Beaudry shrugged his shoulders.  He was lucky for once.  It had been the place of Ned Rutherford to rebuke Charlton for his slighting remark.  A stranger had not the least right to interfere while the brother of the girl was present.  Roy did not pursue the point any further.  He did not want to debate with himself whether he had the pluck to throw down the gauntlet to this fighting vaquero if the call had come to him.

As he walked into the house and up to his room, his mind was busy with another problem.  Where had Ned Rutherford been for three nights and his brother Jeff before that?  Why had Beulah flared into unexpected anger?  He, too, had glimpsed furtive whisperings.  Even a fool would have understood that he was not a welcome guest at the horse ranch, and that his presence was tolerated only because here the boys could keep an eye on him.  He was under surveillance.  That was plain.  He had started out for a little walk before breakfast and Jeff joined him from nowhere in particular to stroll along.  What was it the Huerfano Park settlers were trying to hide from him?  His mind jumped promptly to the answer.  Dave Dingwell, of course.

Meanwhile Miss Rutherford lay weeping in the next room face down upon the bed.  She rarely indulged in tears.  It had not happened before since she was seventeen.  But now she sobbed into a pillow, softly, so that nobody might hear.  Why must she spend her life in such surroundings?  If the books she read told the truth, the world was full of gentle, kindly people who lived within the law and respected each other’s rights.  Why was it in her horoscope to be an outcast?  Why must she look at everybody with bitterness and push friendship from her lest it turn to poison at her touch?  For one hour she had found joy in comradeship with this stranger.  Then Tighe had whispered it that he was probably a spy.  She had returned home only to have her doubts about her own family stirred to life again.  Were there no good, honest folk in the world at all?

She washed her telltale eyes and ventured downstairs to look after supper.  The Mexican cook was already peeling the potatoes.  She gave him directions about the meal and went out to the garden to get some radishes and lettuce.  On the way she had to pass the corral.  Her brother Hal, Slim Sanders, and Cherokee Street were roping and branding some calves.  The guest of the house had hung his coat and hat on a fence-post to keep them from getting soiled, but the hat had fallen into the dust.

Beulah picked up the hat and brushed it.  As she dusted with her handkerchief the under side of the rim her eyes fell upon two initials stamped into the sweat pad.  The letters were “R.B.”  The owner of the hat called himself Cherokee Street.  Why, then, should he have these other initials printed on the pad?  There could be only one answer to that question.  He was passing under a name that was not his own.