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The little clock in Wayne Shandon's room maintained stoutly in the face of the gathering gloom outside, in defiance of the lighted lamp upon the table, that it was still an hour before sunset. The snow was still falling steadily, thickly, swept here and there into shifting mounds, choking the mountain passes, robing trees and fence posts and buildings, each feathery flake adhering where it struck softly as though it had been a gummed wafer.

"Garth and I will have to get out to-morrow," Shandon muttered, drawing off his heavy coat and tossing it to the chair across the room, "or we'll have to beat it out on snowshoes—I wonder what's keeping Dart?"

There came a rap at the front door and Shandon, supposing that already his question was answered, called, "Come in."

"You never can tell what that little devil will do next," he grunted. "Snoop into a man's private business every time he gets the chance and then stand outside knocking at the door in a day like this. Come in."

Then, when the knocking came again, louder, insistent and imperative, he realised that there was the bare possibility that the thumb latch had caught and, crossing the room he jerked the door open.

"Is this Mr. Shandon?"

The cool, confident voice though a woman's was not Wanda's, and Shandon realised that he had been a fool to let his heart leap as it had when his eyes made out through the murkiness that it was a woman.

"Yes," he answered, wondering.

"May I come in?" she asked a little impatiently. "I have come a long way to see you."

Wondering more than ever he threw the door wide open, showed her the way into the living room and lighted a lamp. There was no fire in the room but she went quite naturally to the fireplace. He glanced at her sharply, knew that he had never seen her before for he would have remembered her, understood that she was a woman of the cities, and said,

"Are you very cold? Just a minute and I'll have a fire going. I came in only a moment before I heard your knock."

She did not speak until he had gathered an armful of wood from the box at the side of the fireplace and had flung it upon the blaze that a match had started from a bit of paper and some pitch pine. Nor did she seem in haste to speak even then when he stood across the hearth looking at her. But not for a second had her approving eyes left him; no opportunity had they lost to watch the man's face intently.

"Where did you come from in all this storm?" he asked curiously.

"Remotely, from New York. Immediately from El Toyen."

"Lord!" he ejaculated. "You must be dead. I'll get you something hot, some coffee. We haven't any tea, I'm afraid."

She laughed coolly, evidently quite at home with him.

"If a man came in, frozen stiff, would you offer him a cup of tea?"

"What do you mean?" He had started toward the kitchen, and stopped.

"I mean brandy, if you've got any. It would do me a lot of good. Wanda Leland just poured some tea down me and I didn't want to shock her."

Wayne stood frowning at her a moment, a question on his lips. Then he went to the kitchen and got a bottle and a glass. She had drawn a chair close up to the fire when he returned and was leaning back in it luxuriously, her feet thrust out to the blaze.

"Thanks," she said, taking the glass he handed her. "I am drinking to our better acquaintance."

She set the glass down upon the arm of her chair, half emptied, and smiled up at him.

"I want a good long talk if you can spare the time. Can you?"

"Of course," he said briefly.

"It is my particular desire that no one but yourself hears what I have to say."

"No one is here except Garth and myself. And Garth hasn't come in from the corrals yet."

"Excellent." Her black eyes flashed from him to the various rude appointments of the room, flashed back to him. "I am Helga Strawn," she said abruptly.

He repeated the name after her in surprise:

"Helga Strawn?"

"Yes. Perhaps you guess right away what has brought me West, to you first of all?"

"No," he said. "I don't think that I do."

"Then I'll tell you. That's what I am here for. Don't begin to think that I saw a picture of you somewhere and fell in love with it."

The finely chiselled lips, too faultlessly perfect at any time to be warmly womanly, were suddenly hard. Her eyes had become brilliant, twin spots of colour came into her cheeks.

"At least you remember my name?"

"Helga Strawn? Yes, I remember it. You learned from a mutual acquaintance that I was in New York some time ago. You wrote me then. You are a cousin of Sledge Hume."

