"Say, Nick," he blurted out, "it ain't a square deal to put a fellow away like this. Somebody ought to say something over him."

"No, you bet it ain't a square deal," said Nick. "We wouldn't like it if it was one of us. But what can we do? There ain't no preacher here."

"I was thinkin', Nick," Tom hesitated and blushed a deep crimson, "I was sure thinkin' that maybe—well, I thought—that you-all could say something. You know you always can say something. You-all better say it, Nick." And without waiting for denial or protest Tom took off his hat and bent his head. Nick flashed a surprised look at his companion, waiting in reverent attitude, hesitated an instant, and then doffed his hat, bent his head and began. And the good Lord who heard his prayer did not need to ask his pedigree, for the Irish intonation with which he rolled the words off his tongue in honey-like waves told his ancestry:

"Good Lord, sure and Ye'll rest this poor man's soul, for he was white clean through. Sure, and he was no coward, and no scrub, neither. But the other two—Ye'd better let them fry in their own fat till they're cracklin's. You bet, that is what they deserve, and we can prove it. Amen."

They built a close wall of rock around Bill Frank's resting place high enough to reach the over-hanging rock, and so heavy and secure that no prowling coyote could reach the body, or even dislodge a single stone. After it was all finished they decided that there ought to be something about the grave to show whose bones rested within it. Nick Ellhorn tore some blank paper from the bottom of a partly filled sheet which he found in his pocket and wrote the inscription:

"Here lies the body of Bill Frank, who was white clean through. He was done up by two of the damnedest scrubs that ever died lying down. He killed them both before Tom Tuttle and Nick Ellhorn got sight of the color of their hair, which is the only thing we can't forgive him.

"P. S. and N. B.—This is the lost Dick Winters' mine, and there is nothing in it, except Bill Frank's body."

They emptied the nuggets of gold from the tomato can and put them in their pockets. Then they folded the paper and put it in the can, with a small stone to hold it in place. Tom found an unused envelope in his pocket, and Nick printed on it, in big capitals, "Bill Frank," and they pasted it, by means of the flap, on the front of the can. Then they made a place for the can midway of the stone wall, and fastened it in so that it would be held firmly in place by the surrounding stones.

There was an easy trail down one side of the canyon, which Dick Winters had made long before by removing the largest stones. A dribble of blood, dried on the sands, marked it all the way. Perhaps a mile down the gulch it came to a sudden stop in a great heap of debris, and a zigzag path started up the side of the canyon. The two men stopped, following the course of the shelving trail with their eyes, and as they looked there was a rattle of loose stone and sand, and some dark body rolled over the side of the gulch from the top of the path. Their hands flashed to their revolver butts, and stopped there, as they watched its downward course in wonder. They saw the arms and feet of a human form flung out aimlessly as the thing rolled from ledge to ledge, and they tried to catch a glimpse of the face as now and again the head hung over a rock and disclosed for a second the ghastly features. Down it came, with the cascade of loose pebbles before it, and lay still in the hot sand at their feet. It was Jim's lifeless and mangled body. Nick glanced to the rim of the canyon wall and saw the head of a coyote peering over.

"There's the beast that tumbled him down," he whispered, and raised his revolver, but before he could shoot, the thing disappeared.

At this point the canyon walls began to grow less steep, and Dick Winters had taken advantage of the sloping, shelving side to make a zigzag trail to the summit, in some places blasting the solid rock, and in others building out the pathway with great stones. Nick and Tom followed the path to the mountain side above, where little pools of dried blood made a trail which showed the way a wounded man had taken. A little farther they found the body of Bill Haney, flat on its face, with arms spread out on either side. A coyote slunk away as they appeared, dragging its hinder parts uselessly.

"I reckon that's the one Bill Frank thought he killed," said Nick, as he put a bullet through its head.

They turned the body of Bill Haney over on its back and regarded it silently for some moments.

"Tommy," said Nick, "we ought to put these poor devils where the coyotes can't get 'em."

Tom looked away with disfavor in his face. "They might have got Emerson into a hell of a scrape. Suppose anybody but us had found Wellesly the other day! Everybody would have believed that Emerson had ordered these two measly scamps to do what they did!"

"That's so," Nick replied, "but that's all straight now, and they are past doin' any more harm, and it ain't a square deal to let a fellow be eat up by coyotes."

Tom looked down into the dead, staring eyes and soberly replied: "I guess you're right, Nick, and I sure reckon Emerson would say we ought to do it."

They carried both bodies to the bottom of the canyon and up the bloody trail until they came to a steep-sided, narrow chasm which yawned into the wider gulch. There they put their burdens down, side by side, and decently straightened the limbs, folded the hands, and closed the eyes of the two dead men.

"Now," said Nick, "we'll pile rocks across the mouth of the gulch, and then they'll be safe enough, for no coyote is going to jump down from the top of these walls."

Tom made no answer. He was standing with his hands in his pockets looking at the two bloody, mangled corpses.

"Nick, don't you-all think we'd better say something over these fellows, too? It ain't the square deal to put 'em away without a word, even if they were the worst scrubs in creation. You-all better say something, Nick, like you did before."

Tom took off his hat, without even a glance at his companion, and bent his head. Ellhorn also doffed his sombrero and bent forward in reverent attitude, ready to begin.

"Good Lord," he said, and then he stopped and hesitated so long that Tuttle looked up to see what was the matter. "Go on, Nick," he urged in a low tone.

"Good Lord, Ye'd better do as Ye think best about lettin' 'em fry in their own fat—so long. They were scrubs, that's straight, but they're dead now, and can't do any more harm. Good Lord, we hope—Ye'll see Your way to have mercy on their souls. Amen."

They began piling rocks across the mouth of the narrow chasm, and worked for some moments in silence. Nick glanced inquiringly at Tom several times, and finally he spoke:

"Say, Tommy, that was all right, I guess, wasn't it?"

"Nick, I sure reckon Emerson would say it was." And Ellhorn knew that his companion could give no stronger assent.

They built a wall high enough to keep the coyotes away from the two bodies, and then followed the trail upon the canyon wall and across the mountain side to the spring. There they found Bill Frank's camping outfit and the few things that Jim and Haney had transferred from the canyon below. They found, also, the pan and the hand mortar, rusty and battered by the storms of many years, with which Dick Winters had slowly and with infinite toil beaten and washed out the gold he was never to enjoy. After an hour's search they found the store of nuggets where Bill Frank had hidden them. Haney and Jim had never guessed how near they had come to the wealth for which they were searching.

The two men looked over the contents of pail, coffee pot, oven and cans and talked of the long, wearisome, lonely labor Dick Winters must have had, carrying the sacks of ore on his back, from his mine down the canyon, up the trail, and across the mountain side, to this little spring, where he had then to pound it up in his mortar and wash out the gold in his pan.

"It's no wonder the desert did him up," said Nick. "He had no strength left to fight it with. It's likely he was luny before he started."

"Nick, you don't reckon there's a cuss on this gold, do you? Just see how many people it has killed. Dick Winters and Bill Frank and Jim and Haney, besides all the prospectors that have died huntin' for it. You-all don't reckon anything will happen to us, or to Emerson, if we take it?"

The two big Texans, who had never quailed before man or gun, looked at each other, their faces full of sudden seriousness, and there was just a shadow of fear in both blue eyes and black. The silence and the vastness of an empty earth and sky can bring up undreamed of things from the bottom of men's minds. Ellhorn's more skeptical nature was the first to gird itself against the suggestion.

"No, Tommy, I don't reckon anything of the sort. Bill Frank gave it to us, and Dick Winters gave it to him, or, anyway, wanted him to find it and have it, and I reckon Dick Winters worked hard enough to get it to have a better right to it than God himself. It's sure ours, Tom, and I reckon there won't be any cuss on it as long as we can shoot straighter than anybody who wants to hold us up for it."



CHAPTER XVII

Emerson Mead heard the story which Ellhorn and Tuttle told and looked at the heap of yellow nuggets without enthusiasm. His face was gloomy and there was a sadness in his eyes that neither of his friends had ever seen there before. He demurred over their proposal that he should share with them, saying that he would rather they should have it all and that he had no use for so much money. When they insisted and Tom said, with a little catch in his voice, "Emerson, we can't enjoy any of it if you-all don't have your share," he replied, "Well, all right, boys. I reckon no man ever had better friends than you are."

Judge Harlin was still at the ranch, and while he and Nick and Tom were excitedly weighing the nuggets, Mead slipped out to the corral, saddled a horse and galloped across the foothills. Tuttle watched him riding away with concern in his big, round face.

"Judge," he said, "what's the matter with Emerson? Is he sick?"

"I guess not. He didn't say anything about it."

"Did you bring him any bad news?"

"Not that I know of."

"Have them fellows over in Plumas been hatchin' out any more deviltry?"

"N-no, I think not. Oh, yes, I did hear that Colonel Whittaker and Daniels and Halliday were going over to the White Sands to hunt for Will Whittaker's body. I told Emerson so. That's the only thing I know of that would be likely to disturb him."

A quick glance of intelligence flashed between Tuttle's eyes and Ellhorn's. Each was recalling Mead's promise to surrender if Will Whittaker's body could be produced. Tuttle stood silent, with his hands in his pockets, looking across the foothills to where Mead's figure was disappearing against the horizon. Then without a word he walked to the corral, saddled a horse, and went off on the gallop in the same direction.

