Alice knew instinctively that they were at the gateway of the bad lands, and the forbidding aspect that greeted her on every side as her eyes swept the restricted horizon caused a feeling of depression.  Even the name “bad lands” seemed to hold a foreboding of evil.  She had not noticed this when the Texan had spoken it.  If she had thought of it at all, it was impersonally—­an undesirable strip of country, as one mentions the Sahara Desert.  But, now, when she herself was entering it—­was seeing with her own eyes the grey mud walls, the bare black rocks, and the stunted sage and cactus—­the name held much of sinister portent.

From a nearby hillock came a thin weird scream—­long-drawn and broken into a series of horrible cackles.  Instantly, as though it were the signal that loosed the discordant chorus of hell, the sound was caught up, intensified and prolonged until the demonical screams seemed to belch from every hill and from the depths of the coulees between.

Unconsciously, the girl spurred her horse which leaped past Endicott and Bat and drew up beside the Texan, who was riding alone in the forefront.

The man glanced into the white frightened face:  “Coyotes,” he said, gravely.  “They won’t bother any one.”

The girl shuddered.  “There must be a million of them.  What makes them howl that way?”

“Most any other way would be better, wouldn’t it.  But I reckon that’s the way they’ve learnt to, so they just keep on that way.”

Alice glanced at him sharply, but in the moonlight his clean-cut profile gave no hint of levity.

“You are making fun of me!”

He turned his head and regarded her thoughtfully.  “No.  I wouldn’t do that, really.  I was thinkin’ of somethin’ else.”

“You are a very disconcerting young man.  You are unspeakably rude, and I ought to be furiously angry.”

The Texan appeared to consider.  “No.  You oughtn’t to do that because when something important comes up you ain’t got anything back, an’ folks won’t regard you serious.  But you wouldn’t have been even peeved if you knew what I was thinkin’ about.”

“What was it?” The instant the question left her lips the girl wished she could have recalled it.

There was a long pause and Alice began to hope that the man had not heard her question.  Then he turned a very grave face toward her and his eyes met hers squarely.  “I was thinkin’ that maybe, sometime, you’d get to care enough about me to marry me.  Sounds kind of abrupt an’ off-hand, don’t it?  But it ain’t.  I’ve been thinkin’ about it a lot.  You’re the first woman I’ve seen since—­well, since way back yonder, that I’d ever marry.  The only one that stacks up to the kind of people mine are, an’ that I was back there.  Of course, there’d be a lot of readjustin’ but that would work out—­it always does when the right kind of folks takes holt to put anything through.  I’ve got some recreations an’