While the cowboy sat silent and thoughtful Jimmie Clayton was watching him, watching him with anxiety brilliant in his eyes, his tongue moistening, constantly moistening the lips which went dry and parched and cracked. Thornton knew, without lifting his eyes from the pool of shadow quivering at the base of the candle stub.

"You ain't goin' back on me, Buck!" The wounded man had drawn himself up on his elbow. "I'll leave it to you, Buck, if I didn't stick by you when you was in trouble. Remember, Buck, when I found you, out on the trail between Juarez and El Paso. And you don't care a damn about the reward, Buck; you said so, didn't you?"

"Jimmie," said Thornton slowly, lifting his eyes from the floor to meet both the pleading and the terror in Clayton's, "I'm going to do what I can for you. But I don't quite know what is to be done. They're going to be on your trail mighty soon if they're not on it now. Can you ride?"

"I can't ride much, Buck." And yet Clayton's voice rang with its first note of hope. For if Thornton knew him, then no less did Clayton know Thornton. And Buck had said that he was going to help him. "I rode them two hundred miles getting here, me all shot to hell that away. An' I rode into your camp las' night to leave the letter. An' I guess if it had been half a mile fu'ther I wouldn't never have made it back."

"Why didn't you come in at my cabin? I'd have fixed you up there."

"I come awful near it, Buck! I wanted to. But I didn't know. There might 'a' been some of the other boys bunkin' there an' I wasn't takin' chances."

"I see. Now, let's see what we're goin' to do."

He stood whipping at his boots with his quirt, trying to see a way. This lonely place might be a safe refuge for a few days. But range business sometimes carried his men this far, and soon or late some one would stumble upon Clayton's hiding place. Clayton's voice, eager again and confident, broke into his thoughts.

"I got to find somebody as'll give me a lift, ain't I? A man can't go on playin' a lone han' like I'm adoin' an' get away with it long. Now, I got to be laid up here four or five days, anyway, until I can ride again. You can keep your punchers away from here that long, can't you?"

"Yes. I can give them plenty to do on the other end."

"That's good. An' you can ride out again, at night, you know, Buck, an' smuggle me some more grub, can't you?"

"Yes. But...."

"Wait a minute! I know a man in Hill's Corners as'll give me a han'. I done him favours before now, same as I done for you, Buck. An' he knows the ropes up here. You can git word to him, can't you? An' then I'll drift, an' he'll look out for me, an' you'll be square with what I done for you, Buck. Will you do it?"

"Yes, Jimmie. I'll do it. I'll ride in and see your man at the Corners. Who is it, Jimmie?"

"An' you won't tell nobody but him, will you, Buck?"

"No. I won't tell any one else. Who is it?"

"It's a man as may be crooked with some," said Clayton slowly. "But he's awful square with a pal. It's a man name of Bedloe. They call him the Kid."



CHAPTER XV

THE KID

So the next day Buck Thornton rode away to the south and to Hill's Corners.

He had planned to have his errand over early, to have seen the Kid and to have turned back toward the ranch before noon. For he knew the town's habit of late sleeping and he wanted to be gone from it before it was awake and pouring into its long street and into its many swinging doors the stream of men whom he had no wish to see now. Perfectly well he knew how easily he could find trouble there, and it seemed to him that he had enough on his hands already without seeking to add to it.

But the press of range business kept him later than he had thought it would. And then the one horse on the range he would ride today had to be found out in the hills and roped.

"For," he told himself grimly, "if I'm going to stick my nose in that man's town I'm going to have a horse between my knees that knows how to do something more than creep! And when it comes to horses there's only one real horse I ever saw. I got you, Comet, you old son-of-a-gun!"

And his rope flew out and its wide noose landed with much precision, drawing tight about the neck of a great, lean barrelled, defiant-eyed four-year-old that in the midst of its headlong flight stopped with feet bunched together before the rope had grown taut. The animal, standing now like a horse cut from a block of grey granite, chiselled by the hands of a great sculptor who at the same time was a great lover of equine perfection, swung about upon its captor, its eyes blazing, just a little quiver of the clean-cut nostrils showing the red satin of the skin lining them. The mane was like a tumbled silken skein, the ears dainty and small and keen pointed, the chest splendidly deep and strong; the forelegs small, so slender that to a man who did not know a horse they would have seemed fragile but only because they were all bone and sinew like steel and muscle hardened and stripped clean of the last milligram of fat, as exquisite as the perfect ankle of a high bred woman.

"Part greyhound and part steam engine and part devil!" Thornton muttered with vast approval shining in his eyes. "And all horse! A man could ride you right through hell, Little Horse, and come out the other side and never smell your hair burn!"

He drew saddle and bridle from the animal he had been riding and turned it loose. Then coiling his rope as he went, he came up to Comet's high-lifted head. With much evident distaste but with what looked like too much pride to struggle in an encounter in which he knew that he was to be overcome, the big grey accepted the hard Spanish bit. He allowed, too, the saddle to be thrown on him, only a quick little quivering of the tense flanks and a twitching of the skin upon his back showing that he felt and resented. And then with his master's weight upon him, his master's softened voice in his ear, a hard hand very gently stroking the hot shoulder, Comet shook his head, a great sigh expanded the deep lungs, and he was the perfect saddle horse with too much sense to rebel further at the knowledge that after all he is a horse and the man who bestrides him is a man. And Buck Thornton, because he knew this animal and loved him, slackened the reins a little, sensed the tensing of the powerful muscles slipping like pliant steel through satin sheaths, turned the proud head toward the south and felt the rush of air whipping back his hat brim, stinging his face as they shot out across the rolling hills.

When Comet had had his run, racing through the other herds that flung up their heads to look at him and the first half mile had sped away behind, Thornton coaxed him down into a gentle gallop, swearing at him with much soft and deep affection.

"Easy, Little Horse," he soothed. "Easy. We're going to Dead Man's. We'll go in slow and watching where we put our feet, all rested and quick on the trigger and ready to come out ... if we want to! ... like winning a race."

And Comet, snorting his dislike of any conservation of strength and energy, nevertheless obeyed. So it was a little after three o'clock when they entered the crooked, narrow street which gives a bad town a bad name.

The town had shaken off the lethargy of its morning sleep: there were many men in the street, some riding back and forth, disdaining to walk the distance of a hundred yards from a saloon they had just left to the saloon to which they were going, some sitting their horses in the shade, lounging in the saddle as a man may lounge in an arm chair, some idled on foot at the swinging doors, while many others made a buzz of deep throated voices at the bars and over the gaming tables. As Buck Thornton, riding slowly, his hat back upon his head, his eyes ranging to right and left, came into the street where Winifred Waverly had entered it last week, more than one man lifted his eyebrows on seeing him and wondered what business had brought him here. For the memory of his meeting with the Bedloes was still green, the scars which the Kid wore on his right wrist and his left arm were still fresh, and this town was the Bedloes' town in more ways than one.

He nodded to a few men, spoke to fewer, for here was he more a stranger than he was in Dry Town. Riding straight to the Brown Bear Saloon he swung down. He left his horse, trained to stand by the hour for him, at the edge of the board sidewalk, the bridle reins caught around the horn of the saddle, moved at an even pace through the men at the door and went inside.

A dozen men stood at the long bar, big men and little, dark men and light, of this nationality and that, but alike in the one essential thing that they were of the type by which the far-out places are wrested from the wilderness of God and made part of the wildness of man, hard men of tongue, of hand, of nature, hard drinkers, hard fighters. Gunmen, to the last man of them, who live with a gun always, by a gun often enough, who are dropping fast before the onrush of the civilization for which they themselves have made the way, but who will daily walk over their graves until the glimmer of steel rails runs into the last of the far places, until there be no longer wide, unfenced miles where cattle run free and rugged mountain sides into which men dip to bring out red and yellow gold.

Thornton's eyes ran down the line of them, swiftly. There was no man there whom he knew. He stepped a little to one side, the door at his left, the bare front wall at his back. He stood loosely, carelessly to judge from the little slump of the shoulders, the burning cigarette in the fingers of his left hand, the thumb of the right hand caught in his belt.

The bar was at his left, the bare floor running away in front of him, sawdust covered, the string of gaming tables stretched along the wall at his right. As by instinct his eyes lighted upon the man whom he sought. First a round topped table where three men cut and dealt at "stud"; then a faro lay-out with its quick-eyed dealer, its quick-eyed look-out upon his stool, its half dozen men playing and looking on; then the "wheel"; then a second table with six men busy at "draw." There, at this table, with his broad back to him, sat the Kid. And as usual, to complete the youthful swagger of him, he wore his two guns in plain sight.

Still the cattle man made no move, still his eyes ran back and forth, seeking, showing nothing of what they sought or of what they had found already. He marked every man in the place; saw that there were only two of them besides the Kid whom he had ever seen before, one the bartender, one a man with whom he had had no dealings; noted that neither Charley nor Ed Bedloe were in the house. He saw too that the bartender had leaned a little over his bar, saying something swiftly to the man whom he was serving; that the man turned curiously to look toward the door; while at the same time the man across the table from the Kid had given warning, and the Kid's hands had come away from his cards, dropping down into his lap.

Then Thornton came on, walking slowly, passing about the first poker table, then by the faro table, the roulette wheel, and finally to the table where the Kid sat. Bedloe had not moved again: he had not turned, his cards lay unheeded before him. The other men were silent with a jack pot waiting for their attention.

"When he turns," Thornton was telling himself, "it's going to be in the direction of his gun, and he's going to come up shooting."

There were many men there who sensed the thing he did. Not a man in the saloon whose eyes were not keen and expectant as they ran back and forth between the two, Thornton who had shot Bedloe before now, Bedloe who had sworn to "get him." A chair leg scraped and many men started as if it had been the first pistol shot; it was only the man across the table from Bedloe moving back a little, ready to leap to his feet to right or left. Somebody laughed. At the sound though Bedloe's big thick body remained steady like a rock his fingers twitched perceptibly.

"Bedloe," and Thornton's voice was cool and low toned, with no tremor in it, no fear, no threat, no hint of any kind of expression, "I want a talk with you."