He came upon his friend at Alamo Springs, ten miles away. This was the best water hole on Mead's ranch, and, indeed, the best in all that part of the Fernandez mountains, and was the one which the Fillmore Company particularly coveted. Its copious yield of water never diminished, and around the reservoir which Mead had constructed, half a mile below the spring, a goodly grove of young cottonwoods, which he had planted, made for the cattle a cool retreat from midday suns.

Tuttle found Mead standing beside the reservoir, flicking the water with his quirt, while the horse, with dropped bridle, waited meekly beside him. Tom dismounted and stood by Mead's side, making some remark about the cattle that were grazing within sight.

"Tommy," Emerson said abruptly, "I've about decided that I'll give up this fight, let the Fillmore folks have the damned place for what they will give, and pull my freight."

Tom looked surprised at this unheralded proposition, but paid no further attention to it. Instead, he plunged at once into the subject that concerned him.

"Emerson, what's the matter with you?"

"Nothing," Mead replied, looking at the horizon.

"Emerson, you're lying, and you know it."

"Well, then, nothing that can be helped."

"How do you know it can't?"

Mead shrugged his shoulders and rested his hand upon his horse's neck. It straightway cuddled its head against his body and began nosing his pockets. Mead brought out a lump of sugar and made the beast nod its age for the reward. Tom watched him helplessly, noting the hopeless, gloomy look on his face, and wondered what he ought to do or say. He wished Nick had come along. Nick never was at a loss for words. But his great love came to his rescue and he blurted out:

"Have you tried to do anything?"

"It's no use. There's nothing to be done. It's something that can't be helped, and I'd better just get out."

"Can't I—can't Nick and me do anything?"

"No."

Tom Tuttle was discouraged by this answer, for he knew that it meant that the trouble, whatever it was, must be beyond the help of rifles and revolvers. Still, he thought that it must have some connection with the Whittaker murder, and he guessed that Mead was in fear of something—discovery, apprehension, the result of a trial—that he meant to get rid of the whole thing by quietly leaving the country. Tom's brain required several minutes in which to reach this conclusion, but only a second longer to decide that if this was what Emerson wanted to do, it was the right thing and should have his help.

"Well," he said, "if you want to pull out on the quiet, Nick and me will stand off the Republicans over at Plumas till you get out of their reach."

"Oh, I don't mean to run away." Mead picked up the bridle and with one hand on the pommel turned suddenly around. There was a half smile about his mouth, which his sad eyes belied. Tom's idea of the case had just occurred to him. "Don't you worry about it, Tom. It has nothing to do with the Whittaker case, nor with the political fights in Las Plumas."

They remounted and cantered silently toward home. Tom was revolving in his mind everything he knew about his friend, trying to find the key to the present situation. After a long time he recalled the conversation he and Ellhorn had had, as they sat on the top of the cattle-pen fence at Las Plumas, concerning the possibility of Mead's being in love.

"Golly! I can't ask him about that!" Tuttle thought, spurring his horse to faster pace. "But I reckon I'll have to. I've got to find out what's the matter with him, and then Nick and me have got to help him out, if we can."

He rode close beside Mead and began: "Say, Emerson—" Then he coughed and blushed until his mustache looked a faded yellow against the deep crimson of his face. He glanced helplessly around, vaguely wishing some enemy might suddenly rise out of the hills whom it would be necessary to fight. But no living thing, save Emerson's own cattle, was in sight. So, having begun, he rushed boldly on:

"Say, Emerson, I don't want to be too curious about your affairs, but—this—this trouble you're in—has it—is it—anything about a—a girl?"

Mead's spurs instinctively touched his horse into a gallop as he answered, "Yes."

"Miss Delarue?"

"Yes."

"Wouldn't her father let her have you?"

Mead pulled his sombrero over his eyes with a sudden jerk, as the thought drove into his brain that he had not asked for her. The idea of asking Marguerite Delarue to marry him loomed before him as a gigantic impossibility, a thing not even to be dreamed of. He set his teeth together as he put into words for the first time the thing that was making him heart-sick, and plunged his spurs into the horse's flank with a thrust that sent it flying forward in a headlong run:

"She's going to marry Wellesly."

Tuttle lagged behind and thought about the situation. Sympathize though he did with Mead's trouble, he could not help a little feeling of gratification that after all there was to be no wife to come between them and take Emerson away from him and Nick. Emerson would forget all about it in a little while and their lifelong friendship would go on and be just as it had always been. On the whole, he felt pleased, and at the same time ashamed that he was pleased, that Miss Delarue was going to marry Wellesly.

"I don't think much of her judgment, though," he commented to himself, contemptuously. "Any girl that would take that scrub Wellesly when she might have Emerson Mead—well, she can't amount to much! Bah! Emerson's better off without her!"

That evening, as the four men sat smoking under the cottonwoods, Mead said quietly:

"Judge, I'm goin' to pull my freight."

"What do you mean, Emerson?"

"I mean that this country will be better off without me and I'll be better off without it. I'm goin' to light out."

"Soon?"

"As soon as I can give away this ranch to the Fillmore outfit, or anybody that will have it. Nick, you and Tom better take it. I'll give it to you for love and affection and one dollar, if you want to take the fight along with it."

"Nothing would please me better," Nick replied, "than to clean up all your old scores against the Fillmore outfit, but I reckon if we take it we'll just run it for you until you-all come back."

"All right. I'll turn it over to you to-morrow. You can have all you can make out of it and if I'm not back inside of five years you can divide it between you."

"Everybody will say you are running away from the Whittaker case and that you are afraid to face a trial," said Judge Harlin.

"They may say what they damn please," replied Mead.

Something like a smothered sob sounded from Tuttle's chair, and he exclaimed fiercely, "They'd better not say that to me!"

"There's no likelihood," said Judge Harlin, "that the grand jury will indict you, as things stand now, or that the case would amount to much if they should. If you want to stay and face the music, Emerson, I don't think you need to feel apprehensive about the result."

"Oh, I'm not afraid of the trial, if there should be one. But I don't think there'll be any. I'm not going to submit to arrest, trial, or anything else, until they can prove that Will Whittaker's dead, and they can't do that. I told Wellesly that I would let them arrest me whenever they can prove that Will Whittaker died with his boots on, and I'll stick to my word. I'll come back from anywhere this side of hell for my trial whenever they can prove it, and you can tell 'em so, Judge. But I'm tired of this country and done with it, and I mean to pull my freight to-morrow."

"If you want to start from Plumas you'd better ride over with me," said Harlin, "and you'd better go prepared for trouble, for the Republicans won't let you leave the country if they can help it."

"All right. They can have all the trouble they want."

"You bet they can! All they want, and a whole heap more than they'll want when it comes!" exclaimed Nick.

"That's what's the matter! We'll see that they get it!" added Tom.

The next morning they stowed the gold nuggets under the seat of Judge Harlin's buggy, in which rode Mead and Harlin, with rifles and revolvers. Tuttle and Ellhorn rode on horseback, each with a revolver in his holster and a rifle slung beside him.

Tom Tuttle was much disturbed because he alone knew the secret reason for Emerson Mead's abrupt departure. He thought Nick ought to know it, too, but he could not persuade himself that it would be the square thing for him to tell it to Ellhorn. "Nick ought to know it," he said to himself, "or he'll sure go doin' some fool thing, thinkin' Emerson's goin' away on account of the Whittaker business, but I reckon Emerson don't want me to leak anything he told me yesterday. No, I sure reckon Emerson would say he didn't want me to go gabblin' that to anybody. But Nick, he's got to know it."

After a time he chanced to recall the gossip about Miss Delarue and Wellesly, which Judge Harlin had told him, and decided that he was relieved from secrecy on that point. Still, he felt self-conscious and as if he were rubbing very near to Emerson's secret when he rode beside Ellhorn and exclaimed:

"Say, Nick, did Judge Harlin tell you that Wellesly and Frenchy Delarue's daughter are going to be married next fall?"

"The hell they are! Say, he's in luck, a whole heap better than he deserves!" Then a light broke over Nick's face, as he shot a glance at the carriage behind them. He slapped his thigh and exclaimed: "Jerusalem! Tom, that's why Emerson is pullin' his freight!"

At the moment, Tom felt guilty, as if he had betrayed a confidence, and he merely said, "Maybe it is."

"I might have known Nick would see through it in a minute," he said to himself afterward. "Well, I reckon it's all right. He knows now, and he'd sure have heard that they are going to be married, anyway."



CHAPTER XVIII

The four men stayed at Muletown that night and drove across the hot, dry levels of the Fernandez plain in the early morning. In the foothills of the Hermosa mountains there was a little place called Agua Fria—Cold Water. It was a short distance off the main road, but travelers across the plain frequently went thither to refresh themselves and their beasts with the cool waters which it furnished. It was only a small Mexican ranch, irrigated by a bountiful flow of water from a never failing spring. Cottonwood trees surrounded the house, and around the spring grew a little peach orchard. The ruins of a mining camp, long since deserted, could be seen on the hill above.

Emerson Mead and his companions turned aside into the road leading to the Agua Fria ranch and drew rein in the shade of the peach trees. A woman was washing clothes beside the spring and a man came from a near-by field where he was at work. They chatted with the couple while the horses were allowed to rest in the shade. Presently Tuttle and Ellhorn remounted and started slowly back, leaving Mead and Harlin in the buggy, ready to go, but exchanging some last words with the Mexican. The road curved below the house, through the trees, and as Tuttle and Ellhorn came out on the other side they saw a party of horsemen approaching from the main road. At once they recognized John Daniels and Jim Halliday, who were riding in the front. Behind them came half a dozen others, and in the rear of the company they saw Colonel Whittaker with some pack horses. Tom and Nick drew back into the cover of the trees and conferred a moment over the probable intentions of the party.

