The Fighting Edge

und a heap. Say, how about dinner? You got it started? I'm gettin' powerful hungry."

June knew the subject was closed. She might have pushed deeper into her father's reticence, but some instinct shrank from what she might uncover. There could be only pain in learning the secret he so carefully hid.

There had been no discussion of it between them, nor had it been necessary to have any. It was tacitly understood that they would have little traffic with their neighbors, that only at rare intervals would Pete drive to Meeker, Glenwood Springs, or Bear Cat to dispose of furs he had trapped and to buy supplies. The girl's thoughts and emotions were the product largely of this isolation. She brooded over the mystery of her father's past till it became an obsession in her life. To be brought into close contact with dishonor makes one either unduly sensitive or callously indifferent. Upon June it had the former effect.

The sense of inferiority was branded upon her. She had seen girls giggling at t