ern markets, as against the fine mature cattle which were his pride and his profit; the necessary accepting at Chicago or Omaha of that day's prices, "figured by a lot of crooks who go up an alley and get their heads together." And the necessity of accepting that figure, iniquitous as it might be.
"But why do they let them have them?"
"What's a man going to do? Ship 'em back a thousand miles?"
Even that was with luck. Without it!
They had not much time together, now. Tom came in for his food, ate it hurriedly and went out again. But sometimes glancing out she would hear him whistling and knew that, heat and exertion and worry notwithstanding, he was happier than she had ever known him. He was looking better too; his hospital pallor had gone. He was not drinking at all.
Standing in front of the defective mirror in the bedroom one day, she remembered what Mrs. Mallory had said: "Ranching sure ages a woman. It's all right for the men. It keeps them young."
She could not even ride with him. She had no riding clothes, no saddle. And Tom was still afraid to trust her on his green horse. He was breaking one for her, he told her, but it would take time. She wondered sometimes if he realized that she was as truly a prisoner as though she had been shut behind bars. But what could he change for her, even if he would? For the first time in her life she began to think of the pioneer women all over America who had done this very thing. Out there the back country was still full of them, women who had come there, young like herself, and now that comparative ease had been achieved were too old to use it; who could only sit, on their verandahs or in their cars, their worn hands folded, looking out on a land which they had hoped to conquer, but which had conquered them instead.
And then one day, as if in answer to that thought of hers, he went into Judson, and late that afternoon she heard a strange sound coming up the road, a rattling and bumping which sounded vaguely familiar. She looked out, and there