"They are all armed," said Tom. "Six-shooters and Winchesters on every one."

"I'll bet they're after Emerson, Tommy," Nick exclaimed. "They want trouble, and I reckon we'd better begin to give it to 'em right now."

They drew their rifles from beside their saddles, for the men were still too far away for the use of revolvers. Then Tom looked at Nick doubtfully.

"Nick, what do you-all think would be Emerson's judgment? You know he always wants the other side to begin the fight."

"My judgment is that the sooner this fight is begun the better. Them fellows are out here lookin' for trouble, and I say, if a man wants trouble, Lord! let him have it!"

He raised his rifle to his shoulder and sent a bullet singing down the road, saying to Tom as he fired: "This is just to let 'em know we're here."

The bullet creased the neck of Halliday's horse, which reared and plunged with sudden fright. The whole party checked their horses in surprise and looked intently toward the clump of cottonwoods from which the shot had come. Tom raised his gun to his shoulder, saying, "You've started the fun, Nick, so here goes," and he sent a rifle ball whizzing past Daniels' ear. Harlin and Mead dashed around the house in the buggy, jumped out, and tied their horses in the rear of the trees. Tuttle and Ellhorn dismounted and dropped their bridles.

The approaching party paused for a moment in a close group and held an excited conference. Then they separated and, drawing their guns from the saddle scabbards, sent a volley into the grove. Four rifle bullets made quick answer and set their horses to rearing. It was some time before the beasts could be made quiet enough for the shots to be returned, and in the meantime bullets were pattering all about them. Colonel Whittaker stopped far in the rear with the pack horses, beyond the reach of the rifle balls, and the others made a sudden dash forward. Checking their horses, they fired a concerted volley into the trees. One of the bullets scorched the band of Tom's hat.

"Nick," said Tom, "that was Daniels fired that shot. He's gettin' too impudent. You take care of him while I clean my gun. Don't you let him get any closer, but don't hurt him, for he's my meat."

He went down on the ground cross-legged and swabbed his gun-barrel while the bullets pattered on the ground about him and thudded into the trees and ploughed up the dirt at his feet. Nick bent his rifle on the sheriff and sent a bullet through his hat brim and another through his horse's ear, and bit his bridle with one and tore his trouser leg with another. One dropped and stung on the beast's fetlock as Tom sprang to his feet exclaiming, "Now I'll get him!"

Daniels first checked his horse, and then lost control of it as the bridle broke, and when the bullet struck its fetlock it wheeled and went flying to the rear. The sheriff felt a tingle in his left arm, and, maddened, he seized the severed parts of his bridle and forced the horse to face about. Then he bent forward, apparently taking careful aim at one of the figures beneath the trees, but before he could fire, his horse reared and plunged and went down in a heap beneath him.

In the meantime, Nick, Emerson, and Judge Harlin were exchanging rapid shots with the rest of the sheriff's party. Those of the latter went rather wild, because their frightened horses made it impossible for them to take careful aim. And also by reason of the constant dancing about of the beasts, the accurate markmanship of the men under the trees was not of much avail. Nick found that his magazine was empty and called out:

"Tom, give me some of your hulls! I used up all mine keepin' your darned sheriff back. Gimme some hulls quick!"

He dropped a handful of cartridges into the magazine and raised his rifle with the remark, "Now see 'em scatter!"

The sharp, crashing din of the Winchesters kept steadily on. One of the Daniels party fell over on his horse's neck, and two of their animals became unmanageable. Daniels had knelt behind his fallen horse and across its body he was taking careful aim. Tom felt a bullet graze his cheek, and saw whence it had come. "I'll put a stop to that," he exclaimed, and in another moment the sheriff tumbled over with a bullet in his shoulder. Mead felt a sharp pain in one side, and knew that hot lead had kissed his flesh. It was the first wound he had ever received. With a scream of pain a horse fell, struggling, beneath its rider. From one man's hands the rifle dropped and his right arm hung helpless by his side. Another horseman swayed in his saddle and fell to the ground, and his horse galloped to the rear, dragging the man part of the way with his foot in the stirrup.

Still the remnant of horsemen held their own against the steady rain of bullets from the trees. Presently a flesh wound made Halliday's horse unmanageable and it bolted straight for the grove. The four men paused with fingers on triggers, looking at him in wonder.

"Who would have thought he had the sand to do that!" Mead exclaimed.

Suddenly his horse turned and flew toward the rear. "Whoo-oo-oo-ee!" came a derisive shout from the grove, followed by a volley of bullets. The other horsemen took advantage of the diverted firing, and made a dash forward, dropping their rifles across their saddles and using their revolvers. It was evident that they hoped, by this sudden charge, to dislodge the enemy and force a retreat.

"Out and at 'em, boys," yelled Nick. "Whoo-oo-oo-ee!" And the four men rushed from under cover of the trees, rifles in hand, straight toward the approaching horsemen.

Dropping on one knee and firing, then rising and running forward a few steps, and dropping and firing again, they dashed toward the enemy. Surprised and confused by this sudden move, the horsemen halted, irresolute, then turned and fled down the road.

"Buffaloed!" yelled Mead.

"After 'em, boys!" shouted Judge Harlin. And the four started on the run after the retreating enemy.

"Chase 'em to Plumas!" yelled Nick.

"And learn 'em to let us alone after this!" bellowed Tom, in a voice that reached the ears of the flying party, above the muffled roar of their horses' hoofs.

Halliday had got his horse under control again by the time he reached the place where Colonel Whittaker stood guard, beside the pack horses, and after a few hasty words with Whittaker he started back. When he saw the rout of his party he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and waving it aloft he came galloping on.

"Look at that, will you!" yelled Nick. "They want to surrender!"

"I reckon they want to have a conference," said Judge Harlin.

The four men halted and stood with their guns in their hands, waiting Halliday's approach.

"Emerson," he called, "do you stick to what you told Mr. Wellesly?"

"What do you mean?"

"That you'd submit to arrest when we could prove that Will Whittaker died by violence."

"Certainly, I do."

"Then hand over your guns, for we've got his body!"

"Let me see it first. If I can recognize it I'll keep my word."

"It's back there where his father is."

"Well, bring it here."

"Will you keep the truce?"

"Yes, if you do."

Halliday galloped down the road again, and presently returned with Colonel Whittaker. Between them was one of the pack horses with something lashed to its back. They walked their horses to the spot where the four men stood, untied the pack, spread a blanket on the ground, and laid on it the ghastly, mangled remains of what had once been a man's body.

"We found it in the White Sands," Halliday explained. "It had been buried nearly at the top of the ridge and the coyotes had dug it out and this is all they had left. But his father here, and every one of us, have identified it."

Mead and his friends looked the body over carefully. The face had been gnawed by coyotes and picked by buzzards until not a recognizable feature was left. The shining white teeth glared from a lipless mouth. Closely cropped black hair still covered the head. On one hand was a plain gold ring set with a large turquoise.

"You must remember that ring," said the father. Mead nodded. Colonel Whittaker slipped it from the finger, dried and burned by the sun, and showed the four men the initials, "W. W.," on the inside. The clothing was badly tattered and much of it had been torn away. Part of a pongee silk shirt still hung on the body. On the inside of the collar were the young man's initials worked in red silk. "His mother did that," said Colonel Whittaker. Around the neck was a dark-colored scarf, and in it was an odd, noticeable pin, a gold nugget of curious shape. The four men had all seen Will Whittaker wear it many times. A ragged remnant of a coat hung on the mangled body. In the breast pocket Colonel Whittaker showed them some letters and a small memorandum book. From the book had been torn some leaves and all the remaining pages were blank. But on the inside of the leather cover the name, "Will Whittaker," had been printed in heavy black letters. Rain and sun had almost obliterated the addresses on the two envelopes in the pocket, but enough of the letters could still be made out to show what the words had probably been.

Halliday turned the body over and showed them three bullet holes in the back, in the left shoulder blade. They were so close together that their ragged edges touched one another, and a silver dollar would have covered all of them. Apparently, the man had been shot at close range and the bullets had gone through to the heart.

Mead finished his inspection of the body and turned to Halliday. All the rest of the party had come up and dismounted and were standing beside their horses around the grisly, mangled thing and the four men who were examining it. Several of the men were wounded and blood was dripping over their clothing. A red mark across Tuttle's cheek showed how narrow had been his escape, and a bloody stain on Mead's shirt told the story of a flesh wound.

"Jim," Mead began, and then paused, looking Halliday squarely in the eyes, while his own friends and the sheriff's party edged closer, all listening breathlessly. None of them had any idea what he was going to say, whether it would be surrender, or defiance and a declaration of continued war. Nick and Tom exchanged glances and cocked their revolvers, which they held down beside their legs. "Jim," Mead went on, "I acknowledge nothing about this body except that, as far as I can see, it seems to be the body of Will Whittaker and he seems to have died from these pistol shots. But I reckon it calls, merely on the face of it, mind, for me to make good the word I gave to Wellesly. Here are my guns."

He handed his rifle to Halliday, unfastened his cartridge belt and passed that and his revolver to the deputy sheriff. Among the Whittaker party there were some glances of surprise, but more nods of congratulation. Nick and Tom looked at each other in indignant dismay. Tom's eyes were full of tears and his lips were twitching. "What did he want to do that for?" he whispered to Nick. "We had 'em sure buffaloed and on the run, and now he's plum' spoiled the whole thing!"

