Chapter I.
A Letter with a Surprise in it

The room was full of blue smoke from bacon sizzling on the stove when Philip Earle came in.

Philip was hungry, but there was a weirdly monotonous reminder of preceding meals in the odor of the bacon that took the edge from his appetite.

The lamp was doing its best to help both the smoke and the odor that filled the room; any other function it might have had being held in abeyance by the smoke.

The lamp was on a little shelf on the wall, and under it, half hidden by the smoke, stood another young man bending over the stove.

There was nothing attractive about the room. It was made of rough boards: walls, floor, and ceiling. The furniture was an old extension table, several chairs, a cheap cot covered with a gray army blanket, and a desk which showed hard usage, piled high with papers and a few books. A wooden bench over by the stove held a tin washbasin and cooking-utensils in harmonious proximity.

Several coats and hats and a horse-blanket hung on nails driven into the walls. A line of boots and shoes stood against the baseboard. There was nothing else but a barrel and several boxes.

The table was set for supper: that is, it held a loaf of bread, two cups and knives and spoons, a bag of crackers, a paper of cheese, a pitcher of water, and a can of baked beans newly opened.

Philip added to the confusion already on the table by throwing his bundles down at one end. Then he stood his whip in one corner, and tossed his felt hat across the room to the cot, where it lay as if accustomed to staying where it landed.

"A letter for you, Steve!" he said as he sat down at the table and ran his hands wearily through his thick black hair.

Stephen Halstead emerged from the cloud of smoke by the stove, and examined the postmark on the letter.

"Well, I guess it can wait till we've had supper," he said carelessly. "It's not likely to be important. I'm hungry!" and he landed a large plate of smoking bacon and shriveled, blackened, fried eggs on the table beside the coffeepot, and sat down.

They began to eat, silent for the most part, with keen appetites, for both had been in the open air all day. Stephen knew that his partner would presently report about the sale of cattle he had made, and tell of his weary search for several stray animals that had wandered off. But that could wait.

Philip, however, was thinking of something else. Perhaps it was the texture of the envelope he had just laid down, or the whiff of violet scent that had breathed from it as he took it from his pocket, that reminded him of old days; or perhaps it was just that he was hungry and dissatisfied.

"Say, Steve," said he, setting down his empty cup, "do you remember the banquet in '95?"

A cloud came over Stephen's face. He had reasons to remember it of which his friend knew not.

"What of it?" he growled.

"Nothing; only I was thinking I would like to have the squabs and a few other little things I didn't eat that night. They wouldn't taste bad after a day such as we've had."

He helped himself to another piece of cheese, and took another supply of baked beans.

Stephen laughed harshly. He did not like to be reminded of that banquet night. To create a diversion, he reached out for the letter.

"This is from that precious sister of mine, I suppose," he said, "who isn't my sister at all, and yet persists every once in a while in keeping up the appearance. I don't know what she ever expects to make out of it. I haven't anything to leave her in my will. Besides, I don't answer her letters once in an age."

"You're a most ungrateful dog," said Philip. "You ought to be glad to have someone in the world to write to you. I've often thought of advertising for somebody who'd be a sister to me, at least enough of one to write to me. It would give a little zest to life. I don't see why you have such a prejudice against her. She never did anything. She couldn't help it that her mother was your father's second wife. It wasn't her affair, at all, nor yours either, as I see. When did you see her last?"

"Never saw her but once in my life, and then she was a little, bawling, red thing with long clothes, and everybody waiting on her."

"How old were you?"

"About ten," said Stephen doggedly, not joining in the hilarious laughter that Philip raised at his expense. "I was old enough to resent her being there at all, in my home, where I ought to have been, and her mother managing things and having me sent off to boarding-school to get rid of me. I could remember my own mother, Phil. She hadn't been dead a year when father married again."

"Well, it wasn't her fault anyway, that I can see," said Philip amusedly; "and, after all, she's your sister. She's as much your father's child as you are."

"She's nothing but a half-sister," said Stephen decidedly, "and of no interest in the world to me. What on earth she's taken to writing me long letters for, I can't make out. It's only since father died she's done it. I suppose her mother thought it would be well to appease me, lest I make trouble about the will; but I knew well enough there wouldn't be much of anything father had for me. His precious second wife did me out completely from the first minute she set eyes on me. And she's dead now, too. If it hadn't been for what my mother left, I wouldn't have had a cent."