"Not exactly a cousin," she corrected him. "I am not so proud of the relationship as to wish to make it closer than it is. But that does not matter. You remember also why I wrote you?"

"Yes. You said that yourself and Hume had inherited equal interests in the Dry Lands. That through letters Hume had persuaded you to sell your interest to him. After you had sold you began to think that he had japped you. You wanted to know from me what the property was actually worth."

"I am glad that you remember. You answered my letter. You told me that you had always considered the land hardly worth paying taxes on."

"Yes."

"If I asked you now, that same question, what would you say?"

He hesitated. The Dry Lands were no whit more valuable to-day than they had been last year. But if the scheme Hume was engineering went through it would be a different matter.

"You have already sold your interest, given the deed, haven't you, Miss Strawn? What difference does it make?" he asked bluntly.

"What if I have?" she countered coolly. "I am not the sort of woman, Mr. Shandon, to sit with my hands in my lap when a man has done a piece of sharp business with me. I needed the money and like a fool I sold to Hume. And now I know as well as I know anything that he didn't pay me a tenth of what the property was worth. Yes, I have given the deed. You think that I am a fool again to come clear across the continent upon a matter that went out of my hands a year ago!" She laughed, her laugh reminding him unpleasantly of the man of whom they were talking. "You see, you don't know me yet."

"I don't see just how I can be of service to you," he suggested.

"I'll try to be explicit. I have never had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Hume and yet I think that I could write a very correct character sketch of the gentleman. Egotism and selfishness, two things in most men, just one in Sledge Hume! He is shrewd and hard and his god is gold. Am I right?"

"Hume is hardly an intimate acquaintance of mine."

She laughed softly, twisting the brandy glass slowly in her white fingers.

"I know enough of the Hume blood," she said presently, "to make a close guess at the man's character. We are not related, even distantly, for nothing, Mr. Shandon. My mother was a Hume," she added coolly, her manner again reminding the man strangely of Hume himself. "You see, he chose the wrong woman when he cheated me. It's going to be diamond cut diamond now."

Shandon looked at the girl curiously, falling to see what mad hope she could have of regaining rights that were deeded away a year ago, falling as well to find a reason for her coming all these miles to make a confidant of him.

"I usually go about things in my own way," she said after one of her brief pauses. "What I have to say I'll say as it comes to me. In case your cousin Garth returns before I have done you can send him away upon any pretext you choose. Tell him we want to talk privately; that will do as well as anything. Smoke, if you want to," as she saw his eyes go to the mantelpiece where an old black pipe lay. "Maybe it will make you patient during my harangue."

Wayne got his pipe and, lighting it, sat upon the edge of the table looking down at her through the smoke.

"Six months ago," she went on, "I realised that Hume had underpaid me. Why?" She shrugged her shoulders. "I knew his breed. If he offers a dollar for a thing it's worth ten. I made investigations through an agent who came up to Dry Valley from San Francisco. He turned in his bill on time and that was about all. He was an ordinary man and consequently a fool. But, blind as a bat himself, he showed me a little light that set me thinking. A few days ago I came out myself." She snapped her fingers. "It didn't take me that long to get to the bottom of the whole thing."

"What thing?"

"The scheme Hume is promoting on the quiet to put water on the Dry Lands. The water is to come from your river. Are you in on the deal too?"

Her question was as sudden as a sword thrust.

"No," he answered.

"Have they made you an offer for the water right?"

"No."

"That's funny." She frowned thoughtfully at him a moment, saying in a barely audible tone as though she were thinking aloud, "You don't look as though you were lying. Well, you expect an offer, don't you?"

"Yes."

"And when it comes, coming from Hume, you realise that he'll offer a very small fraction of what it is worth to him?"

"I suppose so. That's business."

"And, above all things in the world, Sledge Hume is a business man! Well, I won't ask what you'd do when the offer came, as you'd say that it was none of my affair. I've seen Ruf Ettinger and learned all he knows."

He did not answer; he had suddenly resolved to see the drift of Helga Strawn's thoughts before he did a great deal of talking.

