocks with the Mexican herders.  Don’t frighten his mother!  It may not be too late!  He may not have reached the Rim—­”

“Let’s telephone that Ranger fellow?”

Then, it all dawned on her, the deadly, suave, incredibly malicious pre-planned thing!

“The wires had been cut since morning,” she said.

CHAPTER VII

WHILE LAW MARKS TIME, CRIME SCORES

They did not tell the boy’s mother.

The German cook hitched the fastest bronchos to the yellow buckboard with the front wheel brake; and, the old frontiersman flourishing the reins, they had whisked off for the Ridge trail before Mrs. Williams could return to the Mission Parlor.