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Once in a blue moon they went to Bement, the town that lay three days’ ride to the north beyond the hills, and what they did there was merely hinted at. They drank and played and took possession of its four saloons, and when they finally reared out of it to go back to their loneliness and work, the town came out of its temporary retirement, breathing again.

Yet Kate Cathrew handled these men and got good work out of them, and she belonged to none of them.

Not but what there were hot hearts in the outfit and hands that itched for her, lips that wet themselves hungrily when she passed close in her supreme indifference.

But Rio Charley carried a bullet-scar in his right shoulder, and Big Basford walked with a slight limp—yet they both stayed with her.

“Sort of secret-society stuff,” said Price Selwood once, “Kate is the Grand Vizier.”

There was no other white woman at Sky Line. She would have none. Minnie Pine, a stalwart young Pomo half-breed, and old Josefa, brown as parchment and non-committal, carried on the housework under her supervision, and no one else was needed.