I’ll not let you forget it. An’ meanwhile it’ll be just as well for you to be snug an’ hid right here. Till spring, huh?”

“Mother Wood, you said you wasn’t inquisitive,” laughed Nevada, parrying her question. Then he grew serious. “When was Hall heah last?”

“In June, with the last cattle that come over the divide. An’, Jim, the right queer fact is he’s never been back.”

“Wal, I reckon that’s not so queer to me. Maybe he has shook the dust of Lineville. He rode in heah sudden, so I was told. An’ why not ride off that way? To new pastures, Mother Wood?”

“No reason a-tall,” she said, reflectively. “Only I jest don’t feel that way about Hall.”

“An’ that high-flyin’ Less Setter from the Snake River country. Did he ever come again?”

“No. That time you clashed with Setter was the only time he ever hit Lineville. No wonder! They said you’d kill him if he did. I remember, Jim, how that night after the row you talked a lot. It was the drink. You’d had trouble with Setter before you come to these parts. I never told it, but I remember.”

“Wal, Mother, I came from the Snake River country, too,” replied Nevada, with slow dark smile.

“It was said here that Less Setter was too big a man to fiddle around Lineville,” returned the woman, passing by Nevada’s cryptic remark, though it was not lost upon her. “Hall said Setter had many brandin’ irons in the fire. His game, though, was to wheedle rich cattlemen an’ ranchers into speculations. He was a cunnin’ swindler, low-down enough for any deal. An’ he had a weakness for women. If nothin’ else ever was his downfall, that sure would be. He tried to take Lize Teller away with him.”

“Wal, you don’t say!” ejaculated Nevada, trying to affect interest and surprise that were impossible for him to feel. Again he casually averted his face to hide his eyes. For that cold, sickening something had shuddered through his soul. Less Setter would never have a weakness for women again. He would never weave his evil machinations around Ben and Hettie Ide, or anyone else, for he and two of his arch conspirators had lain dead there in the courtyard before Hart Blaine’s cabins on the shores of Wild Goose Lake Ranch. Dead by Nevada’s hand! That was the deed that had saved Ben Ide, and Hettie, too. It seemed long past, yet how vivid the memory! The crowd that had melted before his charging horse! The terror of the stricken Setter! Revenge and retribution and death! Those villains lay prone under the drafting gunsmoke, before the onlookers. Nevada saw himself leap back to the saddle and spur his horse away.