Oh, why are you getting--these ?" She caught his arm, looking with intense eagerness into his face.

She half understood already.

Annixter saw that.
"Well," he said, lamely, "YOU know--it may not come to anything at all, but you know--well, this League of ours--suppose the Railroad tries to jump Quien Sabe or Los Muertos or any of the other ranches--we made up our minds--the Leaguers have--that we wouldn't let it.

That's all." "And I thought," cried Hilma, drawing back fearfully from the case of rifles, "and I thought it was a wedding present." And that was their home-coming, the end of their bridal trip.

Through the terror of the night, echoing with pistol shots, through that scene of robbery and murder, into this atmosphere of alarms, a man-hunt organising, armed horsemen silhouetted against the horizons, cases of rifles where wedding presents should have been, Annixter brought his young wife to be mistress of a home he might at any moment be called upon to defend with his life.
The days passed.