"I reckon it was the best thing you could do, Emerson," said Judge Harlin, "but I'm sorry you had to do it."

Mead saw Daniels in the crowd around the body. "Hello, John," he called, "I thought we tipped you over just now. Hurt much?"

"No, not much. Only a scratch on the shoulder."

The entire party went around to the spring and bathed one another's wounds, and the Mexican woman tore her sheets into strips and made bandages for them. No one had been killed, but there were a number of flesh wounds and some broken bones. They hired horses of the Mexican to take the place of those that had been killed and then started for Las Plumas, Mead riding between Daniels and Halliday. Judge Harlin, with Nick and Tom, followed some distance in the rear.

Tom looked after them, as they rode away, with angry eyes. His huge chest was heaving with sobs he could scarcely control. "Damn their souls," he exclaimed fiercely to Nick, "if Emerson wasn't among them I'd open on 'em right now."

"How we could buffalo 'em," assented Nick.

"It was a damned shame," Tuttle went on indignantly, "for Emerson to give up that way. We could have cleaned 'em all out and got rid of 'em for good, if he hadn't given up. We'll never get such a chance again, and the Lord knows what will happen to Emerson now!" And Tom bent his huge frame over his gun and bowed his head on his hands, while a great sob convulsed his big bulk from head to foot. He and Judge Harlin argued the question all the way to Las Plumas, and the judge well-nigh exhausted his knowledge of law and his ingenuity in argument in the effort to convince his companion that Emerson Mead had done the best thing possible for him to do. But the last thing Tom said as they drew up in front of Judge Harlin's office was:

"Well, it was a grand chance to clean out Emerson's enemies, for good and all, and make an end of 'em, so that he could live here in peace. It was plumb ridiculous not to do it."



CHAPTER XIX

The grand jury sat upon the Whittaker case and returned a true bill against Emerson Mead, indicting him for the murder of Will Whittaker. Mead was confined in the jail at Las Plumas to await his trial, which would not take place until the following autumn. The finding of Will Whittaker's body convinced many who had formerly believed in his innocence that Mead was guilty. Everybody knew that his usual practice in shooting was to fire three quick shots, so rapidly that the three explosions were almost a continuous sound, pause an instant, and then, if necessary, fire three more in the same way. The three bullets were pretty sure to go where he meant they should, and if he wished he could put them so close together that the ragged edges of the holes touched one another, as did those in the back of Whittaker's corpse. It was the number and character of those bullet holes that made many of Mead's friends believe that he was guilty of the murder. "Nobody but Emerson could have put those bullets in like that," they said to themselves, although publicly the Democrats all loudly and persistently insisted that he was innocent.

In the constant debate over the matter which followed the finding of the body the Democrats contended that the two men who had held Thomson Tuttle captive all night near the White Sands must have been the murderers. And it was on them and their mysterious conduct that Judge Harlin rested his only hope for his client. The lawyer did not believe they had Whittaker's body in their wagon, although he intended to try to make the jury think so. Privately he believed that Mead was guilty, but he admitted this to no one, and in his talks with Mead he constantly assumed that his client was innocent. He had never asked Mead to tell him whether or not he had committed the murder.

Nick Ellhorn and Tom Tuttle lingered about Las Plumas for a short time, sending their gold to the mint, and trying to contrive some scheme by which Emerson Mead could be forced into liberty. Each of them felt it a keen personal injury that their friend was in jail, and they were ready to forego everything else if they could induce him to break his promise and with them make a wild dash for freedom. But he would listen to none of their plans and told them, over and over, that he had given his word and proposed to keep it.

"Of course," he said, "when I made that promise to Wellesly I didn't suppose they would find Will's body. But they did, and I mean to keep my promise. I gave my word for you-all too, and I don't want you to make any fool breaks that will cause people to think I'm trying to skip."

Finally they gave up their plans and Tom returned to his duties with Marshal Black at Santa Fe and Nick went out to Mead's ranch to keep things in order there.

Ellhorn returned to Las Plumas for his own trial, the result of which was that he was found guilty of assault and battery upon the Chinese and fined five hundred dollars. The moment sentence was pronounced upon him he strode to the judge's desk and laid down his check for the amount of his fine. Then he straightened up, thrust his hands in his pockets, and exclaimed:

"Now, I want that pig tail!"

"You are fined five dollars for contempt of court," said the judge, frowning at the tall Texan, who looked very much in earnest.

"All right, Judge! Here you are!" said Nick cheerfully, as he put a gold piece down beside the check. "Now, I want that Chiny pig tail! It's mine! I've paid big for it! It's cost me five hundred and five dollars, and no end of trouble, and it belongs to me."

"You are fined ten dollars for contempt of court," the judge said severely, biting his lips behind his whiskers.

"Here you are, Judge!" and Nick spun a ten-dollar gold piece on the desk. "I want that scalp as a memento of this affair, and to remind me not to mix my drinks again. I've paid for it, a whole heap more'n it's worth, and I demand my property!" And Nick brought his fist down on the judge's desk with a bang that made the gold coins rattle.

"Mr. Sheriff, remove this man!" ordered the Judge, and John Daniels stepped forward to seize his arm. Ellhorn leaped to one side, exclaiming, "I'll not go till I get my property!" He thrust his hand into the accustomed place for his revolver, and with a look of surprise and chagrin on his face stood meekly before the sheriff.

"A man can't get his rights unless he has a gun, even in a court," he growled, as he submitted to be led out. At the door he looked back and called to the judge:

"That scalp's mine, and I mean to have what I've paid for, if I have to sue your blamed old court till the day o' judgment!" And he went at once and filed a suit against the district attorney for the recovery of the queue.

Marguerite Delarue kept on with her quiet life through the summer, caring for little Paul and attending to her father's house. She did not see Emerson Mead again after the day when, with her little white sunbonnet pulled over her disordered hair, she helped her baby brother to mount his horse. Long before the summer was over she decided that he cared nothing for her and that she must no longer feel more interest in him than she did in any other casual acquaintance. But sometimes she wakened suddenly, or started at her work, seeming to feel the intent gaze of a pair of brown eyes. Then she would blush, cry a little, and scold herself severely.

It was late in the summer when Albert Wellesly made his next visit to Las Plumas. He had decided to buy a partly abandoned gold mine in the Hermosa mountains, and he explained to Marguerite Delarue, as he sat on her veranda the afternoon of his arrival, that he was making a hurried visit to Las Plumas in order to give it a thorough examination. And then he added in a lower tone and with a meaning look in his eyes, that that was not the only reason for the trip. She blushed with pleasure at this, and he felt well enough satisfied not to go any farther just then.

He came to see her again after he returned from the mine. It was Sunday afternoon, and they sat together on the veranda, behind the rose and honeysuckle vines, with Marguerite's tea table between them. He told her about his trip to the mine and what he thought of its condition and deferentially asked her advice in some small matters that had an ethical as well as a commercial bearing. She listened with much pleasure and her blue eyes shone with the gratification that filled her heart, for never before had a man, fighting his battles with the world, turned aside to ask her whether or not he was doing right. Then he told her how much he valued her judgment upon such matters and how much he admired and reverenced the pure, high standard of her life. His tones grew more lover-like as he said it would mean far more to him than he could express if he might hope that her sweet influence would some day come intimately into his own life. Then he paused and looked at her lowered eyelids, bent head and burning cheeks. But she said nothing, sitting as still as one dead, save for her heaving breast. After a moment he went on, saying that he cared more for her than for any other woman he had ever known, and that if she did not love him then, he would be willing to wait many years to win her love, and make her his wife. Still she did not speak, and he laid one hand on hers, where it rested on the table, and whispered softly, "Marguerite, do you love me?" With that she lifted her head, and the troubled, appealing look in her eyes smote his heart into a brighter flame. He pressed her hand in a closer grasp and exclaimed, "Marguerite, dearest, say that you love me!"

The innocent, fluttering, maiden heart of her, glad and proud to feel that she had been chosen above all others, but doubtful of itself, and ignorant of everything else, leaped toward him then and a wistful little smile brightened her face. She opened her lips to speak, but suddenly she seemed to see, beside the gate, a tall and comely figure bending toward her with eyes that burned her cheeks and cast her own to the ground. She snatched her hand from Wellesly's grasp and buried her face in her palms.

"I do not know," she panted. "I must think about it."

"Yes, certainly, dear—you will let me call you dear, won't you—take time to think it over. I will wait for your answer until your heart is quite sure. I hope it will be what I want, and don't make me wait very long, dear. Good-bye, sweetheart."

He lifted her hand to his lips and went away. She sat quite still beside the table, her burning face in her hands, her breast a turmoil of blind doubts, and longings, and keen disappointments with, she knew not what, and over all an imperious, sudden-born wish to be loved.

Wellesly walked down the street smiling to himself in serene assurance of an easy victory. He was accustomed to having women show him much favor, and more than one had let him know that he might marry her if he wished. Moreover, he thought himself a very desirable match, and he did not doubt for an instant that any woman, who liked him as well as he was sure Marguerite did, would accept his offer.

"It was evidently her first proposal," he thought, "and she did not know exactly what to do with it. She is as shy and as sweet as a little wood-violet. Some girls, after my undemonstrative manner this afternoon, would write me a sarcastic note with a 'no' in it as big as a house. But nothing else would have done with Marguerite. She isn't one of the sort that wants every man she knows to begin kissing her at the first opportunity. And that is one of the reasons I mean to marry her. The other sort are all very well, but a man doesn't want to marry one of them. I want my wife to have such dignity and modesty that I can feel sure no other man ever has, or ever will, kiss her but me. And I can feel sure of that with Marguerite—just as sure as I can that I'll have a favorable answer from her by the time I make my next visit to Las Plumas."

