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Corliss dropped from the saddle. Fadeaway rode around and covered him. Corliss's hat lay a few feet from where he had fallen. Beneath his head a dark ooze spread a hand's-breadth on the trail. The cowboy dismounted and bent over him. "He's sportin' a dam' good hat," he said, "or that would 'a' fixed him. Guess he'll be good for a spell."
"You're getting religion, too. Well, I never thought you'd go back on me." "I ain't. I was always your friend, Billy." Corliss hesitated. The door behind Sundown moved ever so little. Corliss's eyes held Sundown with unwinking gaze. Slowly the door swung open. Sundown felt rather than heard a presence behind him. Before he could turn, something crashed down on his head.
But we put the 'Palace' two feeds to the bad," asserted Shoop. They drifted to the hotel doorway and paused at the counter where each gravely selected a cigar. Then they clumped upstairs to Corliss's room. Jim Banks straddled a chair and faced his friends.
As they came from the house, Loring was reading the papers that Corliss had handed to him. The old sheep-man glanced at the signatures on the documents and then slowly folded them, hesitated, and with a quick turn of his wrist tore them and flung the pieces in Corliss's face. "That for your law! We stay!" Corliss bit his lip, and the dull red of restrained anger burned in his face.
Sundown stepped to him, misinterpreting his silence. He put his hand on Corliss's shoulder. "You ain't mad 'cause we called him that, be you?" "Mad! Say, Sun," and Corliss laughed, choked, and brushed his eyes. "Sun, I don't deserve it." "Well, seein' what I been through since I was his size, I reckon I don't either. But he's here, and you're here and your wife and things is fine!
Good ole Tor'dor!" he quavered loudly, clutching Corliss's shoulder. "How much you s'pose he pays f' that buzz-buggy by the day, jeli'm'n? Naughty Tor'dor, stole thousand dollars from me makin' presents diamond cresses. Tor'dor, I hear you been playing cards. Tha's sn't nice. Tor'dor, you're not a goo' boy at all you know you oughtn't waste Dick Lindley's money like that!"
He was at a loss to prevent the men entering the house, but once within the house he determined that they should not enter the bedroom. He backed toward it and stood with one shoulder against the lintel. "Come right in. I ain't got to housekeepin' yet, but . . ." He ceased speaking as he saw Corliss's gaze fixed on the kyacks. "Where did you get 'em?" queried the rancher.
And as Margery was a young woman quietly determined to have her way when she knew that it was right to do so, they were married the day before Will Corliss was to leave for Arizona. This was to be their honeymoon. All of which was in Will Corliss's mind as he lay smoking and gazing at the cloudless sky.
One of the cowboys helped Corliss to his room at the Palace. Later Fadeaway entered the hotel, asked for a room, and clumped upstairs. He rose early and knocked at Corliss's door, then entered without waiting for a response. He wakened Corliss, who sat up and stared at him stupidly. "Mornin', Billy. How's the head?" "I don't know yet. Got any cash, Fade? I'm broke." "Sure. What you want?"
Corliss's hand with a fleeting touch of her finger-tips upon his palm. "Of course you wanted to smoke. I can't think why I didn't realize it before. I must have " A voice called from within, commanding in no, uncertain tones. "Hedrick! I should like to see you!" Hedrick rose, and, looking neither to the right nor, to the left, went stonily into the house, and appeared before the powers.
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