"Who's the girl living with?" asked Philip.

"O, with an aunt,—her mother's sister,—an old maid up in New England."

Then Stephen tore open the letter, and shoved his chair back nearer to the lamp. There was silence in the room while Stephen read his letter; and Philip, emptying the coffee-pot, mused over the life of an orphan girl in the home of a New England maiden aunt.

Suddenly Stephen's chair jerked about with a sharp thud on the bare floor, and Stephen stood up and uttered some strong language.

He had a lot of light hair, originally a golden brown, but burnt by exposure to sun and rain to a tawny shade. He was a slender fellow, well knit, with a complexion tanned to nature's own pleasant brown, out of which looked deep, unhappy eyes of blue. He would have been handsome but for a restless weakness about the almost girlish mouth.

He was angry now, and perplexed. His yellow brows were knit together in a frown, his head up, and his eyes darker than usual. Philip watched him in languid amusement, and waited for an explanation.

"Well, is she too sisterly this time?" he asked.

"Altogether!" said Stephen. "She's coming to see us."

The amusement passed rapidly from Philip's face. He sprang to his feet, while the color rolled up under his dark skin.

"Coming to see us?" he ejaculated, looking round and suddenly seeing all the short-comings of the room.

"Coming to see us?" he repeated as if not quite sure of the sound of his own words. "Here?"

"Here!" asseverated Stephen tragically with outspread hands, and the two looked about in sudden knowledge of the desolation of the place they had called "home" for three years.

"When?" Philip managed to murmur weakly, looking about in his mind for a way of escape for himself without deserting his partner.

Stephen stooped to pick up the letter he had thrown on the floor in his excitement.

"I don't know," he said dejectedly. "Here, read the thing, and see if you can find out." He handed the letter to Philip, who received it with alacrity, and settled into the chair under the light, suddenly realizing that he was tired.

"She'll have to be stopped," said Stephen meditatively, sitting down on the cot to study it out, "or sent back if it's too late for stopping. She can't come here, of course."

"Of course!" agreed Philip decidedly. Then he read:

Philip handed over the last sheet to Stephen, and sat up, looking blankly at the wall for a minute. He could not deny to himself that he was wholly won over to the enemy's cause. There was something so fresh and appealing about that letter written from a lonely girlish heart, and something so altogether brave and daring in her actually starting out to hunt up a renegade brother who had shown no wish to be brotherly, that he could but admire her. But what could they do with her there? Of course she must go back. A pity, too, when she seemed to have her heart so set. But, if she stayed, she would be disappointed. Philip looked at Stephen sadly. It was a good thing she must go back, and would not need to know how little worthy of her love and admiration this unknown brother of hers was. He was a good-hearted fellow, too. A pity for the girl she had not someone to care for her.

Suddenly a new thought came to him as he looked idly down at the envelope of the letter Stephen had carelessly flung aside. The date on it was a week old.

He picked it up excitedly.

"Steve, what day was that letter written?"

"The twenty-eighth," said Stephen, looking up to see what caused the unusual note in Philip's tone.

"Man alive!" exclaimed Philip, "that letter's lain in the office for more than a week now, or else it's been off up to Humstead's ranch, lying around till someone had time to bring it back to the office. Such a postmaster as they have out here anyway! Get up, Steve, and do something! This is Friday night! Don't you realize that your sister's almost here? If it wasn't that the Northern Central is always an hour or more behind time, she would be standing alone down there on the platform, in the dark, this minute, with all that howling mob of loungers that congregate nearby. What are you going to do?"

"I don't know," said Stephen in a dazed way.

Philip towered over him fiercely.

"Well, you better know. Get up. It's five miles away, and the express is due now if it's on time."

Chapter II.
A Strange Night Ride

Margaret Halstead stood alone on the narrow board platform that seemed to float like a tiny raft in a sea of plains and darkness.

The train on which she had come her long and interesting journey had discharged her trunks, and taken up some freight, and wound its snakelike way out into the darkness, until now even the last glimmer of its red lights had faded from the mist that lay around.

The night winds swept about her, touching hair and cheek and gown, and peering solicitously into her face as if to inquire who this strange, sweet thing might be that had dropped, alien, among them, and then, deciding in her favor, softly kissed her on the cheek and ran away to tell the river of her coming.