Marguerite sat behind her screen of honeysuckle vines, her face in her hands and a mob of blind, wild, incoherent desires and doubts making tumult in her heart, until she heard her father's footsteps in the house. Pierre Delarue had been taking his Sunday afternoon siesta, and he came out upon the veranda in a very comfortable frame of mind. He patted Marguerite's shoulder affectionately and asked her to make him a cup of tea. He was very fond of his fair young daughter, who had grown into the living likeness of the wife he had married in the days of his exuberant youth. But he rarely withdrew his thoughts from outside affairs long enough to be conscious of his affection, except on Sunday afternoons, when interest and excitement on Main street were at too low an ebb to attract his presence. On other days, she endeared herself to him by the sympathetic attention she gave to his accounts of what was going on down-town and to his rehearsals of the speeches he had made. On Sundays, when he had the leisure to feel a quickened sense of responsibility, he both pleased himself and felt that he was discharging a duty to her by discoursing upon his observations and experiences of the world and by propounding his theories of life and conduct. For Pierre prided himself on his philosophy quite as much as he did on his oratory.

Marguerite, on her part, was very fond of her father, but it was a fondness which considered his love of speech-making and his flighty enthusiasms with smiling tolerance. Her cooler and more critical way of looking at things had caused her, young as she was, to distrust his judgment in practical affairs, and about most matters she had long since ceased asking his advice.

She sat beside him and talked with him while he drank his cup of tea. A recently married young couple passed the house, and Marguerite made some disapproving comment on the man's character, adding that she did not understand how so nice a girl could have married him.

"Oh, he has a smooth and ready tongue," answered her father, "and I dare say it was easy for him to make love. When you are older you will know that it is the man who can talk love easily who can make the most women think they love him." Pierre Delarue stopped to drink the last of his tea, and Marguerite blushed consciously, remembering the scene through which she had just passed. She rose to put his cup on the table, and was glad that her face was turned away from him when next he spoke:

"When a man tells a woman that he loves her," Delarue went on, "and it rolls easily off his tongue, she should never believe a word that he says. If a man really loves a woman, those three little words, 'I love you,' are the hardest ones in the whole world for him to say. Most women do not know that when they hear their first proposals, but they ought to know it, especially in this country, where they make so much of love. But, after all, I do not know that it makes so much difference, because all women want to hear no end of love talked to them, and it is only the man who does not feel it very deeply who can talk enough about it to satisfy them. A woman is bound to be disappointed, whichever way she marries, for she is sure to find out after a while that the flow of words is empty, and the love without the words never satisfies. After all, it is better for a woman to think of other things than love when she marries. They manage these things better in France. Don't you think so, my daughter?"

There was a deep thrill of passionate protest in her voice as she answered, "No, father, I certainly do not."

He laughed indulgently and patted her hand as he said: "Ah, you are a little American!" Then he added, more seriously: "I suppose you, too, will soon be thinking of love and marriage."

She threw her arms around his neck and there was a sob in her voice as she exclaimed: "Father, I shall never marry!"

He smoothed her brown hair and laid his hand on her shoulder saying, "Ah, that means you will surely be married within a year!"

She shook her head. "No, I mean it, father! I shall never marry!"

"My dear, I should be sorry if you did not," he answered with dignity, and with a strong note of disapproval in his voice. "For what is a woman who does not marry and bear children? Nothing! She is a rose bush that never flowers, a grape vine that never fruits. She is useless, a weed that cumbers the earth. No, my daughter, you must marry, or displease your father very much."

Marguerite lay awake long that night, trying to decide what she ought to do. Her father's words gave sight to a blind, vague misgiving she had already felt, but at the same time she could not believe that Wellesly meant less than his words when he told her that he loved her and wished to make her his wife.

"Why should he propose to me if he does not wish to marry me?" she argued with herself, "and why should he want to marry me if he does not love me? No, he surely loves me. Perhaps father is right about the Frenchmen. He knows them, but he does not understand the Americans. They always feel so sure about things, and they do everything as if there was no possibility of failure. But I wish I knew if I love him! I suppose I do, for I felt so pleased that he should wish to marry me. But I don't have to decide at once. I'll wait till he comes to Las Plumas again before I give him an answer."

She debated whether or not she ought to tell her father and ask his advice, but she feared that in his mind other considerations would outweigh the one she felt to be the chief, and she decided to say nothing to him until she knew her own mind in the matter. "If I refuse him," she said to herself, "there will be no reason for me to say anything about it, and it wouldn't be fair to Mr. Wellesly for me to tell father or any one else that he had proposed to me. Besides, father might possibly speak of it outside, and I couldn't bear to think that people were gossiping about it. No, I will not say anything, unless I should decide that I want to marry him. Then I will ask father if he thinks I'd better."

The next morning she woke with a sudden start, all her consciousness filled with an overwhelming desire to love and be loved, to be all of life to some one who would be more than life to her. She sat up, panting, pressing her hand to her heart. At once her thoughts leaped to Wellesly.

"He loves me, he has told me so, and surely this is love I feel now, and for him. I suppose—I do—love him."

She lifted her nightgown above her bare feet and stood beside little Paul's crib. With her disheveled hair falling in waving masses around her face she bent over him and lightly kissed his forehead.

"My little Bye-Bye, I would not leave you to be any man's wife. But he will not wish me to leave you, because he thinks—that it is beautiful and noble that I—that I have cared for you—though how could I have done anything else—and that is partly why he loves me. Surely, I love him, and I suppose—it is best—for me to marry him. But I'll wait till he comes again—there!"

With burning cheeks she stood erect and stamped one bare foot on the floor. Again the memory of the brown eyes smote suddenly into her consciousness. Her chin took a sharper angle and her red lips shut tightly as she threw back her head and twisted her fingers together.

"I will not think of him again," she said slowly, in a low voice. "He is in jail, to be tried for murder, and he will probably be hung—" She hesitated, her face turned white and there was a spasmodic throbbing in her throat, but she went resolutely on: "And he does not care the least thing about me. He was merely fond of my little Bye-Bye, and I am grateful to him for that. But he is nothing to me. I'll marry Mr. Wellesly—I think—but I'll wait—" And then the throbbing in her throat choked her voice and she threw herself upon the bed and buried her face in the pillow and cried. Just as thousands of young girls have cried over their fluttering, doubtful, ignorant maiden hearts, ever since man gave up seizing the girl of his choice and carrying her away, willy-nilly, and began proposing to her instead.



CHAPTER XX

The first days of October were at hand, and the court session at which Emerson Mead was to be tried for the murder of Will Whittaker would soon open. The supreme court of the territory was sitting at Santa Fe, and its decision upon the shrievalty would be announced in a few days. The flames of partisan feeling were already breaking out in Las Plumas. The dividing line of Main street had begun to be drawn, although fitfully as yet, and conveniently forgotten if business called to the other an occupant of either side. But in the matter of mint juleps, cocktails, and the swapping of yarns Main street stretched its dusty length between Republicans and Democrats as grim and impassable as a mountain barrier. On both sides there were meaning glances and significant nods and half-spoken threats of assault and resistance. The Democrats professed to believe that the Republicans were determined to hold the office of sheriff through the trial of Emerson Mead, whatever should be the decision, in order that they might find some means to end his life should the court discharge him. The Republicans insisted that the Democrats were planning to seize the office by hook or by crook before the trial should begin in order that they might allow him to escape. And each side declared, with angry eyes and set teeth, that the other should not be allowed to thwart justice, if the streets of Las Plumas had to be paved with dead men.

Judge Harlin sent word to Mead's ranch, asking Nick Ellhorn to come into town as soon as possible, and telegraphed to Tom Tuttle at Santa Fe to return to Las Plumas at once. But it happened that Tom was chasing an escaped criminal in the Gran Quivera country, far from railroads and telegraphs, and that Nick was out on the range and did not receive the message until nearly a week later.

Nick had settled the matter of the Chinaman's queue on his last visit to Las Plumas, two weeks before, but not to his entire satisfaction. Judge Harlin had refused to conduct his suit for the recovery of the queue against Harry Gillam, the district attorney, and Nick had declared that he would be his own lawyer and get that "scalp," if it "took till he was gray headed." Secretly, he was glad that Judge Harlin would not take the case, because he had an active animosity against Harry Gillam, mainly because Gillam wore a silk hat, and he thought that, as his own lawyer, he could contrive to cast enough ridicule on the district attorney to set the whole town laughing and make Gillam so angry that he would lose his temper and want to fight. So he set about preparing his case, with advice and suggestion from Judge Harlin, who, while he did not wish to be openly connected with the matter, was very willing to see Gillam, who was a Republican and the judge's chief professional rival, made a laughing stock and brought to grief. And he knew that the case, with Nick Ellhorn at the helm, would be the funniest thing that had happened in Las Plumas for many a day. Ellhorn's plans began to be whispered about. Presently the whole town was chuckling and smiling in anticipation of the fun there would be at the trial. Gillam fidgeted in nervous apprehension for several days; then he put the pig tail in his pocket, hunted up Ellhorn and invited him to have a drink. As they drained their glasses he exclaimed:

"Oh, by the way, Nick, are you really in earnest about that fool suit you've filed against me?"

"You mean about my Chiny pigtail?" asked Ellhorn.

"About the Chinaman's queue, yes."

