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Send your hired men after me; give 'em plenty of ammunition. They'll find me right here, Barb right here where I live." When Sawdy rode into Sleepy Cat next morning it was known that he had come from the Reservation and he was besieged for news from the Falling Wall. At Kitchen's, where he put up his horse; on his way up street to his room over McAlpin's pool hall, he was assailed with questions.
Tenison spoke grimly: "Will you drink it if I fill it, you mule?" he demanded, picking up the bottle and pouring into both glasses in front of him. In the dead silence McAlpin's brain was in a storm. He collected a few of his wildly flying thoughts.
"McAlpin's not going to drink, Stone," repeated Laramie. "What are you going to do about it?" The mere sight of Laramie would have been a vastly unpleasant surprise. But to find himself faced by him in fighting trim after what had taken place in the morning was an upset. "What am I going to do about it?" echoed Stone, lifting his eyebrows and grinning anew.
De Spain arranged his business to wait at Calabasas for her, and was there, after two days, doing little but waiting and listening to McAlpin's stories about the fire and surmises as to strange men that lurked in and about the place. But de Spain, knowing Jeffries was making an independent investigation into the affair, gave no heed to McAlpin's suspicions.
De Spain, his hand on McAlpin's shoulder, was giving his parting injunctions, and the barn boss, head cocked down, and eyes cast furtively on the scattering snowflakes outside, was listening with an attention that recorded indelibly every uttered syllable. Once only, he interrupted: "Henry, you're ridin' out into this thing alone don't do it." "I can't help it," snapped de Spain impatiently,
Slowly a luxurious sense of weariness overcame her and again she leaned back on her pillow and sank into a semiconscious sleep. Balanced between life and the oblivion, into which reason enters blindfolded, she made no resistance, but was swayed by every passing wave of thought, memory, and vision. The voice outside merged presently into Jerry-Jo McAlpin's.
That was it, and the old words, set to music of her own, were the signals used to attract McAlpin's attention. But the merry call brought Glenn from out the barn just as the canoe touched the rocks lightly, and Priscilla prepared to step in. "Where you two going?" he shouted in the tone that always roused the worst in Priscilla's nature.
Laramie only laughed when he talked it over with Belle: "So long as they don't burn my place, I can stand it," he said, philosophically. Nevertheless, he felt disturbed at McAlpin's news not for its substance so much as for what it might note in renewed warfare. Getting his horse, he followed the railroad right of way out of town and struck out upon open country toward the north.
Again Priscilla was aware of the red warmth of the fire, the sickening smell of drying wool, the loosening of the bands of McAlpin's arms. "You you who boast that when you hunt, out of season, you shoot one shot in the air in order to give a poor wild thing a chance of escape you bring me here with a lie; close every hope to me, and call that victory! You you fiend! What do you mean?"
"And I was remembering," Jerry-Jo went on, "how once you said you wanted to thank him for for the books. We might take the canoe, come to-morrow, and the day is fine, and pay a visit." Still Priscilla did not notice the gleam in McAlpin's keen eyes. "Oh! if I only dared, Jerry-Jo! What an adventure it would be, to be sure. And how good of you to think of it." "What hinders?"
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