"Who'd you meet there?" Duke's tone snapped with anger. He was working himself into a fury, but Nan saw it must be faced. "The same people I usually meet--why?"

"Did you meet Henry de Spain there this afternoon?"

Nan looked squarely at her cousin and returned his triumphant expression defiantly before she turned her eyes on her uncle. "No,"

she said collectedly. "Why?"

"Do you deny it?" he thundered.

"Yes, I deny it. Why?"

"Did you see de Spain at Calabasas this afternoon?"

"No."

"See him anywhere else?"

"No, I did not. What do you mean? What," demanded his niece with spirit, "do you want to know? What are you trying to find out?"

Duke turned in his rage on Gale. "There! You hear that--what have you got to say now?" he demanded with an abusive oath.

Gale, who had been hardly able to refrain from breaking in, answered fast. "What have I got to say?" he roared. "I say I know what I'm talking about. I say she's lying, Duke."

Nan's face turned white with anger. Before she could speak her uncle took up the words. "Hold on," he shouted. "Don't tell me she lies." He launched another hot expletive. "I know she doesn't lie!"

Gale jumped forward, his finger pointed at Nan. "Look here, do you deny you are meeting Henry de Spain all over the desert?"

Nan's anger supported her without a tremor. "Who are you to ask me whom I meet or don't meet?"

"You've been meeting de Spain right along, haven't you? You met him down the Sleepy Cat trail near Black Cap, didn't you?"

Nan stood with her back against the end of the table where her uncle's first words had stopped her, and she looked sidewise toward her cousin. In her answer he heard as much contempt as a girl's voice could carry to a rejected lover. "So you've turned sneak!"

Gale roared a string of bad words.

"You hire that coyote, Sa.s.soon, to spy for you, do you?" demanded Nan coolly. "Aren't you proud of your manly relation, uncle?" Duke was choking with rage. He tried to speak to her, but he could not form his words. "What is it you want to know, uncle? Whether it is true that I meet Henry de Spain? It is. I do meet him, and we're engaged to be married when you give us permission, Uncle Duke--and not till then."

"There you have it," cried Gale. "There's the story. I told you so.

I've known it for a week, I tell you." Nan's face set. "Not only,"

continued her cousin jeeringly, "meeting that----"

Almost before the vile epithet that followed had reached her ears, Nan caught up the whip. Before he could escape she cut Gale sharply across the face. "You coward," she cried, trembling so she could not control her voice. "If you ever dare use that word before me again, I'll horsewhip you. Go to Henry de Spain's face, you skulker, and say that if you dare."

"Put down that quirt, Nan," yelled her uncle.

"I won't put it down," she exclaimed defiantly. "And he will get a good lashing with it if he says one more word about Henry de Spain."

"Put down that quirt, I tell you," thundered her uncle.

She whirled. "I won't put it down. This hulking bully! I know him better than you do." She pointed a quivering finger at her cousin. "He insulted me as vilely as he could only a few months ago on Music Mountain. And if this very same Henry de Spain hadn't happened to be there to protect me, you would have found me dead next morning by my own hand. Do you understand?" she cried, panting and furious. "That's what he is!"

Her uncle tried to break in. "Stop!" she exclaimed, pointing at Gale.

"_He_ never told you that, did he?"

"No; nor you neither," snapped Duke hoa.r.s.ely.

"I didn't tell you," retorted Nan, "because I've been trying to live with you here in peace among these thieves and cutthroats, and not keep you stirred up all the time. And Henry de Spain faced this big coward and protected me from him with an empty revolver! What business of yours is it whom I meet, or where I go?" she demanded, raining her words with flaming eyes on her belligerent cousin. "I will never marry you to save you from the hangman. Now leave this house." She stamped her foot. "Leave this house, and never come into it again!"

Gale, beside himself with rage, stood his ground. He poured all that he safely could of abuse on Nan's own head. She had appeased her wrath and made no attempt to retort, only looking at him with white face and burning eyes as she breathed defiance. Duke interfered. "Get out!" he said to Gale harshly. "I'll talk to her. Go home!"