A few lights dotted here and there the murk and gloom about her, and loud, uncultured voices sounded from the little shanty that served, she supposed, as a station. She dreaded to move a step toward it, for a strange new terror had seized upon her in the darkness since the friendly train had disappeared from view.

She remembered that the porter had been solicitous about leaving until her brother arrived to claim her, and had paused beside her until the last car swept slowly up and began to travel by; then, eying dubiously first the silver piece she had put in his hand, and then the fast-gliding train, he had finally touched his cap and swung himself onto the last car, calling back to her that he hoped she would be all right. She had not realized till then what it was going to be to be left alone at night in this strange place, with no assurance whatever, save her own undaunted faith, that her brother had even received her letter, much less, would meet her.

Apprehension and alarm suddenly rose and began to clamor for attention, while she suddenly realized how rash she had been to follow a fancy half across a continent, only to bring up in this wild way.

What should she do? She supposed she ought to go over to that dreadful group of rough men and ask some questions. What if, after all, she had been put off at the wrong station? She half turned to walk in that direction; but just then a wild shriek followed by a pistol-shot rang out in the air, and she stopped, frightened, a whispered prayer on her lips for help. Had she come all this way on what her heart had told her was a mission, to be forsaken now?

The clamor was heard by Philip as he rode through the night.

Stephen heard it also, and hastened his horse's footsteps.

Then from out the gloom and horror there came to the young girl's ears the soft regular thud, thud, thud, of horses' hoofs, and almost at once there loomed before her out of the mist two dark shapes which flung themselves apart, and appeared to be two men and two horses.

She started back once more, her heart beating wildly, and wondered which way to flee; but almost at once she heard a strong, pleasant voice say:

"Don't be afraid. We are coming!"and what seemed a giant landed before her. With a little gasp in her voice that sounded like a half-sob she said,

"O Stephen, you have come!" and put her hands in those of Philip Earle, hiding her face against his shoulder with a shudder.

Philip felt a sudden gladness in his strength, and it was revealed to him in a flash that there were sweeter things in life than those he had counted upon.

Instinctively his arm supported her for just an instant, and a great wave of jealousy toward her brother went over him. His impulse was to stoop and give her the welcoming kiss that she was evidently expecting; but he held himself with a firm grasp, though the blood went in hot waves over his face in the darkness.

To have the unexpected and most unwelcome guest of his partner thus suddenly precipitated upon him, and to find that she was not altogether undesirable, after all, was a circumstance most embarrassing, as well as extremely delicate to handle. He blessed the darkness for its hiding. It was but an instant and Stephen was beside them, and he managed in someway—he never could describe it to himself afterward— to get the young woman faced about toward the real brother and her attention turned in that direction, and then stood watching while Stephen, the impressible, welcomed the new sister with open arms.

It was like Stephen, though he had grumbled all the way to the railroad about what a nuisance it was going to be to have her come, that he should succumb at once to a sweet voice and a confiding way.

Philip's lips were dry, and his throat throbbed hot and chokingly. He felt the pressure of little, soft, gloved hands in his hard ones. He turned away angry with himself that he should be so easily affected and by someone whom he had never met except in the pitch dark. Yet even as he said this to himself he knew the face would fit the voice and the hands when he should see them.

So, after all, though Philip, because he rode the fleeter horse, had been the first to greet her, and though his was the cool head, and he had expected to have to explain why they had been so late to meet her, it was Stephen's eager voice that made the explanations.

"You see I never got your letter until an hour ago. It was miscarried or something, and then we don't get to the office often when we're busy. So, when I took it in that you were really coming and looked at the time, your train was already overdue; and, if it had not been for their habit of being always two hours behind time, you might have stood here alone all this time."

Stephen said it gayly. He was beginning to think it a nice thing to have a sister. He had forgotten utterly how Philip had to insist on his coming at once to meet her, and that he had been most reluctant and ungracious.

It occurred to him at this juncture to introduce his partner.

Philip came to himself as he heard his name mentioned, and was glad again for the darkness. Margaret Halstead blushed, and wondered whether this giant knew how extremely near she had come to greeting him with a kiss, and hoped that he had not noticed how her head had rested against his shoulder for an instant when she was frightened. What would he think of her?

Her voice trembled just a little as she acknowledged the introduction; but her words were few and frigid, and made Philip feel as if she had suddenly held him off at arm's length and bade him come no nearer. She said:

"I did not know you had a partner, Stephen. You never said anything about it in your letters. I am afraid I have been wrong in coming without waiting to hear from you before I started."

