After her precipitate leave-taking of the man whose team she had
bought or borrowed, Margaret Kinney nursed the fires of her
indignation in silence, banking them for future use against the time
when she should meet him again in the event that should ever happen.
She brought her whip-lash snapping above the backs of the horses, and
there was that in the supple motion of the small strong wrist which
suggested that nothing would have pleased her more than having this
audacious Texan there in place of the innocent animals. For whatever
of inherited savagery lay latent in her blood had been flogged to the
surface by the circumstances into which she had been thrust. Never in
all her placid life had she known the tug of passion any closer than
from across the footlights of a theatre.

She had had, to be sure, one stinging shame, but it had been buried in
far-away Arizona, quite beyond the ken of the convention-bound people
of the little Wisconsin town where she dwelt. But within the past
twelve hours Fate had taken hold of her with both hands and thrust her
into Life. She sensed for the first time its roughness, its nakedness,
its tragedy. She had known the sensations of a hunted wild beast, the
flush of shame for her kinship to this coarse ruffian by her side, and
the shock of outraged maiden modesty at kisses ravished from her by
force. The teacher hardly knew herself for the same young woman who
but yesterday was engrossed in multiplication tables and third
readers.

A sinister laugh from the man beside her brought the girl back to the
present.

She looked at him and then looked quickly away again. There was
something absolutely repulsive in the creature-- in the big ears that