Not ceasing to mutter threats, Gale picked up his hat and stamped out of the house, slamming the doors. Duke, exhausted by the quarrel, sat down, eying his niece. "Now what does this mean?" he demanded hoa.r.s.ely.

She tried to tell him honestly and frankly all that her acquaintance with de Spain did mean--dwelling no more than was necessary on its beginning, but concealing nothing of its development and consequences, nothing of her love for de Spain, nor of his for her. But no part of what she could say on any point she urged softened her uncle's face.

His square hard jaw from beginning to end looked like stone.

"So he's your lover?" he said harshly when she had done.

"He wants to be your friend," returned Nan, determined not to give up.

Duke looked at her uncompromisingly: "That man can't ever be any friend of mine--understand that! He can't ever marry you. If he ever tries to, so help me G.o.d, I'll kill him if I hang for it. I know his game. I know what he wants. He doesn't care a pinch of snuff about you. He thinks he can hit me a blow by getting you away from me."

"Nothing could be further from the truth," exclaimed Nan hopelessly.

Duke struck the table a smashing blow with his fist. "I'll show Mr. de Spain and his friends where they get off."

"Uncle Duke, if you won't listen to reason, you must listen to sense.

Think of what a position you put me in. I love you for all your care of me. I love him for his affection for me and consideration of me--because he knows how to treat a woman. I know he wouldn't harm a hair on your head, for my sake, yet you talk now of bloodshed between you two. I know what your words mean--that one of you, or both of you are to be killed for a senseless feud. He will not stand up and let any man shoot him down without resistance. If you lay your blood on his head, you know it would put a stain between him and me that never could be washed out as long as we lived. If you kill him I could never stay here with you. His blood would cry out every day and night against you."

Duke's violent finger shot out at her. "And you're the gal I took from your mammy and promised I'd bring up a decent woman. You've got none o' her blood in you--not a drop. You're the brat of that d.a.m.ned, mincing brother of mine, that was always riding horseback and showing off in town while I was weeding the tobacco-beds."

Nan clasped her hands. "Don't blame me because I'm your brother's child. Blame me because I'm a woman, because I have a heart, because I want to live and see you live, and to see you live in peace instead of what we do live in--suspicion, distrust, feuds, alarms, and worse. I'm not ungrateful, as you plainly say I am. I want you to get out of what you are in here--I want to be out of it. I'd rather be dead now than to live and die in it. And what is this anger all for? Nothing. He offers you his friendship--" She could speak no further. Her uncle with a curse left her alone. When she arose in the early morning he had already gone away.

CHAPTER XXI

A TRY OUT

Sleepy Cat is not so large a place that one would ordinarily have much trouble in finding a man in it if one searched well. But Duke Morgan drove into town next morning and had to stay for three days waiting for a chance to meet de Spain. Duke was not a man to talk much when he had anything of moment to put through, and he had left home determined, before he came back, to finish for good with his enemy.

De Spain himself had been putting off for weeks every business that would bear putting off, and had been forced at length to run down to Medicine Bend to buy horses. Nan, after her uncle left home--justly apprehensive of his intentions--made frantic efforts to get word to de Spain of what was impending. She could not telegraph--a publicity that she dreaded would have followed at once. De Spain had expected to be back in two days. Such a letter as she could have sent would not reach him at Medicine Bend.

As it was, a distressing amount of talk did attend Duke's efforts to get track of de Spain. Sleepy Cat had but one interpretation for his inquiries--and a fight, if one occurred between these men, it was conceded would be historic in the annals of the town. Its antic.i.p.ation was food for all of the rumors of three days of suspense. For the town they were three days of thrilling expectation; for Nan, isolated, without a confidant, not knowing what to do or which way to turn, they were the three bitterest days of anxiety she had ever known.

Desperate with suspense at the close of the second day--wild for a sc.r.a.p of news, yet dreading one--she saddled her pony and rode alone into Sleepy Cat after nightfall to meet the train on which de Spain had told her he would return from the east. She rode straight to the hospital, instead of going to the livery-barn, and leaving her horse, got supper and walked by way of unfrequented streets down-town to the station to wait for the train.

Never had she felt so miserable, so helpless, so forsaken, so alone.