"You bet I am. That blamed thing's cost me a whole heap more'n it's worth to anybody except me and the Chinaman. I reckon he's sold it to me for that five hundred dollars. It's mine, and I mean to have it. I sure reckon I naturalized one heathen when I took that scalp. There's one bias-eyed fan-tanner that won't pull his freight for Chiny as soon as he gets his pockets full of good American money. I reckon I was a public benefactor when I sheared that washee-washee, and I deserve the pig tail as a decoration for my services. No, sir, the scalp's mine, by every count you can mention, and you'll have to give it up."

"Is the queue all you want?"

"If that's all you've got that belongs to me."

"Well, then, take it, and stop your jackassing about the fool thing," said Gillam, holding out the queue.

"The hell you say!" Nick exclaimed, quite taken aback and much disappointed.

"Yes, here it is. And I call these gentlemen to witness that I offer it to you freely and without any conditions."

So Nick reluctantly took the braid and gave up his case against Gillam. "It was just like the blamed whelp," he complained to Judge Harlin, "to back down and spoil all the fun, but it's no more than you might expect from a man that wears a stove-pipe." Harry Gillam was the only man in Las Plumas who wished, or dared to wear a silk hat, and his taste in the matter of headgear gave constant edge to Ellhorn's feeling of contempt and aversion. "I'm blamed sorry for it," Nick went on, "for I sure reckon half the kids in town would have been shyin' rocks at that plug before the trial was over."

"I guess he was buffaloed," he said later, as he finished giving an account of the affair to Emerson Mead. "It was the meanest sort of a backdown you ever saw, but it just showed the fellow's gait. A man with no more grit than that had better go back east, where he can wear a stove-pipe hat without lookin' like a fool, which he sure is."

"What made you so determined to have the thing, Nick?" Mead asked, examining the braid.

Nick gave a twist to the ends of his mustache and looked contemplatively at the ceiling. "Well," he said slowly, and there were signs of the Irish roll in his voice, "it was my scalp. I took it, first, and then I was after payin' for it. Sure and I wanted it, Emerson, to remind me not to mix my drinks again. It's my pledge to take whisky straight and beer the next day. And I sure reckon whenever I look at it I'll say to myself, 'Nick, you've been a blooming, blasted, balky, blithering, bildaverous idiot once too often. Don't you do it again.'"

Notwithstanding his feeling about it, Ellhorn went away and forgot the earnest of his future good behavior. Emerson smiled that evening as he saw it trailing its snaky length over the back of a chair and stuffed it in the side pocket of his coat, thinking he would give it to Ellhorn the next time his friend should come to the jail.

Judge Harlin thought Emerson Mead unaccountably despondent about the probable outcome of his trial, and at times even indifferent to his fate. He wondered much why this man, formerly of such buoyant and determined nature, should suddenly collapse, in this weak-kneed fashion, lose all confidence in himself, and seem to care so little what happened to him. The lawyer finally decided that it was all on account of his client's honesty and uprightness of character, which would not allow him, being guilty, to make an effort to prove that he was not, and he lived in daily expectation of an order from Mead to change his plea to guilty. The time was drawing near for the opening of the case when Judge Harlin one day hurried excitedly to the jail for a conference with Mead.

"Emerson," he said, "some member of the last grand jury has been leaking, and it has come to my ears that testimony was given there by some one who declared he saw you kill Whittaker. And I've just found out that the other side has got a witness, presumably the same one, who will swear to the same thing."

Mead's face set into a grim defiance that rejoiced Harlin more than anything that had happened since his client's imprisonment, as he answered:

"I've been expecting this. Who is it and what's his testimony?"

"I haven't been able to learn any details about it—merely that he will swear he saw you kill Whittaker. I'm not positive who the man is, but I feel reasonably sure I've spotted him. I think he is a Mexican, a red-headed Mexican, called Antone Colorow."

Mead nodded. "I think likely," he said, and then he told Judge Harlin how Antone had tried to lasso him and of the angry man's threats of revenge for his broken wrists. "I've expected all along," he added, "that they'd come out with some such lay as that. I don't see how we can buck against it," he went on, despondently, "for I can't prove an alibi. Unless you can break down his testimony we might as well give up."

"I guess there won't be any difficulty about that," said Harlin assuringly. "What you've just told me will be a very important matter, and if I can keep Mexicans off the jury it won't take much to convince Americans that he is lying, just because he is a Mexican."

After Judge Harlin went away Mead sat on the edge of his bed, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands, and his broad shoulders rounded into an attitude of deep dejection.

"What is the use?" his thoughts ran. "They are bound to get me sooner or later, and it might just as well be now as any time. It won't make any difference whether they clear me or convict me. She will believe me guilty anyway, because her father and all her friends will say so." He rose and began pacing the room and his thoughts turned persistently to Marguerite Delarue. Since he had heard the rumor of her approaching marriage to Wellesly he had tried not to let his thoughts rest upon her, but sometimes the rush of his scanty memories would not be forbidden.

Again he recalled the day when he first saw her, as she stood with her sick baby brother in her arms. She was so young, so blooming, so fair, that her anxious face and troubled eyes seemed all the more appealing. He remembered that he had looked at her a moment before he could speak, and in that moment love smote his heart. He had wished to see her father and she had laid the sick child on a couch while she left the room. The little one had fretted and he had sat down beside it and shown it his watch and his revolver, and it had put out its hands to him, and when Marguerite came back she had found the big, tall, broad-shouldered man cradling the sick child in his arms. He halted in his moody pacing of the cell and a sudden, shivering thrill shot through his whole big body as he saw again the look of pleasure and of trustful admiration which had lighted her face and shone in her dark blue eyes. The child had clung to him and, pleased, he had asked if he might not take it in his arms for a short ride on his horse. And after that, whenever he had passed the Delarue house alone, he had tried to see the little boy, and had tried still more, in roundabout ways, to bring the child's sister outside the house, where he might see her and hear her voice. Four times he had done that, and once he had seen her in her father's store and had held a few minutes' conversation with her. He remembered every word she had said. He repeated them all to himself, and went over again every least incident of the times he had stopped his horse at her gate and had taken the laughing child from her arms and they had looked at each other and he had tried to say something—anything, and then had ridden away.

When the meager little memories were all done he sat down on his bed again and felt that nothing mattered, since she was to marry Albert Wellesly and would surely believe him guilty of all that was charged against him. He felt no jealousy of her chosen husband, and no anger toward Wellesly because he had won her. He was conscious only of a vague wonder that any man had dared ask Marguerite Delarue to be his wife.

On Saturday of the first week in October Judge Harlin received a private dispatch from Santa Fe saying that the supreme court had decided the shrievalty contest in favor of Joe Davis, the Democratic candidate. At once the threatened storm began to break. By noon Main street was again divided into two opposing camps. Every rifle, revolver and shot-gun in the town that was not carried on some man's person was put within easy reach of ready hands. Shops and offices, stores and gardens were deserted, and men hurried to the center of the town, where they drifted along the sidewalk or stood in doorways in excited groups, each side anxiously and angrily on the alert for some open act of hostility from the other. The Republicans said they had not received official notice of the decision of the court, and that they would not surrender the office until it should reach them. The Democrats demanded that it be given up at once and accused the other side of secreting the court order with the intention of holding the office through Emerson Mead's trial. The district court was to convene at Las Plumas on the following Monday. Mead's case was the first on the docket.

Men who were next door neighbors, or friends of long standing, passed each other with scowls or averted faces, if they were members of the opposing parties. Mrs. John Daniels was planning to give a swell breakfast to a dozen chosen friends early the next week, the first appearance of that form of entertainment in Las Plumas society, and she was delightedly pluming herself over the talk the function would be sure to create and the envious admiration her friends would feel because she had introduced something new. She had talked the matter over with her dearest friend, Mrs. Judge Harlin, whom she had sworn to secrecy, and she was on her way to the post-office to mail her invitations when she saw that the threatened storm was breaking. Her glance swept up Main street on one side and down on the other, and she turned about and hurried home to substitute in her list of guests for those whose sympathies were Democratic, others whose masculine affiliations were Republican.

Hurried messages were sent out to mines and cattle ranches, and in the afternoon fighting men of both parties began to come in from the country. A procession of horsemen poured into the town, bronzed and grim-faced men, each with a roll of blankets behind him, a revolver at his side, a rifle swung to his saddle, or a shot-gun across its pommel. They loped about the town, sometimes surrounding the court-house, angrily discussing whether or not the clerk of the court was probably hiding the official order, and sometimes lining the two sides of Main street, as if they were two opposing companies of cavalry ready to join battle. Among the Republican forces Judge Harlin saw a red-whiskered Mexican who, he learned, was Antone Colorow. The man's broken wrists had healed, but they had lost all their suppleness, and he could never throw the lariat again. He could shoot as well as ever though, and not a day had passed since that morning at the round-up when he had not sworn to himself that Emerson Mead should die by his hand. He hated Mead with all the vengefulness and fierceness of his race. His mind held but one idea, to work upon the man who had ruined his occupation the crudest possible revenge, in whatever way he could compass it. He had allied himself with the Republican forces only because they were opposed to his enemy, and he hoped that in the impending clash he would find opportunity to carry out his purpose.



CHAPTER XXI

On that same Saturday Marguerite Delarue received a letter from Albert Wellesly saying he would be in Las Plumas the following Tuesday, when he hoped he would hear from her own lips the answer for which he had been waiting. She was no nearer a decision than she had been weeks before, and in her perplexity she at last decided that she must ask her father's advice. But he was so absorbed in the factional feud that she could scarcely catch sight of him. In the late afternoon of Sunday she took little Paul and walked to the mesa east of the town, toward the Hermosa mountains. For the hundredth time she debated the matter, for the hundredth time she told herself that he loved her and that she loved him, that it would please her father, and that there was no reason why she should not marry him. And for the hundredth time her misgivings held her back and would not let her say conclusively that she would be Wellesly's wife. Then she would think that her hesitancy was because she really preferred not to marry any one, and that she would always feel the same doubts.

