Ina silenced him with a raised hand. She felt her face growing white.

“I won’t hear any more,” she said, ringingly. “I know nothing of the deals you mention. If my father really did what you claim—it—it was doing me a terrible wrong. Now all that remains for me to say is this. I wouldn’t marry you to save my father from ruin—or even my own life.”

“You’ve changed some since I last saw you, Ina Blaine,” declared McAdam, with the studious bitter acumen of jealousy. “I haven’t forgotten the way you greeted Ben Ide that day in Hammell. If I have to lay this throw–down to that lousy wild–horse hunter it’ll be bad for him.”

Ina checked on the tips of her opening lips a flippant retort that he was precisely right in his suspicions.

“You wouldn’t dare say that to Ben Ide’s face,” she blazed, instead.

“Now I’ve got you straight,” he hissed. “I see it in your face. You pretty lying cat! Coming home with all your education and style to take up with that horse thief!”

There were, it seemed, limits to Ina’s endurance. She gave McAdam a stinging slap across his sneering mouth. The blow brought the blood.

“I’ll tell Ben Ide what you’ve said,” she cried, passionately. “And I hope I’m around when he meets you. That, Mr. McAdam, is the last word I’ll ever speak to you.”

Whereupon Ina went into her tent, shut and hooked the screen door, and pulled down the blind. She heard McAdam stride away, cursing, striking the junipers with his whip. Then she sank into a chair, suddenly limp and weak.

“Whew! All in a minute! Something’s got into me, surely…. But he was insufferably rude. I’m glad it happened just that way…. Now for dad! He’ll come like a mad bull…. Well, I’ll just settle him, too.”

Ina did not have long to wait, certainly not long enough to cool off or lose her nerve. She heard the stamp of his heavy boots.

“Ina!” he called, stridently.

She waited until he called again, louder this time. Then she answered:

“Dad, I’m in my tent.”

“Wal, come out.”

“But I’m not coming out just yet.”

“Wha–at?” he roared, stamping to the front of her tent.

“I’m expecting to feel very bad—pretty soon—so I don’t want to come out.” How cool and audacious she felt! Almost she could have laughed. But at the depths of her feeling there was a new and cold emotion, sterner than any she had ever felt.

“You come hyar an’ apologize to young McAdam,” shouted her father.

“I won’t do anything of the kind,” flashed Ina, in a voice her father had certainly never heard. Nor had she ever heard it! Still, she was frightened.

“What’s wrong? What happened?”

“Mr. McAdam insulted me.”

“He did, now!—an’ how?”

“He tried to kiss me. Then after a few pretty plain words from me he insulted me again. So I slapped his face. And I ended by saying I’d never speak to him again.”