He was not five short paces behind the brawler's back. The Kid turned a little in his chair, slowly, very slowly like a machine. His eyes came to rest full upon Thornton's. And Thornton, looking back steadily into the hard eyes, steely and blue and fearless, low lidded and watchful, knew that the man had fully expected to see straight into the barrel of a revolver. For a moment it was as though this place had come under such a spell as that in the tale of the Sleeping Beauty, with every man touched by a swift enchantment that had stilled his blood and turned his body to stone.

Thornton saw that Bedloe's hands were tense with tendons standing out sharply under the brown skin, the fingers rigid, curved inward a little, and not three inches from the grips of his guns. And Bedloe saw that Thornton carried a burning cigarette in his left hand, that his right, with thumb caught in the band of his chaps, was careless only in the seeming and that it, too, was alert and tense. And he remembered the lighting quickness of that right hand.

"What do you want?"

No bluster, no threat, no fear, no hint of expression in the voice which was as steady as Thornton's, with something in it akin to the steely steadiness of the hard eyes.

They spoke slowly, with little pauses, little silences between. The man whose chair had scraped looked uncomfortable; the muscles of his throat contracted; his hand shut tight upon his cards, cracking the backs; then he pushed back his chair again, swiftly, and got to his feet. His deep breathing was audible when he stood to one side where, if there was to be shooting, he would no longer be "in line." No one noticed him.

"I want a quiet talk," was Thornton's reply. "I'm not here to start anything, Bedloe. Will you give me a chance to talk with you?"

Bedloe pondered the words, without distrust, without credence, merely searching for what lay back of them. And finally he answered with a brief question:

"Where?"

"Anywhere. In yonder," and Thornton's nod indicated the little room partitioned off from the larger for a private poker room while his eyes clung to Bedloe's. "Or outside. Anywhere."

Again the Kid pondered.

"I'm playin' poker," he said presently, very quietly. "An' I ain't playin' for fun. There's one hell of a lot of money changin' han's this deal, an'," with the first flash of defiance, and much significance to words and look alike, "my luck's runnin' high today!"

"I'll wait until you play your hand," returned Thornton without hesitation. "I'll step right over here."

As he spoke he moved, walking slowly with cautious feet feeling for an obstacle over which he might stumble and so for just the one vital fraction of a second give the Kid the chance to draw first, his eyes upon the eyes which followed him. He stepped, so, about the table, to the other side, so that Bedloe, once more sitting straight in his chair, faced him over the jack pot.

The big blue eyed man didn't speak. It was his move and he knew it, knew that all men there were looking at him. He studied Thornton's eyes as he had never studied a man before, taking his time, cool, clear headed. He could get his gun in a flash; he could throw himself to one side as he jammed it across the table, shooting; he could do it before most men there could even guess that he was going to do it. He knew that very well. And he knew too, that although he was quick and sure on the draw, here was a man who was just that wee, deadly fraction of a second quicker.

As though he would find a flicker in the steady eyes of the other man to tell him what he wanted to know, he moved his hand, his left, a very, very little, so little that save at a time like this no man would have seen. There came no change in Thornton's eyes. The Kid lifted the hand, laying it with still fingers upon the table before him. Still nothing in Thornton's eyes to tell that he had seen or had not seen. One second more the Kid sat motionless, pondered. Then he had decided. The right hand came up and lay beside the left on the table.

A man at the bar set down his glass and the faint noise against the hard wood sounded unnaturally loud. Another man ordered a drink, and the low voice breaking the silence sounded like a shout. Men who had stood in tense, cramped positions moved, games that had stopped went on. The strain of a few moments was gone, though still no one lost sight for more than an instant of Thornton and the Kid.

Bedloe dropped his eyes to his cards, merely turning the corners as they lay flat on the table. The man who had gotten hastily out of his chair came back. The game went on as the others were going, silently and swiftly. The jack pot was opened, "boosted," and grew fat. Bedloe played a cool hand, and the impression until near the show-down was that he was not to be reckoned with. Then, a little impudently, as was his way, he shoved his pile to the centre of the table.

"See that or drop out," he said curtly.

The nervous man dropped out. Two men saw it. They both lost to the Kid's full hand.

He swept up the gold and silver and slipped it into his pocket, his hand going very close to his gun during the process but never hesitating. Then he got to his feet.

"Let's go outside," he said, turning toward Thornton.

He led the way, swinging about so that the broad of his back was to the man who followed him and the man whom he had sworn to kill. Walking so, a few paces between them, they passed by the bar, through the clutter of men about the door and out upon the narrow sidewalk. Still the Kid did not stop. He strode on, not so much as looking to see if he were followed, until he came to the middle of the narrow street. Then he came to a quick halt and turned.

"Now," said the Kid, "spit it out. If you want to finish what we begun at Smith's start in. I'm ready."

"I told you," Thornton answered him, "that I am not looking for trouble. When I am I know where I can find it." He dropped his voice yet lower so that by no possibility could any one of the men upon the sidewalk hear him, and ended, "Jimmie Clayton sent me."

"An'," asked the Kid coolly, "who the hell is Jimmie Clayton?"

"He's a poor little devil who is in need of a friend, if he's got any," Thornton returned. "And he said you were the only friend he had here."

"Maybe I am an' maybe I ain't." The sharpness of suspicion was still high in Bedloe's eyes. "What about him?"

"You knew he was in the pen?"

"I ain't answerin' questions. Go ahead."

"He broke jail a few days ago. He killed his guard and got himself pretty badly shot up. I guess they're on his trail now. And he's going to swing for it if they ever get him."

"Where is he?" asked Bedloe sharply with no lessening of the suspicion and ready watchfulness.

"In the old dugout at the Poison Hole."

"How's it happen you know so much about it?"

"Jimmie was a friend to me once when I needed a friend. He got this far, he held out to ride to my cabin night before last and left a note. I took him out some grub last night. It's all I can do for him; I haven't any way to hide him out. And he's in too bad shape to ride."

"Well, where do I come in?"

Thornton shrugged his shoulders.

"That's your business, yours and Jimmie's. He said that you were a pal of his, and," he added bluntly, with a keen curious look into the Kid's steel-blue eyes, "that you never went back on a pal."

Behind him in the street Thornton heard the clatter of horses' hoofs coming on rapidly. He paid no attention until they were close to him, so close that from the corner of his eye he caught the flutter of a woman's skirt. Then he knew who it was before she passed on. One was Pollard looking white and sick; the other, rosy cheeked and bright eyed, was Winifred Waverly.

A quick smile drove the sternness from his eyes and he swept off his hat to her, ignoring the presence of Pollard. But into her expression as she returned his look for the moment in which she was flashing by, there came no vague hint of recognition. He turned back to Bedloe, a little flush of anger in his cheeks. The two men were very near only battle just then. For the Kid smiled.

"How do I know you're tellin' me the truth?" They had gone back to Jimmie Clayton, Bedloe speaking suspiciously again. "How do I know you ain't puttin' up a game on me? It's a nice lonely place, where that dugout is."

The flush died out of the cowboy's tanned skin as swiftly as it had run into it.

"I guess you can't tell," he retorted. "Unless you go and find out. And you know if I wanted to get you I could have got you in there, and I could have got you that time at Smith's. And," with an impudence to match Bedloe's, "I could get you now!"

The Kid passed over the remark, his brows knitted thoughtfully.

"Well," he said in a moment, "you've shot your wad now, ain't you? I guess there ain't no call for me an' you to talk all day."

"That's all. What'll I tell Jimmie?"

"You can tell him he ain't made no mistake. You may be lyin' an' you may be tippin' me the straight. But he is a pal of mine an' a damn decent little pal, an' I'll take a chance."

"You'll get him?"

"If he's there I'll get him."

"When?"

"You'd like the time o' day to the minute, I reckon!" He laughed softly. "Jus' the first show I get, which'll be in three or four days."

"If you want a horse for him after a while, a good horse, I'll give him one. That's the best I can do. And I guess that's all, Bedloe."

Thornton stepped back toward his horse. Bedloe turned abruptly and strode through the crowd of men on the sidewalk and back to the saloon and his game, no doubt. Thornton swung up into the saddle, and riding swiftly, passed down the street and back toward the range. As he went he felt little satisfaction in an errand done, little relief to have it over. For he was thinking of the look in a girl's eyes, and again a flush ran up into his cheeks, the bright flush of anger.



CHAPTER XVI

A GUARDED CONFERENCE

With flaming eyes Winifred Waverly whirled upon her uncle.

"Why do you suffer it?" she cried hotly. "The man knows that I was not deceived by his idiotic mask, he knows that I have told you, and still you let him go free where he pleases, swagger about with brawlers like that horrible Kid Bedloe, and dribble your money over the bars for drink and over the poker tables! Why do you suffer it?"

A fleeting smile of deep satisfaction brightened Pollard's eyes. They had ridden home in silence and now, with the door barely closed behind them, she had turned upon him with her indignant question.

"I am waiting," began Pollard.

"Waiting for what?" she demanded. "Until he can have had time to squander what is rightfully yours, until there be no chance of getting it back or bringing such a man to justice!"

"You little fire-eater!" he laughed at her. "Come with me in here." He turned and led the way into the room just off the hall and at the front of the house where he had his office. When the door was closed behind him he dropped into a chair, his face a little white and drawn from the exertion of his ride, the first he had had since the girl had come. "I want to talk with you, and I don't want anybody, Mrs. Riddell in particular, to overhear. She's too fond of talking."

Winifred stood across the room from him, her quirt in her hand switching restlessly at the carpet, her eyes showing a little sympathy for his illness but more anger at Buck Thornton.

"You ask why I don't bring that man to reckoning, and I tell you that I am waiting. Then you ask, for what?" He leaned a little forward, and she saw again in his eyes the look she had surprised there on that first day she had come to Hill's Corners, a look of hate and of a sinister satisfaction. "Waiting for the time when I am sure there will be no loophole for him to crawl through! You are ready to go into a court room and swear that he robbed you; that is a great deal and it will go a long way toward convicting him. But it isn't enough. It's only your word against his; don't you see? He will swear that he did not rob you, won't he? We can prove that you left Dry Town with the five thousand dollars; we might even prove that you didn't bring it on to me. But we couldn't prove, beyond the last shadow of doubt, that you didn't lose it, or that somebody else didn't rob you of it."