She was so absorbed in her own thoughts that she did not notice the unusual abstraction of the child. With one chubby fist grasping her forefinger and the other trailing, head downward, a big yellow chrysanthemum, he trudged silently by her side, his red fez making a spot of bright color against her white dress. He was wondering why he had no mamma. Many times he had talked the matter over with Marguerite, but she had never been able to explain it to his entire satisfaction. He accepted her statements when she made them, but as they did not seem to him to justify the fact, she had to make them all over again the next time he thought of the subject. That day he had visited a little playmate who had both a big sister and a mamma, and as he walked across the mesa with Marguerite his small brain was busy with the problem and his childish heart was full of longing. He lifted his serious, puzzled face, with its big, blue, childishly earnest eyes to his sister, who was as absorbed in her problem as was he in his.

"Say, Daisy, why haven't I got a mamma, just like Janey?"

"Darling, our mamma, yours and mine, has gone to Heaven."

"What did she go there for?"

"Because God wanted her to go there and live with Him."

"Did God take her to Heaven?"

"Yes, dear."

"Well, it was awful mean for Him to do that."

"Oh, my darling! My little Bye-Bye mustn't say such things! Everything God does is right. Poor mamma was so ill she could not stay with us any longer, and God took her to Heaven to make her well."

"Is she ill in Heaven?"

"No, dearie. She is well and happy in Heaven, and so is every one who goes there."

"When I go to Heaven shall I see my mamma?"

"Yes, dear."

The child was silent for a few moments and Marguerite turned again to her own thoughts. She scarcely heard him when he spoke again:

"Heaven is up in the sky, ain't it, Daisy?"

His eyes were caught by the sunset glow on the Hermosa mountains and he did not press her for confirmation of his idea. The swelling flanks and the towers and pinnacles and castellated crags of the rugged Hermosa range were glowing and flaming with the tenderest, deepest pink, as though the living granite had been dyed in the blood of crimson roses. The eastern sky, vivid with seashell tints, hovered so low that the topmost crags seemed to support its glowing colors. It was no wonder that the child's mind, already awed and made receptive by his thoughts of Heaven, was at once filled with the idea that its gates had been opened before him. He dropped his sister's finger and went forward a few steps, his eager eyes fixed on the glory that flamed in the east, and his heart beating wildly with the thought that if he ran on a little way he could go in and see his mother. Of course, she would see him coming and she would run out to meet him and take him in her arms, just as Marguerite did when he came home from Janey's. Filled with the sudden, imperious impulse, he ran down the hill on which they were standing, across the dry, sandy bed of a watercourse, and up the hill on the other side. The miracle of beauty which dazzled him was of almost daily occurrence, but, baby that he was, he had never noticed it before.

Marguerite took Wellesly's letter from her pocket when Paul dropped her hand, and, turning to get the sunset light on the page, read it over and over. She knew Paul had run on ahead, but thought he was playing in the arroyo. She folded the letter slowly and put it in her pocket again and watched for a few moments the glowing banks of color that filled the western sky. Then she looked down the little hill and along the arroyo, calling, "Come, Paul! We must go home." But the sturdy little figure was nowhere in sight. At that moment he was crossing the second hill beyond. She ran up and down the arroyo calling, "Paul! Paul!" at the top of her voice. Gathering her white skirts in one hand, she rushed to the top of the hill and called again and again. But there was no reply. As she listened, straining forward, all the earth seemed strangely still. The silence struck back upon her heart suffocatingly. Over the crest of the next hill Paul heard her voice and hid behind a big, close clump of feathery mesquite, fearful lest she should find him and take him home again. Across the arroyo she ran, and up to the hill-top, where she stood and called and looked eagerly about. But he, intent on carrying out his plan of reaching the rosy, glowing gates of Heaven over there such a little way, crouched close behind the spreading bush and made no answer.

"He would not have gone so far," she thought, anxiously. "He must be back there in one of those arroyos."

She ran back and hurried farther up and down, first one and then the other gulch, calling the little one's name and straining her eyes through the dusk that had begun to gather for a glimpse of his flaxen curls and red cap. Paul, meanwhile, was scurrying across the hills as fast as his two fat, determined legs could carry him, straight toward the deepening, darkening glory upon the mountains.

At last Marguerite decided that he must have turned about, after he had run a few steps away from her, and gone home. Comforting herself with this hope, she hurried back, looking about her as she ran, to be sure that she did not pass him. Flushed and panting, she rushed through the house and asked the servant if little Bye-Bye had come home. The maid had not seen him, and the two women looked through the house and searched the yard and garden, stopping every moment to call the child. Then they ran out again upon the mesa, where Marguerite had walked with him, calling and circling about through the gathering dusk.

When it became quite dark Marguerite, thoroughly frightened, ran back to the town and hurried down Main street looking for her father. She met a clerk from his store on the way to tell her that he had just started to his alfalfa ranch, ten miles down the river, to bring in the men who were there at work, and would not return until early the next morning. The clerk quickly got together a half dozen young men and they set out for the mesa. The mother of one and the sister of another stayed with Marguerite, and by dint of constant persuasion kept her at home.

At daybreak the party returned, worn out by their long tramp. The moon had risen about ten o'clock, and by its brilliant light they had searched carefully the hills and arroyos within two or three miles of the town, but had not found a trace of the lost child. Main street had slept on its arms that night. Men of both parties, wrapped in their blankets, with revolvers and shot-guns and rifles under their hands, had dotted the court-house yard, had lain on the sidewalks near the jail, and had slept on the floors of shops and offices along both sides of Main street. Feeling had risen so high that a hasty word, or the unguarded movement of a hand toward a pistol butt, was likely to cause the beginning of the battle. The Democrats had telegraphed to Santa Fe and learned that the order of the court making Joe Davis sheriff, having left there by mail on Saturday, should have reached Las Plumas on Sunday. So they announced that they would wait until the arrival of the mail from the north on Monday at noon, and that if the Republicans did not then vacate the office they would march upon the court-house, seize the clerk of the court, take forcible possession of the jail, and install Joe Davis in the office of sheriff. They swore they would do all this before sunset Monday night if they had to soak the sand of the streets a foot deep in blood. The Republicans grimly said that they would not give up the office without the official order of the court if they had to kill every Democrat in the town to hold it.

When the party searching for little Paul walked down Main street in the dim, early light, their footsteps breaking loudly upon the morning silence, men jumped to their feet with revolvers at ready, and set faces, crowned with disheveled hair, looked out from doorways whence came the click of cocking triggers. As the party was divided in its political affiliations, the young men knew that it would be safer for them to separate and for each to walk down Main street on that side to which his elders belonged. And so it happened that armed men, jumping from their blankets with revolvers drawn and cocked, and sternly commanding "halt," heard on both sides of the street at the same time how Pierre Delarue's little boy was lost on the mesa. Over and over again the young men told their story as they walked down the street, and group after group of armed and expectant men asked anxiously, "What's the matter?" "What's up?" "What's happened?" As they listened, the angry resolve in their faces softened into sympathy and concern, and everywhere there were low exclamations of "We must hunt him up!" "We must all turn out!"

When Pierre Delarue returned he found the feud forgotten. Men were running hither and thither getting horses and carriages ready, a long line of men and boys straggled out across the mesa, the Main street barrier, which had risen sky high when he left the town, had sunk to the middle of the earth, and men who, a few hours before, would have shot to kill, had either opened mouth to the other, rode or walked side by side, talking together of the lost child, as they hurried out to the hills to join in the search.

Mrs. John Daniels, as soon as she rose from the breakfast table, hastened to Mrs. Judge Harlin's house, and together they went to offer sympathy and neighborly kindness to Marguerite. Other women came, and their tear-dyed lids told how the mother-sympathy in their hearts had already opened the flood-gates of feeling. None of them thought it possible that the child could be found alive, though they talked encouragingly with Marguerite. But among themselves they said, "Poor girl! It will kill her!"

Marguerite wished to join the searchers on the mesa, but the women would not let her go. She had not slept during the night, and her usually blooming face was pale and drawn and her eyes were wide and brilliant. When her father came she appealed to him.

"No, my dear, you can do no good out there. Stay here and be ready to take care of him when we bring him home. We shall find him, my dear, we shall find him. Keep up your courage and save all your strength for the time when it will be needed."

So Marguerite stood on her veranda and watched the people stringing out to the hills, men and boys and even a few women, on foot, on horseback, in carts and carriages and wagons. She could not shut from her eyes the vision of her little Bye-Bye alone, far out on the hills in the darkness and cold—the little baby Bye-Bye, who, if he wakened in the night, had always to be taken into her own bed and cuddled in her arms before he could sleep again.

Judge Truman, of the district court, reached Las Plumas on Sunday and prepared to open the court and call the case of Emerson Mead on Monday morning. The sheriff and his deputy brought Mead out of the jail and started to conduct him to the court-house. Suddenly the bell of the Methodist church began to ring violently; a moment later that of the Catholic convent added its sharp tones, and the fire bell, over by the plaza, joined their clamor.

"What are those bells ringing for, John," said Mead to Daniels.

