Lawler's fingers at his throat.

To his astonishment, the fingers did not sink into the flesh. They touched his throat lightly, and he dazedly met Lawler's eyes, burning, with a passion he never had seen in them before. And Lawler's voice was dry and light, but steady—so steady and cold that Hamlin realized that only the man's complete mastery of himself had kept him from committing murder.

"Hamlin, I ought to kill you. I'm letting you off on one condition—that you break off with Singleton, and that you keep silent about the things we both know. If you confess to Ruth that you've been rustling cattle, or if you tell her—or hint of it—that I know you've been rustling—I'll tear you apart!

"You're like a lot of other damned, weak-kneed polecats. You've got a girl who is good as gold, and you're making a regular hell for her. She's wise to what you've been doing—she suspects you. And from now on you're going to show her that she was wrong—that you're straight and square.

"There's a job for you over at the Circle L—if you want it. I'll throw things in your way; I'll put you on your feet again—give you stock and tools, and pretend I've sold them to you. I'll do anything to keep you square. But if you tell Ruth, I'll kill you as sure as my name is Lawler!"

"I'm agreein'," said Hamlin, thickly. "I ain't wanted to do the things I've been doin'. But things didn't go right, an' Singleton—damn it, Lawler; I never liked the man, an' I don't know why I've been doin' what I have been doin'. But I've wanted to do somethin' for Ruth—so's she could quit teachin' an' live like a lady. I thought if I could get a bunch of coin together that mebbe she'd have——"

"She'd see you dead before she'd touch it," scoffed Lawler.

"Mebbe I'd be better off if I was dead," said Hamlin, glumly.

"You'll die, right enough, if you don't keep your word to me," grimly declared Lawler.

He strode to the door, leaped upon Red King and rode away.

Inside the cabin, Hamlin got to his feet and swayed toward the door, reaching it and looking out, to see Lawler riding rapidly toward Willets.

CHAPTER III

A WOMAN'S EYES

There had been a day when Willets was but a name, designating a water tank and a railroad siding where panting locomotives, hot and dry from a long run through an arid, sandy desert that stretched westward from the shores of civilization, rested, while begrimed, overalled men adjusted a metal spout which poured refreshing water into gaping reservoirs.

In that day Willets sat in the center of a dead, dry section, swathed in isolation so profound that passengers in the coaches turned to one another with awe in their voices and spoke of God and the insignificance of life.

But there was a small river near the water tank—the headwaters of the Wolf—or there had been no tank. And a prophet of Business, noting certain natural advantages, had influenced the railroad company to build a corral and a station.

From that day Willets became assured of a future. Cattlemen in the Wolf River section began to ship stock from the new station, rather than drive to Red Rock—another shipping point five hundred miles east.

From the first it became evident that Willets would not be a boom town. It grew slowly and steadily until its fame began to trickle through to the outside world—though it was a cattle town in the beginning, and a cattle town it would remain all its days.

Therefore, because of its slow growth, there were old buildings in Willets. The frame station had an ancient appearance. Its roof sagged in the center, its walls were bulging with weakness. But it stood defiantly flaunting its crimson paint above the wooden platform, a hardy pioneer among the moderns.

Business had strayed from the railroad track; it had left the station, the freighthouse, the company corral, and some open sheds, to establish its enterprises one block southward. There, fringing a wide, unpaved street that ran east and west, parallel with the gleaming steel rails, Business reared its citadels.

Willets buildings were not imposing. One-story frames predominated, with here and there a two-storied structure, or a brick aristocrat seeming to call attention to its substantial solidity.

Willets had plenty of space in which to grow, and the location of the buildings on their sites, seemed to indicate that their builders appreciated the fact that there was no need for crowding. Between each building was space, suggestive of the unending plains that surrounded the town. Willets sat, serene in its space and solitude, unhurried, uncramped, sprawling over a stretch of grass level—a dingy, dirty, inglorious Willets, shamed by its fringe of tin cans, empty bottles, and other refuse—and by the clean sweep of sand and sage and grass that stretched to its very doors. For Willets was man-made.

From the second story of a brick building that stood on the southern side of the street, facing the station, Gary Warden could look past the red station into the empty corrals beside the railroad track. Jim Lefingwell, Warden's predecessor, had usually smiled when he saw the corral comfortably filled with steers. But Gary Warden smiled because the corral was empty.

Warden was standing beside a flat-topped desk at one of his office windows. Warden was big, though not massive. He seemed to have the frame of a tall, slender man, and had he stayed slender he might have carried his flesh gracefully. But Warden had lived well, denying himself nothing, and the flesh which had been added had formed in flabby bunches, drooping his shoulders, sagging his jaws, swelling the back of his neck.

And yet Warden was not old; he had told some new-made friends in Willets that he was thirty-five. But he looked older, for a certain blasé sophistication that shone from his eyes and sat on the curves of his lips, did much to create the impression of past maturity.

Warden dressed well. He was coatless, but he wore a shirt of some soft, striped material, with a loose, comfortable-looking collar and a neat bow tie. His hair was short, with bristles in the roll of fat at the back of his neck; while at his forehead it was punctiliously parted, and plastered down with precision.

Warden was not alone. At another window, her elbows on the sill, her hands crossed, her chin resting on the knuckles of the upper one, sat a woman.

She was young, slender, lissom. There was grace in every line of her, and witchery in the eyes that watched Warden with a steady gaze. She too, was hatless, seemingly conscious of the beauty of her hair, which was looped and twisted into glistening strands that fell over her temples and the back of her neck.

As she watched Warden, who was smiling at the empty corral, she withdrew her elbows from the window-sill, twisted around, so that she faced Warden, and idly twirled the felt hat that she took from her lap.

"Does something please you, Gary?" she asked with slight, bantering emphasis.

Warden's smile broadened. "Well, I'm not exactly displeased."

"With Willets—and the rest of it?"

"With that corral—over there." He pointed.

"Why, it's empty!"

"That's why."

"Why you are pleased! That is odd. As a buyer, I should think you would be more pleased if the corral were full—had cows in it. That is what you are here for, isn't it?"

"Yes," grinned Warden; "to keep it empty until it is filled with steers at my price."

"Oh, bother!" The woman yawned. "I am glad it is you and not I who is to deal with these clod-hoppers. I should turn sour—or laugh myself to death."

"Getting tired of it already, Della?"

"Dreadfully tired, Gary. If I could see one interesting person, or a good-looking man with whom I could flirt——"

"Don't forget our engagement, Della," warned Warden.

She laughed, shooting a mischievous glance at him. "Oh, it would be harmless, I assure