"But," she asked, frowning in her perplexity, "what good will it do to wait?"

"Your evidence," he went on slowly, as though working the thing out for himself, "is enough to convince eleven jurors out of the twelve; now we must make sure of the twelfth. How will we do it? One way is to find the lost bank notes in Thornton's possession. The other way is to get other evidence to add to yours, cumulative evidence all of which will point one way, to one conclusion!"

"To one conclusion?" she repeated after him, prompting him, so eager was she for him to go on.

"To the fact that Buck Thornton is the man who, for six months now, has been committing the series of crimes, running the gamut from the murder of a stage driver to the theft of cattle from Kemble's place! That is the thing I am waiting for!"

She frowned. A mental picture of the cowboy rose quickly and vividly before her. She saw the clear, steadfast eyes, the free, upright carriage, the flash of a smile that was like a boy's. She had come to be firm in her belief that he was the man who had robbed her, had forced the insult of his kiss upon her, but it was hard, with that picture of him before her, to think him a murderer, too. But then, as though to sweep away her last shred of doubt, the vision widened and into it came another man: she saw Buck Thornton as she had seen him only a few minutes ago, in seeming friendly conversation with the youngest Bedloe whose eyes soiled the woman they rested upon, whose name had travelled even to her home in Crystal City and beyond as a roisterer, a brawler, a man of unsavoury deeds done boldly and shamelessly.

"I am a little sick of it all," she said wearily. "I want to go back home, uncle."

He had looked for that and had his answer ready.

"I know, Winifred. And I don't blame you. But I want you to stay a little longer, won't you? Your evidence is going to be the strongest card in our deck. Will you stay and give it?"

"How long?"

"Not long now. I expect Dalton here today."

"Who is Dalton?"

"Cole Dalton, the sheriff. He is as anxious as I am to get his hands on Thornton. The whole country has been growing hotter in its criticisms of him every day for the last six months, blaming him for not rounding up the man who has committed one depredation on top of another, and gotten away with it."

"And you are sure," she hesitated a little in spite of herself, repeating, "you are sure ... that Buck Thornton is that man?"

"Yes. I guessed it a long time ago. I know it now that he has robbed you. You will wait a few days, won't you?"

"Yes, I'll wait. But, oh," she cried out with sudden vehemence, swinging about when half way to the door, "I hate this sort of thing! Get it over with quick, Uncle Henry!"

She left him then and went upstairs to her own room where for a little she tried to concentrate her wandering thoughts upon a book. But in the end she flung the volume aside impatiently and went to her window, staring down into the neglected tangle of the front yard and the glimpse of the street through the straggling branches of the pear trees. She tried to see only that men like Kid Bedloe and Buck Thornton were not to be thought of as men, but rather as some rare species of clear-eyed, unscrupulous, conscienceless animals; that they were not human, that it would not be humane but foolish to regard them with any kind of sympathy; that the law should set its iron heel upon them as a man might set his heel upon a snake's flat, venomous head.

And she felt a hard contempt of self, she hated herself, when again and again there rose before her mind's eye the form and face of the man who surely was the worst of the lot, and yet who looked like a gentleman and who knew how to carry himself like a gentleman, who knew what courtesy to a woman was when he wanted to know, who had in a few hours made upon her an impression which she realized shamefacedly would stay with her always.

She had been in her room for an hour, driven by her loneliness had run downstairs to chat a few minutes with Mrs. Riddell in the kitchen and, unusually restless, had gone back upstairs. As she came again to her window, she saw two men leave their horses at the front gate and turn toward the house along the walk under the pear trees. Both were men whose very stature would have drawn one's thoughts away from even pleasant preoccupation, and Winifred Waverly's thoughts were sick of the channel in which they had been running.

One, the one who came on slightly in front of his companion, was very broad and heavy and thick. Thick of arm, of thigh, of neck. He was not short, standing close to six feet, and yet his bigness of girth made him seem of low, squat stature as she looked down upon him. She did not see his face under the wide, soft hat but guessed it to be heavy like the rest of him, square jawed and massive. She noted curiously that his tread was light, that his whole being spoke of energy and swift initiative, that the alertness of his carriage was an incongruity in a man so heavily built from the great, monster shoulders of him to the bulging calves.

The face of the other man she saw. His hat was far back upon his head and as he come on his dark features fascinated her. He was tall, as tall or nearly as tall as the Kid or Buck Thornton, she thought, slender, full of the grace of perfect physical manhood. There was a dash to him that, to the girl, was not without its charm. It spoke from the finely chiselled lips, curved to a still, contemptuous smile, from the eyes, long lashed, well set far apart, from the swinging careless stride. A handsome devil, as handsome in his own way as the Kid in his, as defiant an insolence in his smiling eyes, as cool an assurance and a vague added charm which was not so readily classified.

The two men came to the door. She heard Pollard greet them, calling them by name, and thus learned that one was Cole Dalton, the sheriff, one Broderick. Then there came up to her the hum of voices from her uncle's office, the heavy, rasping voice which she was certain belonged to the thicker-set man, the light, careless pleasant tones of the taller man. She found herself listening, not for the words which were lost in the indistinct hum, but to the qualities of tone, idly speculating as to which man was the sheriff, which Broderick. She wondered if now they were going to arrest Buck Thornton and if Broderick were a deputy? And again she hated herself with a quick spurt of contemptuous indignation that she allowed a feeling of sympathy for the tall cattleman to slip into her heart.

For a long time the low toned conversation in the room below her continued. At first it was her uncle who did the greater part of the talking, his utterances at once emphatic and yet guarded. She had the uneasy feeling that the tones were hushed less because of Mrs. Riddell whom she could hear clattering with her pots and pans in the kitchen, than because of herself. A little hurt, half angry that he should think of her as a possible eavesdropper, she took up her book again, turning the pages impatiently in search of the place which she had a great deal of trouble in finding since she had understood so little of what she had read that day. And even then one half of her mind was on the men below as she wondered why they should not want her to know what it was they said.

Evidently Pollard had finished what he had to say. She supposed that he had been telling them of his loss and her robbery. Then the heavy, rasping voice, Cole Dalton's she was right in guessing it to be, as guarded as Pollard's had been, broke in and for several minutes it was the only sound that came to her, save twice when a low laugh from Broderick interrupted. She frowned at that; to her it seemed that in this stern discussion which had for theme crime and retribution there was no place for a man's laughter; even then her dislike for Ben Broderick had begun.

Then Cole Dalton had finished and Broderick was talking. It was as though each man in turn were making his report to the others. As before not a word came to the ears which she strove futilely to make inattentive. A certain quality in the speaker's voice drew fresh speculation from her. He spoke quietly, with no single interruption from the others and with a positiveness that was like a command, as though he whom she had thought possibly a deputy were coolly telling both Pollard and Cole Dalton what they should do, when they should do it and how. The voice was arrogant, cool and confident.

Again the sheriff's voice floated up to her, raised a little, rasping out what sounded like a protest. And Broderick's answer was another short laugh, full of contempt and followed by a few emphatic, crisp words which she did not catch.

That ended the consultation. She knew it from the silence which followed the curt finality of Broderick's retort and from the scraping of chair legs followed by the sound of the men pacing back and forth and speaking in new, unguarded tones. Now their conversation came to her for the first time.

"You'll be going out tonight, Dalton?" Pollard asked.

"No. The first thing in the morning."

"And you, Broderick?"

"I'll trot along tonight, Henry. But not," the cool voice carelessly, "until I've had something to eat. I know you're going to ask me to stay to supper!"

"What do you want to stay for, Ben?" demanded Pollard with something of irritation in the question. "Haven't you got enough on your hands...."

Broderick's ready laugh, slow, easy, vaguely insolent, rose clearly to Winifred's ears.

"You're sure a hospitable cuss," he retorted. "Don't be a hog on top of it, Henry. I want to see that pretty niece of yours."

The girl's cheeks went red at the light tone. She waited to hear her uncle's short rejoinder. And she heard nothing beyond the sheriff's rasping chuckle.

When Mrs. Riddell called from the foot of the stairs that supper was ready Winifred had fully made up her mind that she would not go down. She heard the three men chatting lightly and decided that she would get something to eat after they had finished and gone. But as though her uncle had caught her thought he too came to the foot of the stairs, calling to her.

"Winifred," he was saying, "supper's ready. Sheriff Dalton is here, and Mr. Broderick, a friend of mine. I want you to tell them what you have told me."

She hesitated a moment, biting her lip. Then she answered, "All right, Uncle Henry; I'll be right down." She went to her wash-stand, arranged her hair swiftly, saw that the flush had gone out of her cheeks, that her eyes were cool and told nothing, and went down to join the three men who had already taken their places at the dinner table.

As she came through the door, her head up, her lips a little hard, Broderick was the first to see her and was upon his feet in a flash, as graceful as a cavalier, as debonair in his big boots and soft white silk shirt as though he had been a courtly gentleman dressed for the ball, his eyes frankly filled with the appreciation of her dainty beauty. Pollard, remembering, rose too, and last of all Cole Dalton, his shrewd eyes intense and keen upon her. Winifred's gaze passed by Broderick as though she had not seen him and travelled to her uncle while she waited for the introductions.

Dalton, who was first to be presented, put out a big, hard, square hand, capturing and releasing Winifred's suddenly as though it were a part of the day's work to be done and over with. He had stepped forward and now stepped back to his chair, his keen, watchful eyes never leaving her face.

Then Broderick took the hand which she did not like to refuse to her uncle's friend and guest and yet which she disliked giving him, saw the little flush which his gaze drove into her cheeks, and with a hint of laughter in his eyes bowed over it gallantly, murmuring his happiness in knowing her. And it was Broderick who stepped quickly to her chair, drawing it out for her to be seated. She found herself wondering where this man had learned to do these little things which are no part of the training of the far out cattle men.