But Philip had noticed the tremble in her voice, and he hastened to make her most welcome as far as he was concerned.

Nevertheless, a stiffness hung about the trio which made it hard for them to be natural; and, had it not been for another pistol-shot from the shanty down the road and another clamor of voices, they might have stood still some time longer.

Margaret started in spite of herself, and asked nervously:

"Oh! what can be the matter? What a dreadful place this must be!" And Philip found in himself a new instinct of protection.

"We must get your sister out of this, Steve," he said. "We must take her home."

And somehow the word "home" sounded a haven as he pronounced it. The thoughts of the two young men galloping furiously on their way to the station had been but of how they should reach there as soon as the train. They had made no plans. It was impossible for them to realize the importance of the charge that was about to be put upon them.

But now the manners of the world from which they had come some years before, and from which this young woman had but just come, suddenly dropped down upon them as a forgotten garment, and they knew at once the wretchedness of their limitations.

"It isn't much of a place to call home," said the brother, apologetically, "but I guess it's better than this. If we had only known before, we'd have had something fine fixed up some way."

He made the statement airily, and perhaps he thought it was true. Philip found himself wondering what it would have been. There was not a house where she might have been lodged comfortably within fifty miles.

"How do you think we'd better arrange the journey?" said Stephen, suddenly brought face to face with a problem.

"You see," said he in explanation to his sister, "we had no time to hitch up, if we had thought of it, though I'm blamed if it occurred to me but that we could carry you in our pockets. Say, Phil, guess I'll go over and see if I can get Foxy's buckboard."

"Foxy's gone over to Butte in his buckboard with his mother. I saw him go this afternoon," answered Philip.

Stephen whistled.

"I'll ask Dunn for his wagon," said Stephen starting off.

"Hold on!" said Philip shortly. "I’ll go myself. You stay here."

"Couldn't we go down to the station and see after my trunk, Mr. Earle?" said Margaret timidly. And to his ears the name never had so sweet a sound.

"Give me your checks, and stay here, please," he said in quite a different tone from that in which he had addressed Stephen; and, turning, he left them standing in the dark, while the mist closed in behind him and shut him from their sight as if he had left the world.

Alone with her brother, Margaret suddenly put out her hands appealingly to him.

"You are a little bit glad I've come, aren't you, Stephen?" she said.

"I'm no end of glad," he answered, rousing out of his sulkiness that Philip would not let him go. He knew that Philip had good reason for making him stay. "But we're a rough lot out here. I don't know how you'll stand it."

His voice had lost a shade of the gayety, and she thought it was touched with anxiety. She hastened to assure him.

"O, I shall not mind a bit. And I shall try to make things a little pleasanter for you. You think I can, don't you?" This in an anxious voice.

"I'm sure you can," said Stephen heartily. There was something in her voice that appealed to his better self, and reminded him strangely of his childhood. It could not be his father; for his father had always been silent and grave, and this voice was sweet and enthusiastic, and flowed out as if it loved to speak. And yet it must be the likeness to the father's voice he noticed.

"I am so anxious to get you in the light and see how you look," she said ardently, and then added softly, "My dear brother."

Stephen slid his arm about her awkwardly, and kissed her on the forehead. He felt embarrassed in doing this; yet it was by no means the first time he had kissed a girl. Perhaps it was the memory of those other kisses hovering near that shamed him now. He half felt this, and it made him awkward. He was glad to hear Philip's step coming toward them.

"Dunn's wagon has broken down, and both the front wheels are off for repairs. There isn't a thing we can get in town tonight," said Philip anxiously. "Miss Halstead, can you ride? Horseback, I mean."

"Why, I can try," said Margaret a little tremulously. This was a rather startling proposition to even her dauntless courage. Involuntarily she glanced down at her city-made gown in the darkness. She felt hampered by it.

"It's too bad, Miss Halstead," he said apologetically, while Stephen in the dark wondered at his new tone and manner. "But there's no other way, and I think you'll enjoy getting out of this, anyway. There's going to be a big row over there," he added in a low tone to Stephen. "Jim Peters is on his high horse. Hurry!"

Then in a cheery tone he said:

"It won't be so bad. You can rest your foot in the stirrup, and Steve and I'll take turns walking beside the horse. She'd better ride your horse, Steve. He's the gentler of the two."