News in the mountains travels fast, by mysterious ways, and in places where it seems impossible. Also it has marvelous powers of . What may start out far down on Little Dam as an innocent , is liable to reach the Upper Sweet Water as a full-fledged scandal.  
So it was on Nameless that day in August.
 
Allison was busy about her work in the kitchen, with Sonny Fair following her like a small-sized shadow.
 
In the dim regions beyond Mrs. Allison was in bed with a “sick headache.” The balls of the carpet-rags had been sadly put away, all finished and ready for the , but farther away from that desired goal than ever. It seemed to Nance that that carpet was the last straw, the ridiculous small pressure that had all but snapped the thread of her control. Whenever she thought of Kate Cathrew she thought not of her Pappy, not of Bud with his shoulder, not of her burned stacks and her field of growing corn, but of the bare floors of her poor home.
 
There was a frown between her golden brows these days, a grim set to her lips, and she spent many hours on her knees beside her bed praying for guidance, for strength to keep to her narrow way. But the “stirrings” that she felt inside her in the spring had become a of passion, hard to hold.
 
“I’m like the patriarchs of old,” she thought to herself, “filled with righteous . If it wasn’t that I have the light of the New I’m afraid I’d go and my enemies, or try to.”
 
“What you whimpering about, Nance? Tell me, too,” said the child hugging her knees and looking adoringly up with his soft brown eyes.
 
“My gracious! Was I whimpering, Sonny?” she asked aghast, “I must be getting pretty far gone, as Brand says. Nance was thinking, that’s all—thinking about bad things that make her heart ache.”
 
“Our enemies?” he asked .
 
She nodded.
 
“Yes—they’re ours, all right. Yours and Brand’s and mine.”
 
There was a vague comfort in this association, in the common cause that seemed to her and hers to Brand and Sonny Fair.
 
Brand and Sonny Fair—her thoughts went off on the tangent which those two names always started.
 
It was part of the trouble which made the frown habitual—the frown, so alien to the sweet and open face of this girl.
 
Always there was under the surface of her mind the running question—What was Brand Fair to Sonny? And always there in the dim background the word—Father. Was it true? Was the child his son? And if it was true—where and who was the mother?
 
A deep and terrible ache seemed to take her very bones at this thought—a which she could not understand.
 
She shook herself and sighed and tried to smile down at the boy, but the effort was a failure.
 
“Nance,” he asked soberly, “don’t you love me any more?”
 
The girl dropped on her knees and gathered him to her breast in a fierce gesture.
 
“Love you? Honey child, Nance loves every inch of your little body! She loves you so well she’s scared to death Brand will come along some day and want to take you away again!”
 
She sat back on her heels and smiled at him, this time successfully. If there was one spot of light in the darkness of her troubles it was the child. Always his pleading eyes, his shy could lighten the load.
 
And so it was that presently she fell to laughing in her old light-hearted way, sitting back on her heels on the clean white floor and rolling the child this way and that.
 
Screams of delight from Sonny the strokes of his bare feet as he kicked in the of Nance’s fingers “creep-mous”-ing up his little .
 
They did not see Bud in the door, so absorbed in their game were they, until he moved and his shadow fell across them.
 
Nance turned her laughing face up to him—and stared with the laughter set upon it.
 
The boy was white as milk, his eyes black with terrible .
 
“Bud,” she cried, “what’s up? What——”
 
“The rustlers were out last night,” he said slowly with a strange hesitation—“I met Old Man Conlan going down to Cordova—a man was shot—they think it is—the —Smith.”
 
For a moment Nance sat still on her heels, her mouth open, the sickly lines of laughter still around it.
 
Then she put out a hand that was beginning to shake—like an hand with palsy.
 
“Smith?” she , “that’s—Brand Fair! Oh—oh—dear Lord—Brand Fair!”
 
For the first time in her life the bright sunlight faded out and Nance Allison, who had fought so long and hard against tremendous ,—who had held her battle line and borne all things with the courage of a strong man swayed back upon the floor.
 