During the first half of the meal there was no reference to the happening at Harte's Camp. Broderick, with a mood contagiously care free and sparkling, did the greater part of the talking, and though he elicited from the girl rare words beyond a brief "yes" or "no," he seemed content. And he interested her. He talked well, with little slurs of grammar that seemed rather due to the man's carelessness of nature than to ignorance, his vocabularly not without picturesque force. It seemed natural that he should do the talking, that he should address himself largely to her, and that Pollard and Cole Dalton should listen and watch him.

Within ten minutes she gleaned that Broderick was a miner, that he had a claim of some sort in the mountains back of Hill's Corners, to the eastward, that a couple of years ago he had made his "pile" in the Yukon country and that he had lost it in unwise speculation, that he knew more than the names of the streets of the chief cities of both coasts, that he had strong hopes of making a strike where he was and of selling out at a good figure to a mining concern with which he was already corresponding. And yet this light miscellany of information was so brightly sprinkled into the flow of talk upon a score of other matters that it did not seem that the man was ever talking of himself.

Finally Pollard, catching a sharp look from Sheriff Dalton, got up and stepped into the kitchen where Mrs. Riddell was. The woman went out into the yard and Pollard came back. Before he had taken his chair again Dalton said abruptly, turning upon the girl:

"Pollard mentioned your seeing the stick-up man at Harte's cabin. Tell us about it."

She told him swiftly, eager to have it over with, conscious that the eyes of all three of the men watched her with a very intense interest. From her account she omitted only that which concerned her personally and alone and of which she had not even spoken to her uncle.

"You're sure it was Thornton?" demanded the sheriff when she had finished. "Dead sure?"

"Yes," she answered resolutely, defiant of her own self that hesitated to fix on an absent man the crime of which she believed him guilty.

Dalton sat still save for the drumming of his thick fingers upon the table cloth. Presently his big stocky body turned slowly in his chair as he looked from Broderick to Pollard, the hint of a smile merely making his eyes the harder.

"So," he said, his wide shoulders rising to his deep breath, "it looks like all we got to do is just go out and put our rope on Mr. Badman!"

"It looks like it, Cole," laughed Broderick gently. "Only when you get ready to pull off your little roping party I wish you'd let me know. He don't look like he's the kind to lie down and let you hog-tie him, does he, Miss Waverly? They say he's half Texan an' the other half panther. You want to be quick on the throw, Cole. Remember the way he got the Kid last winter!"

"The only wonder," growled Dalton, "is that the Kid hasn't taken him off our hands and got him long ago!"

"But," put in Winifred hastily, "they're friends now. Uncle Henry and I saw them talking together this afternoon."

She saw the start that her words gave the sheriff, and turning toward Broderick glimpsed a look, steely and hard and glittering with suspicion that had driven the smile from his eyes.

"If Bedloe...." began Dalton sharply, his great fist clenched. But he stopped short. He saw and understood the warning glance Broderick shot at him; Winifred saw, too, but did not understand.

"Let's go into the other room," the miner said carelessly, "and see what Henry's cigars are made out of."

They rose and went back to Pollard's office. And Ben Broderick, who had suggested cigars, was the only one of the three men who rolled his own cigarette, rolled it slowly and with deep thoughtfulness.



CHAPTER XVII

SUSPICION

After all it seemed that for some reason the time was not yet ripe for Cole Dalton to put his rope on "Mr. Badman". For the days ran on smoothly for Buck Thornton, the weeks grew out of them and he rode, unmolested, unsuspicious of any threatened interference, about his own business.

He had gone a second time to the dugout at Poison Hole, carrying provisions enough to last Jimmie Clayton several days. Clayton seemed assured that Bedloe would look out for him now and insisted that there was danger of some of the range hands learning of Thornton's trips here. So, for a week he did not ride near the man's hiding place, and when one day he did visit the dugout again there was nothing to show that Clayton had been there and no hint of how or where he had gone. Thornton felt a deep sense of relief, believing that the episode, so far as he was concerned, was closed.

Another week and he was close to forgetting Jimmie Clayton altogether. The demands of the routine of range work kept him busy every day, early and late, and as though that were not enough to tax his endurance there came a fresh call upon him.

The stage had not been robbed that day he had seen it leaving Dry Town, and he had begun to persuade himself that the epidemic of crime from one end of the county to the other was at an end; that the highwayman had left the country while he could. But now came news of fresh outlawry, news that ran from tongue to tongue of the angered cattle men and miners who demanded more and more loudly that Cole Dalton "get busy".

Rumour flew back and forth, indignant, voluble, accusatory. It stacked crime upon crime; it mouthed the names of many men whom the county would be glad to entertain in its empty jail, the names of the three Bedloe boys, of Black Dan, of Long Phil Granger, of certain newcomers to Hill's Corners who, naturally, were to be looked upon with suspicion. It listed the depredations committed during four weeks with a result that was startling. It told of the theft of a herd of steers from Kemble's place; the shooting of Bert Stone and the looting of Hap Smith's mail bags; the robbery of Seth Powers who left the poker table at Gold Run at two o'clock one morning with seven hundred dollars in his overalls and was found at eight o'clock beaten into unconsciousness and with his pockets turned wrong-side out; the stage robbery in which Bill Varney of Twin Dry Diggings had been killed; the robbery of Jed Macintosh in Dry Town. A hundred and fifty miles lay between the most widely removed of the places where these things had happened, but no two of them had occurred within a time too short for a man to ride from one to the other.

And now came the list of the bold crimes committed since the day, four weeks ago, when Buck Thornton had ridden into Dry Town with the five thousand dollars. Kemble, to the westward of the Poison Hole, told of again losing cattle, seven big steers run off in a single night, nothing left of them but their tracks and the tracks of a horse which disappeared in the rocky mountain soil; Joe Lee, of the Figure Seven Bar, to the north of the Poison Hole, reported the loss of nine cows and two horses, all picked stock; Old Man King of the Bar X grew almost speechless with trembling wrath at the loss of at least a score of cattle. And Ben Broderick, the mining man who was working his claim to the eastward of the Poison Hole, admitted quietly that a man, a big man wearing a bandana handkerchief as a mask, had slipped into his camp one night, covered him with a heavy calibre Colt, and had taken away with him a six hundred dollar can of dust.

As yet no single loss had been noted by the Poison Hole outfit. But Thornton believed that he saw the reason: now, there were few nights that found him at the range cabin or his cowboys in the bunk house. His cattle had been brought down from the mountains, herded into the open meadow lands, and the night riders kept what watch they could upon the big herds. Many a night he lay in his blankets close to the border of his range upon the south, knowing that here and there upon other borders, watching over his cattle, guarding the mouths of canons down which a rustler might choose his way, his men lay. He began to wish that his property might be attacked, feeling secure in his alertness, thinking that an over bold "badman" might come suddenly to the end of his depredations here. And yet no attack came, not so much as a wandering yearling was lost to him.

Men of the stamp and calibre of these ranchers who were hearing of a neighbour's losses only as a sort of prelude to their own, were not patient men at the best, nor did such lives as they led permit of lax hands and natures without initiative. It was in no way a surprise to Thornton, upon riding to the Bar X, to learn that the cattle men were now rising swiftly and actively to a defence of their own property. Many of them lifted frank and angry voices in condemnation of their county sheriff, many of them more generously admitted that Dalton was up against a hard proposition and was doing all that any one man could do. But they were unanimous in saying that what Cole Dalton couldn't do they would do.

This morning Thornton found old man King saddling his horse in the Bar X corrals and snapping out orders to his foreman and the two cowboys who sat their horses watching him with speculative eyes. His recent loss had driven him to a towering rage and his voice shook with anger in it.

"Twenty head they've took from me," he spat out angrily. "Twenty head in one night an' they think they c'n git away with it an' go on doin' jest what they damn please!" He jerked his cinch tight, climbed into his saddle and as his young horse whirled about Thornton saw that he had a rifle under his leg.

"Them cows," he went on wrathfully, merely ducking his head at the new comer, "will average a hundred dollars a head. Two thousan' bucks gone like a fog when the sun's up! What in hell do you fellers think I'm payin' you for?"

"It ain't goin' to happen one more time," growled Bart Elliott, the foreman whose wrath under the direct eyes of the "Old Man" was no less than King's. "I jes' wish they'd try it on again...."

"Ain't goin' to happen again, ain't it?" retorted King. "That's got to satisfy me, huh? Jest so long as they take a couple thousan' dollars out'n my pockets, an' then don't come back for all I got, it's all right, huh? Now you boys can jest nacherally take the glue out'n your ears an' listen a minute: I'm goin' to know who took them cows an' where they went, an' I'm goin' to have 'em back, every little cow brute of 'em! Git me, Elliott? An' you, Jim an' Hodge? If you fellers are lookin' for jobs where you ain't got nothin' to do you better look somewhere else. Now, listen some more."

He told them that they would find two more rifles and a shotgun at the range house. To this information he added that they could pack up some grub and hit the trail along with him. For he was going to bring his cattle back if he had to ride through three states to get them and back through hell to drive them home.

The men rode away to the range house talking among themselves, and King swung about upon Thornton.

"Hello, Buck," he said shortly.

"Hello, King. Anything I can do?"

"Not for me," said King drily. "How about yourself? Lost any cows off'n the Poison Hole?"

"Not a one. The rustlers seem to be giving me a wide berth. I've had my men out every night, though. Maybe they've got wise."

King looked at him sharply. And Thornton was vaguely aware in that swift glance of something which made but little impression on him at the time, something which he forgot even as he saw it, imagining he had misread but something to be remembered in the days that followed: it was a cool, steely look of suspicion.

"Mebbe," King grunted. "It's happenin' all aroun' you. I wasn't sayin' much so long's it didn't come too close the Bar X. An' now I ain't goin' to say much."

Thornton finished his errand with Old Man King and saw him with his men ride away into the little hills of the range. Then he was turning back toward the Poison Hole when young King, riding around the corner of the barn, called to him.