"Haven't you heard about Frenchy Delarue's kid? He was lost on the mesa last night and the whole town is turning out to hunt him. They are ringing the bells to call out everybody that hasn't gone already."

Mead stopped short at the words "Frenchy Delarue's kid."

"Little Paul Delarue?" he asked in quick, sharp tones.

"Yes, the little fellow with the yellow curls."

Without a word Mead turned sharply on his heel and ran with long strides down Main street toward Delarue's house. The hands of the two men went instinctively to their revolvers, then their eyes met, and Daniels said:

"I guess we'd better not touch him, Jim."

At that moment Judge Truman turned the corner, just from the court-house, and saw the escaping prisoner.

"Let him go, Mr. Sheriff," he said. "His help will be valuable in the search. Better go yourself, and take as many with you as you can. I have adjourned court and told everybody to hurry out to the mesa, and I'm going myself as soon as I can get a horse."

Emerson Mead ran at the top of his speed to the Delarue house, going there without thought of why he did it, feeling only that Marguerite was in deepest trouble, and all his mind filled with the idea that it would kill her if anything happened to the child. As he entered the gate Marguerite saw him and rushed down from the veranda.

"How did it happen?" he asked hastily.

"I took him out to walk with me on the mesa yesterday afternoon, and he slipped away from me and I could not find him."

"Can you tell me where you saw him last?"

"Let me go with you! I can show you the very place!"

"Are you strong enough? Can you stand it? You are very pale!"

"Yes, yes! It will not be so hard as to stay here and wait! Let me go with you and help you!"

"Come, then, quick!"

She snatched her little white sunbonnet from a chair on the porch and they hurried off. Walking swiftly and silently they passed through the back streets of the town and across vacant lots and hurried over the rising plain until they came to the place in the rolling hills where the child had disappeared.

"It was here," said Marguerite. "I am very sure of the place. He stood beside me and while I was thinking about—something that troubled me, and reading a letter, he slipped away. I was sure he had only run down the hill into the arroyo, but when I looked for him, and it seemed hardly more than a minute, I could not find him."

Mead looked about for footprints, but the ground had been trampled by scores of feet since the night before, and tracks of shoes in many sizes covered the sandy earth. A few scattered searchers were near them, but the great mass of people could be seen in groups and bunches trailing off over the hills, most of them headed to the northeast. A shout came along the line and one of the men near by ran across the hills to learn its cause.

"What had he been talking about?" Mead asked.

"About Heaven and our mother, and if he could see her if he should go there."

Mead looked about him, thinking there was no clue in that, when his glance rested upon the towering peaks of the Hermosa range, their western slopes soft in the violet shadows of the forenoon, their upreared crags seeming to lean against the very blue of the sky. A sudden memory from his own childish years flashed into his mind.

"I remember when I was a kid I used to think that if I could only get to the top of a mountain I could jump from it into the sky and see God. Children always think Heaven is in the sky, don't they? Maybe he had some such idea. Let's go straight toward the mountain and see if we can't find his tracks."

They walked down the hill, and in the sand in the bottom of the arroyo Mead's quick eye caught a faint depression. He stopped Marguerite as she was about to step on it, and they knelt together to examine it. There were other footprints all about, but this one little track had escaped obliteration, and none had noticed it. Marguerite thought it was the size and shape of his shoe, and they went on over the hill, watching the ground closely, but seeing nothing more. A man came running back to tell them that a child's footprints had been found near the mountain road, two miles or more to the northward. Marguerite wished to go there at once.

"Yes, certainly, go if you wish," said Mead, "but I think I will stay here. If they have found his tracks there are plenty of people there to follow them, but I am anxious to follow this lead."

Marguerite said she would stay with him, and the others hurried over the mesa to the mountain road, leaving the two alone. They walked slowly up and down the hills toward the mountains, finding in one place a little curved depression, as if from the toe of the child's shoe. And presently, close behind a clump of bushes, they saw two little shoe-prints clearly defined in the sand. They were so close to the bush that they had escaped detection.

"Why, he must have hid here while I was looking for him!" Marguerite exclaimed, "for I came to the top of the hill, not more than twenty feet away! He must have hid behind this big bush and kept very still when he heard me calling, and that was how he got away from me!"

They went on over the hills, Mead keeping a fairly straight course toward the mountains, and constantly running his eye along the ground in front of them. Twice he saw faint depressions in the sand, partly obliterated, but enough to make him think they were on the right track. At last, in a wide, sandy arroyo, he paused before a track in the farther edge of the sand which turned up the canyon.

"What time was it when you lost him?" he asked.

"Just at sunset. I remember, because the red was on the mountains and the sky was very brilliant."

"Then by the time he had traveled this far it was dark and this wide sandy streak was lighter and brighter than the hill up there, covered with bushes. Come on!"

Mead rushed up the canyon, almost on the run, his eye catching a toe-print here, a heel track there, a sunken pebble in one spot, a crushed blade of grass beside the sand in another. The young men who had gone out first had been through this arroyo the night before, when the moonlight did not show the faint trail. Since sunrise the searching parties had gone farther toward the north, covering ground which the other party had left untouched, for every one believed, since the failure of the first expedition, that the child must have turned in that direction and tried to go home.

Mead and Marguerite followed the winding of the arroyo for a mile or more, and at last, where it headed and the ground was covered by a thicker growth of bushes, the little tracks climbed the hill. By that time they were well beyond the farthest point toward the mountains which any one else believed the child could have reached, and there were no footprints of previous searchers to perplex their eyes or blot out such traces as they might find. From the top of the hill they saw the great body of men again scattering out over the mesa, and knew that they had been disappointed.

It was some minutes before Mead found any indication of the trail on the hill. Then the child seemed to have wandered about in the dark without purpose. For a long time he had kept to the top of the hill, going backward and forward and circling about, and at last following its crest toward the mountains.

"This must have been after the moon rose," Mead said, "and while it was still so low that only the top of the hill was light."

After a time the track turned down the hillside again, and the man and the girl followed, eagerly scanning the ground for the faint traces of the child's feet. Slowly and carefully they walked along, sometimes able to follow the trail without difficulty for long distances, and again keeping it only by the greatest care. Marguerite noticed that Mead looked for it always toward the south, and asked him why he did it.

"Because the moon was considerably past the full and shone more from the south, and he would have kept his face toward it."

Up and down the hills they went and along the arroyos, the trail sometimes heading straight for the mountains, and again turning toward the south, sometimes following the sandy watercourse beds and sometimes the hilltops, and again crossing them at varying angles. Once they lost it entirely, and searched over a wide area in vain, until Marguerite found a shred of brown linen hanging upon the thorny limb of a mesquite bush.

"This is from his dress!" she exclaimed.

About the same time Mead saw a number of dog-like tracks, all going in the same direction, and a sickening fear rose in him so great that he scarcely dared sweep with his eyes the arroyo into which they were descending. He did not let Marguerite see that he had noticed anything unusual, and she followed him silently, wondering how he could trace the trail so rapidly. For he knew that he need not stop to look for the child's footprints. He could follow swiftly, almost on the run, the plain trail of the dog-like tracks down the sandy arroyo. Presently she saw him stoop and pick up something from the ground. He turned and held out to her a large yellow chrysanthemum. She ran to him and seized it eagerly.

"Yes, I picked it as we were leaving home yesterday. He wanted it and I gave it to him. And he clung to it all this way! I wonder what made him drop it finally!"

Mead did not tell her of the fear that probably had relaxed the little muscles and sent the weary feet flying over the sand. He could think of no word of encouragement to say, for he felt no hope in his heart. But her face had lighted with the finding of the flower and she seemed to feel almost as though it were a call from the child. She pressed the yellow bloom to her face and thrust it into her bosom. Then she dropped upon her knees and hid her face in her hands. Mead felt that she was praying, and impulsively he took off his hat and bent his head, but his eyes still swept the arroyo in front of them. As they went on he noticed that the child's tracks had been almost obliterated. Here and there a toe print, pressed deeply into the sand, showed that the little one had been running. At last Mead stopped beside a large flat stone. The child's footprints showed plainly beside it. And the dog-like tracks ranged in a half circle six or eight feet distant.

"He must have sat down here to rest," said Mead, hoping she would not notice the other tracks. But she saw them and looked at him with sudden fear in her eyes. A single word shaped itself upon her whitening lips.

"Coyotes?"

He nodded, saying, "I have been watching their tracks for the last mile."

She threw her hands to her head with a despairing gesture. He moved toward her, filled with the yearning to take her in his arms and comfort her. But he remembered that she was to be married to Albert Wellesly and his hands dropped to his sides. He turned to examine the ground about the stone and saw in the sand many little holes and scratches. He noticed, too, some pebbles in front of the coyote tracks.

"Look!" he exclaimed. "The brave little man! He threw stones at the coyotes and kept them off! He must have had a stick, too, for see these little holes in the sand. He probably stood up and thrust the stick toward them."

"Could he keep them off so that they would not attack him?"

"Yes, I think he could. As long as—as he kept moving they would only follow him."

A little farther on they found many deep impressions of the child's feet close together, as if he had been jumping, and after that the coyote tracks disappeared.

"He must have jumped at them and shouted and thrust out his stick," said Mead, "and frightened them away. He might have done that after he found he could drive them back. And this was probably after daybreak, when they would be less likely to follow him. We can't be so very far behind him now, for he would be tired and could not walk fast."

"Come, hurry! Let us go on!" urged Marguerite,

He looked at her doubtfully. Her face was drawn and white under her sunbonnet, notwithstanding her long walk in the hot sun, and dark rings circled her eyes.