Bud sprang forward to left her up, but already the weakness was passing and she put him aside, getting to her feet.
 
She forgot the child at her knee.
 
“His enemies——” she was muttering to herself, “and mine—they got him—at last—just as they tried to get me—and Jehoshaphat rose and went against his enemies—and the Lord was with him—I—I—Bud, give me that gun.”
 
She took the rifle out of his hands with a motion and went from the cabin, swaying like a drunkard.
 
At the corner of the stable she came face to face with Fair, who was just coming up from the river on Diamond.
 
She stopped and stared at him like one in a .
 
“You?” she said presently. “You—Brand?”
 
The man saw at once that there was something gravely wrong and dismounted quickly.
 
He came forward and laid a hand on hers where it grasped the weapon.
 
“Sure—my dear,” he said carefully, “don’t look so, Nance—I’m all right. Let me have this,” and took the gun away.
 
He put his right arm gently around her and looked over her head at her brother.
 
“Tell me,” his eyes commanded.
 
“I just told her what I heard this morning,” said Bud, “that a man was shot by rustlers and that it was Smith—you. She said something about one of the Bible men who went out and his enemies—and she was starting for Sky Line, I think.”
 
There was no need to ask more, for Nance had covered her face with her shaking hands and bending forward on Fair’s breast was weeping terribly.
 
The man drew her close and held her, and the dark eyes that gazed down at her shining head with its neat braids, were grave and very tender.
 
At last he said quietly, “It was our friend, Sheriff Selwood, but he is not dead. He’s at his , but he cannot talk—and no one knows who shot him. Sky Line drove down this morning—all regular and . McKane says Selwood knows—that he tried to tell him who the rustlers of Nameless are, but that he could not. When he comes round there’ll be something doing in this neck of the woods, or I miss my guess. Come, Nance—aren’t you going to invite me to dinner? I’ve got four prime grey squirrels in my saddle-bags, and my canteen’s full of honey—found a bee tree down the river.”
 
And with the gentle of deep understanding and something more, Fair drew Nance back from the edge of tragedy to the safe ground of the commonplace.
 
She straightened up, wiped her hands down across her cheeks and looked at him with eyes in which the tears still .
 
“I thought,” she said unsteadily, “that Kate Cathrew had had you shot.”
 
“She’ll have to get up earlier than I do if she pulls that trick,” he laughed, “I’ve been too long on guard.”
 
 
Two days later Nameless was ringing with the news of the raid and Bossick was grim and silent.
 
When the Sky Line riders came back from their drive they into Cordova for the mail and stood on the porch.
 
“Still watchin’ your range?” Provine as he swung out of his saddle and without a word the rancher leaped for him. He caught him by the neck and they both fell under Silvertip’s feet. The horse sprang away and in a second the two men were trying to kill each other with all the strength there was in them.
 
“You damned dirty thief!” Bossick, “if the law won’t get you I’ll take a hand!”
 
He was a heavy man, stocky and square, with tremendous thews, but the other was the wiry type and younger, so that they were not so matched, and it bade fair to be a lively affray.
 
But Big Basford, temper flaming as usual, pulled his gun from the holster and flung it down in line.
 
“Roll over, Sud!” he shouted, “I’ll fix him!”
 
Provine endeavored to roll away from Bossick, but the rancher held him, pounding him the while with all the fury of right, and the blue gun- in Basford’s hand traveled with their convolutions, seeking a chance to kill his man.
 
The huge unkempt body leaned down from its saddle, the red eyes glittered and that traveling muzzle stretched closer to the men on the ground. It looked like certain death for Bossick, when there came the sudden crack of a gun from the , and the weapon dropped from Basford’s broken hand. The horse he was riding screamed and reared with a red ribbon from its breast where the glancing ball had seared it.
 
“I’m sorry to hurt the horse,” said Smith the prospector, watching the group with narrow dark eyes above the steady barrel, “but I’m not so particular with assassins. We’ll see fair play.”
 
And they did see fair play, a tense and silent the Sky Line men sitting their horses on the one side, McKane, Smith, the bearded man from the Upper Country ............