"Hello, Bud," Thornton said casually. "What's the word?"

Bud King rode up to him before he answered. Then, sitting loosely in the saddle, his eyes meditative upon one free, swinging boot, he answered.

"There's a dance over to the school house tonight, for one thing. Coming, Buck?"

Thornton shook his head.

"No. Hadn't heard of it and I guess I'll be busy enough without prancing out to dances." And then, a little curiosity in his even tones, "How does it happen you're not out hunting rustlers with the old man?"

Young King lifted his head and again Thornton saw in a man's eyes a thing which was so vague that it went almost unnoted, a look of veiled suspicion.

"The old man hunts his way and I hunt mine," Bud King said briefly. "And besides, I haven't been to a shindig for six months."

A little flush ran up into his face under Thornton's level glance, and Buck laughed softly.

"Who's the girl, Bud?" he challenged.

"Aw, go chase yourself," Bud flung back at him, but with a reddening grin. To Thornton came a swift inspiration.

"Wonder if Miss Waverly will be over from the Corners?" he asked.

"Dunno," Bud replied innocently, so innocently that Thornton laughed again.

Thornton rode back to the Poison Hole. And as he went, his thoughts ran now to the mission upon which old man King had set forth, now upon the wisdom of shaving, putting on his best suit and new hat and going to a dance....

"It isn't so much I want to see her again," he told himself, "as I want to give back her spur rowel!"



CHAPTER XVIII

THE DANCE AT DEER CREEK SCHOOLHOUSE

Deer Creek schoolhouse stood in a tiny, emerald valley half a dozen miles from Hill's Corners, some fifteen miles from Thornton's cabin, its handful of barefooted pupils coming from the families scattered through the valley. It was a one roomed building with two low doors and six square windows. And yet it offered ample enough floor space and bench accommodations for the valley dances, its one room being twenty-four feet long and twelve feet wide, certainly over large for the single "school marm" and her small flock, having been constructed with an eye to just such social gatherings as the one tonight.

The teacher's desk had been taken outdoors by willing hands; the pupils' benches stood along the walls for the "women folk" during the intermissions; upon the slightly raised platform at one end of the room were the chairs for the musicians, fiddler and guitarist. And upon the floor was much shaved candle. For light there were the four coal-oil lamps with their foolish reflectors against the walls, and a full moon shining in through door and windows.

Thornton came late, late that is, for a country dance. It was after nine o'clock when, riding Comet, he saw the schoolhouse lamps winking at him through the oaks and heard the merry music of fiddle and guitar in the frolic of a heel-and-toe polka. Already he made out here and there the saddle horses which had brought so many "stags" so many miles to the dance, and which stood tied to tree and shrub. Also there were the usual spring wagons that had brought their family loads of father, mother, son, daughter, hired man and the baby; while the inevitable cart was in evidence speaking unmistakably of mooning couples whose budding interest in each other did not permit of the drive in the family carry-all.

Thornton noted the vehicles as he passed them, and turned to look at the saddle horses, saying to himself, "So-and-so is here from Pine Ridge, So-and-so from the Corners." For hereabouts a man knew another man's horse and saddle, or wagon, as well as he knew the man himself. So when Thornton saw the buckboard near the door with its two cream-coloured mares, there was at once pleasure and speculation in his eyes, and he told himself, "Somebody is here from Pollard's."

He loosened Comet's cinch, flung the tie rope over the low limb of the big oak near Pollard's team, and leaving his horse in the shadows, went on to the open door.

Already the polka had come to its giddy end. Men and women, boys and girls, old folks with white hair and young folks in knee breeches and short skirts, laughing and talking crisscrossed the floor this way and that seeking seats. The girls and women sinking affectedly or plumping in matter-of-fact style down into their places, with languishing upward looks if they be young and in tune with the moon outside, with red faced jollity and much frankness of chatter if they were married and perhaps had a husband and children likewise disporting themselves, made long rows about the walls of the schoolhouse, looking for the world like orderly flocks of bright plumaged birds in their bravery of many hued calicos and ginghams; a gay display of bold reds and shy blues, of mellow yellows and soft pinks, with the fluttering of fans everywhere like little restless wings.

The men had left their partners, as custom demanded, and had gone to the doors, energetically mopping their brows with handkerchiefs as various in colour as the women's dresses; red and yellow silk, blue and purple, and the eternal gaudy bandana. Thornton paused at the door, losing himself among the men who had come out to stand there smoking or to wander a little away in the darkness where earlier in the evening each had hidden his personal flask under his particular bush. There would be a good deal of drinking tonight, but then that too was custom, and there was no more danger here of drunkenness than in those more pretentious balls in town where men and women partake together of heady punch.

Thornton passed words of greeting with many of these men, ranchers for the most part whom he knew well. There was Bud King, his tie a vivid scarlet, his store clothes a blue-bird-blue, the wide silk handkerchief mopping his flushed face a rich yellow; there was Hank James from the Deer Creek outfit speeding away with long strides to his own bottle under his own bush where he might conceal the tremor of the new happiness he had but come from and drink to the big-eyed girl in the pink dress with the cascades of baby-ribbon; there was Ruf Ettinger with his new overalls turned back the regulation six inches from the bottoms in a cowboy cuff that permitted of the vision of six inches of grey trouser leg below; there was Chase Harper of Tres Pinos in the smallest boots man ever wore, with the highest heels, their newness a thing of which in their pride they shrieked manfully as he walked; and there was Ben Broderick, the miner, quietly dressed in black broadcloth, looking almost the man of the city. To him Thornton merely nodded, briefly, knowing the man but little, liking him less. But Broderick put out his hand, saying cordially:

"Hello, Buck. Going to shake a leg a little?"

"I might." They were just outside the door, and the cowboy's eyes running on past the miner sought up and down the lines of chatting women for the girl who had tempted him to his first dance in many months. He had seen Pollard's team, but he had not seen Pollard or his niece. Broderick watched him, smiling a little. "Have a drink, Buck?" he asked, seeming not to have noticed the other's curtness of word and manner. "I've got something prime outside."

"Not thirsty right now, Broderick," Thornton returned coolly.

Then he heard a man's voice from the shadows at his back, and without turning knew that Henry Pollard was out there, just behind him. At the same instant his busy eyes found the girl he sought.

Winifred Waverly's days in Hill's Corners had had little enough of the joy of life in them for her; she had felt that she breathed an atmosphere charged with forces which she could not understand; upon her spirit had rested a weight of uncertainty and uneasiness and suspicion; the men she saw had hard, sinister faces and seemed cast for dark, merciless things; even her uncle appeared a strange sort of stranger to her and she shrank from following her natural train of surmise and suspicion when now and then she surprised a certain look upon his face or when she saw him with the type of man with whom he mixed.

Tonight it was as though after a long period of gloomy, overcast skies, a storm had passed and the sun had broken through. About her were light and music, the merry faces of children and girls with everywhere joyous, full throated, light hearted laughter. And the spirit of her ran out to meet the simple joy of the dance, glad just to be glad again.

Thornton knew that he had found her before she turned her face toward him. He recognized the trim little figure although now the riding habit was discarded for a pretty gown of white which he guessed her own quick fingers had fashioned for the dance; he recognized the white neck with the brown tendrils of hair rebelling from the ribbon-band about her head. And then, when she turned a little, he stared at her from his vantage in the outside darkness, wondering if she had grown prettier than ever in the few weeks since he had seen her, or if it were the dress and the way she wore her hair with a white flower in it, or if he had been half blind that other time.

There was a warm, tender flush upon her cheeks telling of her happiness. Her eyes shone, soft in their brightness, and her lips were red with the leaping blood of youth. She had turned to speak with Mrs. Sturgis, the stoutest, jolliest and altogether most motherly woman in the valley, and Mrs. Sturgis, watching her eyes and lips and paying no attention to her words, put out her plump hands suddenly, crying heartily:

"You pretty little mouse! If I had just one wish I'd wish I was a man, an' I'd just grab you up in my arms an' I wouldn't stop goin' until I set you down in front of a preacher. Come here an' let Mother Mary kiss you."

"There's a woman with brains for you, Buck," chuckled Broderick.

Thornton, though he agreed very heartily just then, did so in silence.

"It's Winifred Waverly," went on Broderick carelessly. "She's Henry Pollard's niece, you know. A little beauty, don't you think?"

Thornton nodded. Again he had agreed but he did not care to discuss her with Ben Broderick. The miner laughed lightly, and added for Thornton's further information,

"As keen a dancer as she is a looker. And a flirt from the drop of the hat! Had the last dance with her. Which reminds me I better hurry and down my booze and get back. I'm going to rope her for the next dance, too."

Broderick went his way for his bottle. Thornton did not speak, did not turn, did not move that a man might see. But the fingers of the hand at his side twitched suddenly and for a moment were tense.

"Pollard can't help being mostly rattlesnake," he muttered angrily. "But he ought to be man enough to keep his own blood kin away from Ben Broderick's kind. Lord, Lordy, but it's sure enough hell folks can't help having uncles like Ben Pollard. Poor little girl!" And then, thoughtfully, his eyes filled with speculation as they rested upon Winifred Waverly, "Mother Mary Sturgis was absolutely right!"

Now the fiddler was tuning with long drawn bow, and the patting of the guitarist's foot told that he was ready. Thornton, tossing his hat to the teacher's desk just outside the door, entered the building and strode straight to the girl. Other men were hurrying across the floor eager to be first to ask this or that demurely waiting maiden for the dance, but Thornton was well in the lead. He nodded and smiled and spoke to many of the women whom he knew, but he did not stop until he came to Winifred Waverly and Mrs. Sturgis. There he was stopped by the older woman who had not read his intentions, and who, thinking that he was going by, took his arm in her two plump hands.

"Why, Buck Thornton, you rascal, you!" she cried heartily. "Where you been all year? I ain't seen you since I c'n remember. An' where you think you're goin', stampedin' along like a runaway horse?"

"Howdy, Mother Mary," he returned as they shook hands. "I was headed right here to see you and Miss Waverly. Howdy, Miss Waverly."