"I have learned," came another of her abrupt thrusts, "that you and Hume are about as friendly as a cat and a dog."

He merely looked at her enquiringly, drawing thoughtfully at his pipe. She smiled, turned from him back to the fire, settling a little more comfortably in her chair.

"Hume is a crook." She said it calmly, dispassionately, positively. "It is in his blood. He couldn't help it if he tried. He isn't the kind to try. The deal he put over with me may have been nothing but clever business. On the other hand, considering that I was a relative, considering that there was going to be plenty of boodle for everybody, some people might say that there was an element of dishonesty in it. But what I am getting at is that the man in unscrupulous. Now, he's in the biggest business deal of his life. Chances in that sort of thing for crooked work are many. Ergo, Mr. Shandon, it's a fair bet that starting with a crooked deal he has gone on playing a crooked game. Do you begin to see why I'm here?"

"Blackmail?" he said bluntly.

"Yes," she said coolly. "There's no use quarrelling over a name."

"If you imagine that I know anything about the man's private history—"

"You've quarrelled openly with him. Everybody knows about it. What was the reason for your quarrel?"

"Really, Miss Strawn—-"

"Why can't you talk to me as if I were a man?" she flared out at him, the sudden heat from a woman who had been ice a moment ago taking him by surprise. "I'm not dragging my sex into this like a buckler to hide behind. Why can't you say it's none of my damned business, if you feel that way about it?"

"I shouldn't put it quite so strong," he replied. "If you will go on and show me how I can be of any service to you, anything in my line—"

"Consequently excluding blackmail!" she laughed, her mood like ice again. "When you quarrelled with Hume a year ago you called him a crook, didn't you?"

"Your investigations seem to have been made very painstakingly," he countered.

"For one of your reputation you are surprisingly noncommittal," she said. "Will you tell me this: So far as you know is there a woman in Sledge Hume's life?"

"So far as I know there is not. He doesn't impress me as the sort of man to lose either his heart or his head over a woman."

"That sort of man," she replied swiftly, "very often surprises people who think that they understand human nature, and don't! Now I come to one of my reasons in coming to see you. I saw you one day at the Grand Central Station with a friend of mine, a Mr. Maddox. I was uncertain whether he had pointed me out to you or not, told you who I was. Did he?"

"No. I should have remembered."

"Thank you. That's the first pretty thing you've said! Well, no harm is done in making sure. I'm making sure of every little point as I go along, Mr. Shandon. I didn't want there to be a possibility of any one here knowing who I am. It is my own business and I hope that I am not asking overmuch if I request you not to tell any one that I am Helga Strawn."

He shrugged his shoulders.

"If you don't want Hume to know you I most certainly shall not seek to find or take advantage of an opportunity to tell him."

"Thank you again. Now, for the other part of my business with you. You are in a position to stand pat and by just doing nothing smash Sledge Hume's little game all to flinders. He's counted on you, he's made sure in some way I don't know. But I am going to know before long. And I'm going to get Sledge Hume just where I want him! How? Wait and see. I'm going to get back the property he cheated me out of. How? I don't know and I don't care. And then—"

She rose swiftly, her eyes blazing, her head lifted triumphantly as though already she had met the success she had set out to find.

"And then, Wayne Shandon, you and I and Ruf Ettinger can take into our hands the thing that Sledge Hume has already half created for us! There is a fortune in it for every one of us."

"I've told Ruf Ettinger already—" he began.

The door opened suddenly and Mr. Dart came into the room.

"Say, Red," he began with an important air, "I want to see you a minute, private. Hazel will excuse us, won't you?" with a rare smile and an abbreviated bow after Mr. Dart's best manner.

"Hazel?" frowned Shandon.

"Sure," grinned Dart. "We got chummy as twins riding over, didn't we? Come on, Red. This here is urgent."

"It will have to wait, Dart. Miss—"

"Hazleton," prompted Helga.