The eyes which the girl turned upon him were wide with surprise. She had had no thought that he would come here tonight. Surely he must know that her uncle, the man whom he had robbed, was here! And Broderick, too—another man whom he had robbed! And how many others? And yet he had come, he seemed careless and without uneasiness, he dared to speak with her quite as if that which had happened in Harte's cabin had never occurred outside of his own imaginings. He even had the assurance to put out his hand to her! As though she would touch him!...

"Take your pardners for a waltz!" cried Chase Harper of the Tres Pinos, he of the small boots, coming in through the door, wiping his mouth and resuming his duties as "caller" of the dances. "Shake a leg, boys!"

The hurried progress of men in search of "pardners" became a race, boots clumped noisily against the floor, the cowboys swooped down upon the line of women folks, often enough there was no spoken invitation to the waltz as a strong arm ran about a lithe waist, the fiddle scraped, the guitar thrummed into the tune, and with the first note they were dancing.



CHAPTER XIX

SIX FEET FOUR!

Winifred Waverly looked steadily into Buck Thornton's eyes, suddenly determined that she would see in them the guile which must be there. Surely a man could not do the things which this man so brazenly did, and not show something of it! And she saw a glance as steady as her own, eyes as clear and filled with a very frank admiration. In spite of her, her color rose and her eyes wavered a little. Then she noticed that Mrs. Sturgis's keen eyes were upon her, and swiftly drove the expression from her own eyes and returned Thornton's greeting indifferently. Some day her uncle would accuse this man, but she did not care to give her personal affair over to the tongue of gossip, nor did she care to have her name linked in any way with Buck Thornton's.

"May I have this dance, Miss Waverly?"

He had put out his arm as though her affirmative were a foregone conclusion. She stared at him, wondering where were the limits to this man's audacity. Then, before she could reply, Mrs. Sturgis had answered for her. For Mrs. Sturgis was a born match maker, Buck was like a son to her motherly heart, Winifred Waverly was the "sweetest little thing" she had ever seen, and they had in them the making of such a couple as Mrs. Sturgis couldn't find every day of the week.

"Go 'long with you, Buck Thornton!" she cried, making a monumental failure of the frown with which she tried to draw her placid brows. "Here I thought all the time you was goin' to ask me!"

Then she jerked him by the arm, dragging him nearer, playfully pushed the girl toward him, and before she well knew what had happened Winifred found herself in Thornton's arms, whirling with him to the merry-fiddled music, putting out her little slipper by the side of his big boot to the step of the rye-waltz. And Mrs. Sturgis, drawing her twinkling eyes away from them and turning upon Ben Broderick, who had arrived just too late, with as much malice in her smile as she knew how to put into it, remarked meaningly,

"A little slow, Mr. Broderick! You got to keep awake when there's a man like Buck around."

And she seemed very much pleased with the look in Broderick's eyes, a look of blended surprise and irritation.

"Thornton and her uncle are not just exactly friends," he retorted coolly.

"If they was," she flung back at him, "I'd think a heap sight more of ol' Ben Pollard!"

Mrs. Sturgis's manoeuvre had so completely taken the girl by surprise that as she floated away in the cowboy's arms she was for a little undecided what to do. She did not want to dance with Thornton; it had been upon the tip of her tongue to make the old excuse and tell him that she was engaged for this waltz. In that way the whole episode would have passed unnoticed. But now, if they stopped, if she had him take her to her seat and leave her, everybody would see, everybody would talk, gossip would remember that when she had first come to Hill's Corners John Smith had ridden with her as far as the Bar X, and that Smith had told there how Buck Thornton had ridden as far as his place with her; and then gossip would go on into endless speculation as to what had happened upon the trail which now made her refuse to dance with him.

That was why she hesitated, undecided, at first. Then Thornton began to speak and she wanted to know what he was going to say. Besides, she admitted to herself, begrudgingly, that she had never known a man dance as this man danced, and the magic of the waltz was on her.

"I had to return something you left at Harte's Camp," were his first words. "That's the reason I rode over tonight."

"What is it?" she asked quickly.

Now suddenly there rose up into her heart a swift hope that after all he was not entirely without principle, that he had grown ashamed of having taken from a girl the money with which she had been entrusted and that he was bringing it back to her. If he were man enough to do this ... the blood ran up higher in her cheeks at the thought ... she could almost forgive him for that other thing he had done.

So they moved on in the dance, her hand resting lightly in his, his fingers closing about it with no hint of a pressure to tell her that again he would take what small advantage he could, his eyes looking gravely down into the eyes which flashed up at him with her question.

"Didn't you lose anything that night?" he countered. "In the cabin after I went for the horses?"

"Well?" she countered, the quick hope leaping higher within her.

"You did?"

She wondered why his eyes were so grave, so stern now, why they had ceased to say flattering things of her and merely hinted of a mind at work on a puzzle. How could she know that while she was thinking of a yellow, cloth lined envelope, he was thinking of a horse lamed with a knife, and hoping to learn from her something of the man who had wounded the animal?

"Well?" she asked again, hardly above a whisper. Did he dare even talk of it here, among all these men and women? She glanced about her anxiously to see if Pollard were in the room. "You are going to give it back to me?"

Her wonderment was hardly more than Thornton's. Why should she show this eager excitement, because of a lost spur rowel?

"I rode over to give it to you," he answered, swinging her clear of an eddy in the swirl of dancers and to the edge of the crowd. "First, though, I want you to tell me something. A man came into the cabin about three minutes before you came out to the barn, didn't he?"

She had lowered her eyes, aware that people were noticing them, her looking up so earnestly, him looking down into her face so gravely. But now, in spite of her, she looked up at him again.

"Why do you ask that?" she demanded with a flash of anger that he should continue this useless pretence. "Do you think I am a fool?"

"No. I am asking because I want to know. It's a safe gamble that the man you had a tussel with is the man who lamed my horse."

"Is it?" she asked with cool sarcasm. "And it's just as safe a gamble that he is a coward and a ... brute!"

"I don't know about his being a coward, and I don't care about his being a brute," he told her steadily. "But I do want to know what he looks like."

Again she called herself a little fool and bit her lip in the surge of her vexation. She had been glad and over eager just now to restore her faith to this big brut of a man; at a mere word from him she had been ready to condone a crime and forgive an insult.... She felt her face grow hot; he had kissed her rudely and she had been willing to find excuses, she had even felt as odd sort of thrill tingling through her. And now this eternal play-acting of his, this insane pretence....

"Mr. Thornton, this is getting us nowhere," she reminded him coldly. "If you care to be told I can assure you that I know perfectly well who the man was who ... who came into the cabin that night. And I think that it would be for the best if you returned ... my property!"

"I'm going to return it. Now, will you answer my question? Will you tell me who that man was?"

"Why do you pretend in this stupid way?" she demanded hotly.

"Why don't you tell me who he was?" he returned, frowning a little.

For a moment she did not answer. Then, her voice very low, she said, speaking slowly,

"I don't tell you, Mr. Thornton, because you know as well as I do!"

She saw nothing but blank amazement in his eyes.

"If I knew I wouldn't be asking you," he informed her.

Again she looked up at him, their eyes meeting steadily, searchingly.

"You say that you don't know who it was?" she challenged. And the eyes into which she looked were as clear of guile as a mountain lake when he answered:

"No. I don't know!"

Then through lips which were moulded to a passionate scorn no less of self than of him, in a fierce whisper, she paid him in the coin of her contempt with the one word: "Liar!"

She saw the anger leap up into his eyes and the red run into his bronzed skin, she felt the arm about her contract tensely until for one dizzy second she thought that he would crush her. And then they were swinging on through the dance to the merry beat of the music and above the music she heard his soft laugh.

He did not look at her, nor did she again lift her eyes to his. But both of them saw Broderick where he stood near the door, his hands shoved down into his pockets, his tall, gaunt form leaning against the wall. His eyes had been following them, and there was in them an expression hard to read. It might have been anger or distrust or suspicion.

And both Thornton and Winifred as they turned in the dance caught a quick glimpse of the face of another man. It was Henry Pollard. He had evidently just come in and as evidently had not seen Thornton and his niece dancing together until this moment. And the look in his eyes springing up naked and startled was a thing easy to read. For it was the look of fear!

Winifred Waverly tried to tell herself that it was fear for her, at seeing her in Thornton's arms. But she knew that it was not. Nor was it fear for himself, not mere physical fear of Thornton. Already she knew of her uncle that the man was no coward. It was not that kind of fear; it was a fear that was apprehension, dread lest something might happen. What? "Dread that something he did not want her to know might become known to her in her talk with Buck Thornton!"

It was as though a voice had shouted it in her ear. Where so many things were muddled in inexplicability this one matter seemed suddenly perfectly clear to her. He had not wanted her to talk with Buck Thornton! Why?

Thornton, with no further word to her, had bowed to her, his eyes hard and stern, and taking a paper-wrapped packet from his vest pocket had given it to her, and had walked swiftly to the door near which Broderick stood. In spite of her her eyes had gone down the room after the tall figure. And then something happened which could have meant nothing to any one else in the house, but which brought leaping up into the girl's heart both fear and gladness. And, at last, understanding.

Broderick, smiling, had said some light word to Thornton, laying his hand upon the cowboy's shoulder. For a moment, just the fraction of a second the two men stood side by side in the open doorway. Until they stood so, close together, a man would have said that they were of the same height. Now Winifred marked that there was a full two-inch difference and that Thornton was the taller.

Together they stepped out through the doorway. The door was low, Buck stooped his head a little, Broderick passed out without stooping! It seemed only last night that she had made her supper in the Harte camp with Buck Thornton. She remembered so distinctly each little event. She could see him now as he had sat making his cigarette, could see him going to the door to look at the upclimbing moon. She had marked then the tall, wiry body that must stoop a little to stand in the low doorway. She had jested about his height; the six-feet-four of him, as he called it....

She could see again the man who had come in, masked, the man whose clothes were like the clothes of Buck Thornton even to the grey neck handkerchief. She could remember that this man had stood in the same doorway, that his eyes had gleamed at her through the slits in the handkerchief,... that he had held his head thrown back, that he had not stooped!

"It wasn't Buck Thornton!" she whispered to herself, her hands going white in their tense grip upon the parcel they held. "A man did lame his horse, a man who wanted me to think all the time that it was Buck Thornton. And that man," with swift certainty, "is Ben Broderick! Uncle Henry's friend. And Uncle ... knows!"



CHAPTER XX

POLLARD TALKS "BUSINESS"

The promise of the night flat and stale in his mouth, Thornton turned his back upon the merriment in the little schoolhouse and strode away to his horse awaiting him under the oak. He tightened the cinch with a savage jerk, coiled his tie rope and flung himself into the saddle. Did he not already have enough on his hands without running after a girl with grey eyes and a blazing temper? Had he not already enough to think about, what with guarding his range interests from a possible visit from the marauder who was driving wrath into the hearts of the cattle men and terror into the hearts of the isolated families, what with scraping every dollar here and there that he might be on time with his final payment to Henry Pollard? Must he further puzzle over the insolent whims of a captious girl?

Which was all very well, and yet as he turned Comet's head toward the Poison Hole ranch the blood was still hot on his brow, his thoughts were still busy with Winifred Waverly and the enigma she was to him, while his mind, still touched with the opiate of the loveliness of her, was filled with the picture she made in the moment of her flaming accusation.

"I have been calling her Miss Grey Eyes!" he mused angrily. "That name doesn't suit her. Little Blue Blazes would be better!"

"Mr. Thornton!"

It was Henry Pollard's voice, and for a moment Thornton had no thought of heeding it. But the voice called again, and he drew an impatient rein, waiting.

"Well," came his answer shortly. "What do you want?"

"I want to talk business with you or I wouldn't stop you," Pollard returned coolly. He came close to Comet's head and in the same, cool, impersonal voice continued.

"When time comes for your last payment are you going to be able to make it?"

"Until time does come," Thornton snapped at him, "it's my business what I'm going to do."

"Certainly it's your business. But since you've put fifteen thousand into it already I guess you won't slip up on the last five thousand. Now it's nearly five months until that payment falls due, isn't it?"

"Well? Talk fast, Pollard."

"I want to make you a proposition. I need money, and I don't mind saying that I need it bad! I've got a chance for something good, something big, in a mining speculation, and I'm short of cash. If I could raise the money within thirty days..."

Thornton laughed.

"Nothing doing, Pollard," he cut in. "When your money's due you can come talk to me. Not before."

"I said I had a proposition, didn't I?" went on Pollard evenly. "I see where I can make by it, and I'm willing for you to profit at the same time."

"Spit it out. Where do I get off?"

"You owe me five thousand yet."

"Five thousand with interest, six per cent...."

"Forget the interest; I don't want it. And I'll carve five hundred dollars off the five thousand too, if you'll raise it within thirty days. That is my proposition. What do you say to it?"

For a little Buck Thornton was silent, thinking swiftly. For the life of him he could not but look for some trickery in any proposition which might come from "Rattlesnake" Pollard. And when Pollard coolly offered to give away eight hundred dollars, five hundred of it principal, three hundred interest, Thornton had an uneasy sense that there was something crooked in the deal. But at the same time he knew that a year ago Pollard had been short of funds and for this reason had been driven to sell the Poison Hole. Hence it might be that now Pollard was telling the truth when he said that he needed money.

"You mean," he said presently, speaking slowly, trying to see Pollard's face in the shadows, "that if I come across with four thousand five hundred dollars in thirty days you will give me the deed to the Poison Hole?"

"That's what I mean," agreed Pollard bluntly. "It's a proposition you can take or leave alone. Only you have got to take it right now if you want it. What do you say?"

"I've got out the habit of carrying forty-five hundred around in my vest pocket...."

"You've got an equity of fifteen thousand in a range that is worth a whole lot more than you are paying for it, young man! The bank in Dry Town would advance you the money and never bat an eye."

Again Thornton asked himself swiftly if there were some trap here Pollard was setting for him to blunder into. But he could see none, and he could understand that matters might stand so that the smaller sum now would be worth more to him than the larger amount in five months.

"This is the fifteenth," replied the cowboy. "On the twenty-fifth I'll have the money ready at the Dry Town bank."

"I don't want it in the bank," Pollard told him shortly. "I want it in my fist! It's just about time for the stage to get held up again, and I'm taking no chances on this bet. You bring the money to me or the bet's off."

"An' I take the chances of gettin' held up!" grunted Thornton.

"You take all the chances there are. You stand to make eight hundred dollars, and you can take it or leave it! If you take it you can have the papers made out in town, deed and receipt and all, and I'll sign them. You can bring them to me at the Corners, or," with a little sneer creeping into his cool voice, "if you don't like the Corners, anywhere you say. And you can have half a dozen witnesses if you like."

"Why don't you ride with me into Dry Town?"

"Because I don't want to! Because, if you agree to put this thing over, I'm going to be mighty busy getting my deal in shape here and on the other side of the line."

"All right. I'll take the chance," Thornton said crisply, his voice as cool as Pollard's had been. "I'll raise the money and I'll get the papers made out. I'll bring them to you at Hill's Corners on the morning of the twenty-fifth."

He reined Comet about, turning again toward the range, and gave him his head. Pollard watched him a moment, then swinging about upon his heel, went back toward the school house. Chase Harper's voice from within rose above the fiddle and guitar, calling for the quadrille. Broderick came forward to meet Pollard.

"Well?" he asked quickly. "You made him your proposition?"

"Yes."

"What did he say?" Broderick's voice and eyes alike were eager.

"He swallowed it whole," laughed Pollard.

Broderick laughed with him, and then suddenly, the laughter going out of his voice, his hand shutting down tight upon Pollard's arm and drawing him away further from the door, deeper into the shadows, his words almost a whisper, he said:

"He danced with Winifred. You saw that?"

"Yes, damn him. That's what he came for. But I don't think that they said anything...."

"Shut up, man! Don't you suppose I know what you mean? I don't know what they said. It's up to you to find out. He gave her something, a little parcel done up in paper. I don't know what. That's up to you, too. And, what's more," and his voice grew harsh with the menace in it, "it's up to you that they don't see each other again! I don't think that any harm was done tonight. He went away red-mad. When I stopped him at the door for a minute he hardly knew I was there. They didn't say a word to each other the last half of their dance. She said something to him, and her eyes were on fire when she said it, like his when he went out; that put an end to their talk. They didn't even say good night."

"I've got a notion to send her away," muttered Pollard sullenly. "It was a fool idea to drag a woman into this."

"Send her away ... now?" cried Broderick sharply. "You're the fool, Pollard. She's the best bit of evidence we've got. Keep her here, but for God's sake, man, keep her close! And let's jam this thing through to a quick finish."

"You're right, I suppose, Broderick." Pollard ran his hand across a wet forehead. "We've got to put the whole thing across in a hurry. Ten days, and we'll wind it up.... What's Cole Dalton doing?"

"He's getting mighty hot under the collar," said Broderick grimly. "He's got to get somebody in his little old jail damn' soon, or he'll have a bunch of wild men in his hair. And he knows it. Now we can get our crop planted and things will be ripe for him to gather in in eleven days."

"Let's go inside." Pollard turned toward the front door. "I want to see Winifred. I want to see how she looks before she gets through thinking about Thornton."

And Winifred Waverly, who, after her stunned hesitation when she had seen Thornton and Broderick standing side by side in the doorway, and who had hurried out through the back door, hoping to find Thornton before he had gone, got to her feet in the black shadow where she had crouched by the school house wall, her face dead white, her eyes wide and staring, her heart pounding wildly.



CHAPTER XXI

THE GIRL AND THE GAME

She did not fully understand, she could not grasp everything yet, she was filled with doubts and suspicions and a growing terror. What had her uncle said to Thornton, what had the cowboy "swallowed whole"? What was the whole scheme which connected the two men, which envolved Thornton and the sheriff, which seemed clear in one moment only to be a tangle in the next?

One thing only was perfectly clear now to the girl. And seeing it, she gathered up her skirts in her two hands and ran, ran back along the wall, keeping in the shadows, drawing close about her the dark cloak she had thrown about her white dress. She must get into the house before they came in, she must let her face show nothing, she must have time to think before she spoke with them. So she came to the back door, paused a brief moment, commanding her nerves to be steady, then slipped in, letting the cloak fall from her shoulders. She saw Bud King standing with his back to the wall watching the dancers, and going swiftly to him, putting her hand lightly upon his arm, she summoned a smile into her eyes as she cried breathlessly:

"Will you dance this with me?"

Young King looked at her in quick surprise, startled at the nearness of the girl for whom his eyes had been seeking, and a little flush ran up into his cheeks, a sparkle of gladness into his eyes.

"Sure," he grinned happily. "I been looking for you, Miss Waverly."

He ran his arm about her, she bent her head a little so that he could not see the whiteness of her face, and they caught the beat of the music. She lost the step, purposely that she might have a little more time before they pass down the room toward Pollard and Broderick, hesitated, taking her time to catch it, laughed at his apology for the mistake, noted that her own laugh sounded free and natural, caught the step, and swirled away into the crowd, daring now to look up laughingly into Bud's face unmindful of the havoc she was working in his soul. The two-step was lively; the room was warm, and the colour rose high in her cheeks. But still she was careful to turn her head a little as they whirled by the front door. But when, for the second time, the dance carried them to the end of the room where Pollard and Broderick were, she was so sure of herself that she sent a quick, laughing glance at her uncle. And a little of the tightness about her heart was gone as she saw the look of relief in his eyes.

King, reckless with the wine of her, demanded the next waltz, claiming that this had been only half a dance, and she gave it to him laughingly, the more pleased that she saw Broderick coming toward her and that this was the second time tonight that he had been a little too late, and that she saw a frown in his eyes as they followed her and King out upon the floor.