"Sure," put in Dart. "Her uncle used to know my aunt in Poughkeepsie. Come on, Red."

"Dart," cried Shandon, "you get out! We are busy."

Dart went slowly back to the door, to the surprise of Shandon who knew so well the little man's tenacity.

"Oh, well," he said mournfully from across the room. "Only Wanda said—"

"You will excuse me a moment?" Wayne asked hurriedly. Dart, already outside was grinning broadly.

"What is it?" queried Shandon.

"Whatever it is it'll keep until we get where we can talk," was the dogged answer. "There's nobody in the bunk house. Come on."

He hastened down the steps, Wayne following him. Only when they were in the bunk house, the door closed, the lamp lighted, did Dart speak.

"First thing," he said abruptly, "Hazel's name begins with an H, but she spells it Helga!"

"You little weasel! Well, what about it? And what about Miss Leland?"

"Wanda's part will keep. Gee, Red, she's some swell dame, that Egyptian skirt, take it from me! She's got Macbeth's frau of the fairy tale faded to a finish, ain't she?"

"Look here, Dart …"

"It's cold weather," interrupted Dart. "Keep your undershirt on, Red. When your brother Archie mortgaged the Bar L-M …"

"What fool's nonsense are you talking, Dart?" demanded Shandon. "Arthur never mortgaged—"

"Uhuh. I thought you didn't know about it. Now I'm here to tell you something you ought to know. I guess the Weak Sister forgot to tell you about it. Archie mortgaged the Bar L-M, he socked a plaster worth twenty-five thousand dollars on it, the day before somebody put him out. Get that?"

Wayne stared at him wonderingly. Suddenly he shot out his two hands and gripped Dart's shoulders, jerking the little man toward him threateningly.

"What's your game, you little crook? You lie to me and I'll come so close to killing you we'll both be sorry."

"Listen to that now," sighed Dart. "When one pal tries to wise another up—"

"Talk fast," said Shandon sternly. "What are you talking about?"

"Give me a chance to breathe and I'll spit it out. Your brother mortgaged the outfit for twenty-five thousand. You never heard about it. Some guy who was wise croaked him. Where's the twenty-five thousand? What's the answer?"

"Good God!" muttered Shandon.

Dart, suddenly released, moved a little further away and smoothed his coat collar.

"The mortgage was held by a man I used to call a pal," he volunteered further. "I don't call him that any longer. I mean old Mart."

"Martin Leland! You mean to tell me that Martin Leland held a mortgage over the Bar L-M for twenty-five thousand dollars and that I never heard of it?"

"Yep," answered Dart lightly. "And three months ago he foreclosed. Funny, ain't it?"

"It's impossible. It's one of your fool lies, Dart."

"When I tell a lie, Red, I don't tell that kind. The whole thing was recorded nice and proper. All you got to do is go to the courthouse and look it up. I'd go for you, only the jail's in the basement and jails always give me a cold. Or, you can go ask the Weak Sister. He'll know about it. You gave him your power of attorney, didn't you? Oh, he'll know, all right."

The two men stared at each other fixedly, the eyes of one frowning and penetrating, those of the other round and innocent.

"I believe you are telling the truth," said Shandon slowly. "I don't see why you'd lie about a thing like this— How do you know anything about it?" he asked suddenly.

"How do I know Hazel's name is Helga?" smiled Dart. "There's tricks in every trade, Red."

"If this thing is true—"

"Go talk to the Weak Sister," said Dart briefly.

Wayne swung about and without reply went swiftly down toward the corrals. Suddenly he stopped and came back.

"You didn't tell me what Miss Leland said," he said shortly.

Dart laughed in great amusement.

"She didn't say anything. She's sore as a goat, though, Red. This Helga business sort of got on her nerves."

Then Shandon went hurriedly toward the corrals.

"Me," mused Dart, on his way to entertain Miss Helga Strawn during what might be a period of lonely waiting for her, "I'm almost chicken-hearted enough to feel sorry for the Weak Sister!"