But she knew that if she play her part as she must play it until she could have time for the definite shaping of plans, she must dance again with Broderick. When he came for her she nodded carelessly, let him take her into his arms, and even looking up at him, forced a smile. For surely, if these men could do what they were doing and give no hint of it, she could play her part with clear eyes and a steady heart. She knew now that Ben Broderick was a highwayman, that he had forced upon her the insult of his kiss; already she suspected him of being the man who had murdered Bill Varney, who had committed crime upon crime. But she knew, too, and with as clear a knowledge, that she must give no slightest sign of what her thoughts were. And as a result Mrs. Sturgis, watching her, vowed to herself that "that Win Waverly was a little devil of a flirt!"

It seemed an endlessly long time until midnight. The lunches which had come in baskets and boxes were spread out upon the benches, coffee was made outside and brought in in steaming, blackened coffee pots to be poured into tin cups, and the supper was a noisy, successful affair. The girl so wanted to slip away, to get back into her own room at Pollard's house where she might drop all pretence and think, think, think! But she knew that she must seem to enjoy the dance, she must not let her uncle guess that the night had grown bitter in her mouth as it had in Buck Thornton's.

The benches were cleared and pushed back against the walls, the musicians were at it again, when Pollard came to her.

"Don't you think, Winifred, we'd better be going?" he asked quietly. "It is late, we've got a good ride ahead of us and I have a lot to do tomorrow."

But she pleaded for one more dance, and then one more, and finally with much seeming regretfulness allowed her uncle to slip on her cloak for her.

"I may be a hypocrite," she told herself a little sternly, as she sat in the buckboard at her uncle's side. "But they are playing me for a little fool! And ... and if they knew that I guessed...."

She shivered and Pollard asked if she were cold.

It was a swift drive with few words spoken. Winifred, her chin sunk in her wraps, seemed to be dozing much of the way, and Henry Pollard had enough to think about to make the silence grateful. The cream-coloured mares raced out across the level land of the valley, with little thought of the light wagon and much thought of the home stable and hay. And, racing on, they sped at last through the long alley-like street of Hill's Corners, into the glaring light from the saloons, by many shadows at the corners of houses, their ears smitten by much noise of loud voices and the clack of booted feet upon the board sidewalks. When Pollard jerked in his team at his own front gate, the girl slipped quickly from the buckboard, saying quietly:

"I think I'll go right up to bed, Uncle Henry. I'm a little tired. Thank you for taking me."

And when he said, "Good night, Winifred," she called back her good night to him, and hurried under the old pear trees to the house. In the hall she found her lamp burning where Mrs. Riddell had left it for her, and taking it up she climbed the stairs to her room.

At last she was alone and could think! Her door was locked, her light was out that no one might know she was awake, and she was crouching at the open window, staring out at the night.

Out of a tangle of many doubts, suspicions and live terrors there were at first two things which caught the high lights of her understanding, standing clear of the shadows which obscured the others. Buck Thornton was absolutely innocent of the thing she had imputed to him, and unsuspecting of the evidence which was being piled up against him. And her own uncle was the friend and the actual accomplice of the real criminal.

Her thoughts harked back to the beginning of the story as she knew it, reverting to that night when she had first seen Buck Thornton at Poke Drury's road house. From that she passed in review all that she knew of him; how he had come in while she was talking with the banker about the errand which was to carry her over a lonely trail to her uncle. At first she had been quick to suspect that Thornton had overheard a part of their conversation, that he had known from the first that she was carrying the five thousand dollars. Now she realized with a little twinge of bitter self-accusation that she had been over hasty in judging the man who had been kind to her.

She remembered how, on the trail from Dry Town, she had seen a man following her, a man whose face, at the distance he maintained, was hidden from her by his flapping hat brim, but whom she believed to be Thornton. Upon what had she founded her belief? Upon the matter of his being of about the size and form of the cowboy, upon the fact that he rode a sorrel horse and that his clothes, even to the grey neck handkerchief, were the same! How easy, how simple a matter for another man to have a sorrel horse and to wear clothes like Thornton's!

She remembered that the cowboy's surprise had seemed sincere and lively when she had told him she had seen him; she recalled his courtesy to her in the Harte cabin, his willingness to walk seven miles carrying his heavy saddle that she might have a night's rest under a roof with another woman. Not to be forgotten was the wrath in his eye and voice when she had come upon him with his limping horse, and now, at last she knew why his horse had been lamed and by whom! For that seemingly wanton cruelty had accomplished that which it was planned to do, making her certain beyond a doubt that Thornton had lied to her, that he had been the man whom she had seen following her, hence that he it was who had robbed her and had kissed her into the bargain.

Now, in an altered mood she cast in review all that John Smith and his wife had told her of him, and she knew that her first judgment there in the storm-smitten road house, when she had deemed him clean and honest and manly, had been the right judgment; that he was a man and a gentleman; that he could be all that his eyes told of him, gentle unto tenderness or as hard as tempered steel but always ... a man.

But there was so much which she did not grasp yet. She heard Henry Pollard return from the stable where he had left the horses and enter the house, passing down the hallway to his room. Still she sat, never stirring save for the little involuntary shiver which ran over her from head to foot, as her uncle came into the house. And still she worked at the patchwork of her puzzle, putting it together piece by piece.

"Buck Thornton didn't do it," she whispered to herself, looking up at the stars flung across the sky above the ugly little town. "Ben Broderick did do it. He robbed me of Uncle's money. And Uncle knows! I don't understand!"

But at last she thought that she did understand. Thornton was buying the Poison Hole ranch from Pollard. Already he had paid fifteen thousand dollars into the deal. Now, what would happen if it were proven that Thornton had stolen back from Pollard's emissary five thousand of that money? Thornton would go to jail and for a long time, and then....

But why was Pollard waiting? Why was Broderick waiting, urging the sheriff to wait? She saw it all in a flash then! They would prove ... they thought that they were sure of proof through her! ... that Buck Thornton had robbed her of the five thousand dollars. They would prove that Buck Thornton had killed Bill Varney; that he had robbed Hap Smith at Poke Drury's road house; they would prove that Buck Thornton was the man the whole country wanted, the man who had committed crime upon crime! She knew that he was a new man here, that he had lived on the Poison Hole ranch for only a year and that the evidence of which her own word was to have been a part, would be sufficient to prove to the countryside that Buck Thornton was the daredevil marauder they sought. And how undeniably strong would that evidence be if all crime ceased abruptly upon the arrest of this one man!

"It would not be the penitentiary for Buck Thornton," she thought suddenly, her face whiter than it had been when she had overheard Pollard and Broderick. "The ranch would come back into Henry Pollard's hands, the men who have committed these crimes would be able to keep the thousands and thousands of dollars they have taken from stages and stolen cattle, and Buck Thornton would go to the gallows!"

It was unbelievable, it was unthinkable, it was impossible! And yet....

"And yet," she whispered through her white lips, "it is the truth!"

She sprang to her feet, her hands clenched at her sides, her eyes blazing. Buck Thornton had been good to her and in return she had done much to give him over into their hands, she had insulted and reviled him, she had sworn to the sheriff that he had robbed her. Now suddenly she felt that she could never sleep again if she did not atone to him.

She was already at the door, her hat and gloves in her hand, ready to run down stairs, to saddle her horse, to ride to Thornton with word of warning, when a new thought came to her.

They were waiting, they were going to wait ten days; that much she had overheard. Waiting for what? For some new crime, for the monster crime of all, for the last play for the last and biggest stake?

She, too, would wait. Not ten days but until she might slip away without this danger of being seen, of her errand being guessed. In the meantime she would learn what she could.

She had not forgotten that Henry Pollard was her uncle. The thought added its bitterness. But she remembered, too, the look she had seen upon Pollard's face when she had told him that Thornton had robbed her, she remembered the look of cruel satisfaction she had surprised there more than once, and she knew that were he more than uncle, closer than uncle, she could not act otherwise than she must act now.

Then, suddenly, she sank down upon her bed, alone and lonely in the thick darkness, weary and vaguely afraid.

"Buck Thornton," she whispered, "I am afraid I need your help as much as you need mine now!"



CHAPTER XXII

THE YELLOW ENVELOPE AGAIN!

Old man King, red eyed with wrath, had gone out after the cattle rustlers in his own direct fashion, seeking to follow the trail of running steers through the mountain passes, his eye hard, his rifle ready, his mind eager to suspect any man to whom that trail might lead. But he found only confused tracks which ran toward the state border line and which vanished before even his sharp eyes, leading nowhere.

Young Bud King, his own anger little less than his father's, went forth on another trail, not after the running steers but after a man. And he went to the town of Dead Man's Alley. Mentally he had made his list of the men to whom one might look to for the commission of the crime which had driven the Bar X outfit to action. Being no man's fool, young King planned to go first to the source of the stream, as it were, and thence to travel downward seeking to see who had muddied the waters. And his "one chief bet" was that the source was in Hill's Corners.

The result of Bud King's investigations, so far as he was concerned, was little different from that of his father's and negligible. But his journey to the town of the bad name was of vast importance to others.

Winifred Waverly, upon the morning after the dance, came down late to her breakfast, and found that Pollard had waited for her. Although he was not in the habit of offering her this little courtesy, she thought nothing of it at first, having enough of other matters in her brain, perplexing her. But before the meal was over she knew why Henry Pollard had waited for her.

It was plain to her that he realized that some real importance might be attached to the matter of her having seen Buck Thornton last night, of having danced and talked with him. On the ride home he had not referred to the cattle man nor had she. Now, in great seeming carelessness but with his eyes keen upon her, he spoke lightly of the dance, mentioned that he had seen Thornton talking to one of the men at the schoolhouse door and wondered why he had gone so early.

She managed to look at him innocently and to say carelessly as he had spoken:

"I had a dance with him. He didn't say anything about leaving so soon." She even achieved a little laugh which sounded quite natural, ending, "He seemed rather put out that I did not receive him like an old friend!"

"You did not accuse him of having robbed you?"

"Not in so many words," quietly. "But I was certainly not polite to him! For a little I thought that he was going to return your money to me."

"Why?" Pollard asked sharply, and now she was sure of his readiness to suspect her of holding back something from him.