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Updated: May 13, 2025
"Do you?" he asked, calmly. "There is something bad in his face something hiding, it seems to me," she said, without show of conscious evasion. "I'll call him, no matter what move he makes," Slavens declared, looking speculatively across the gorge. "Look how high the sun is up the wall over yonder. I think we'd better be going back." "Oh, I've kept you too long," she cried in self-reproach.
He stood wiping it, his hat in his hand, turning his eyes to see how she regarded his strength. "I tell you, a woman needs a man to do the heavy work for her in a place like this," he hinted. "I'm finding that out," she laughed. Smith sat down comfortably on the box lately occupied by Dr. Slavens.
"Smith called you to the box to help him, he told me later, because he picked you out as a man who would put up a fight," said she. "Well, let us hope that he made a good guess," Slavens said, "for here's where we take up the racket with the world again."
Slavens was blameless for his unexplained disappearance and prolonged absence deep-anchored in her heart. But there was a surface irritation at that moment, a disposition to censure and scold. For nothing short of death should keep a man away from the main chance of his career, thought she, and she could not believe that he was dead. It was altogether disappointing, depressing.
They walked over to the place where Boyle's horse stood, and there, out of the hearing of Agnes, Slavens sounded Jerry sharply on his intentions. It was plain that there was no bluff in Boyle; he meant what he threatened, and he was small enough to carry it through.
His thought leaped to the instant conclusion that it was Agnes; he laid light fuel to the coals, blowing it to quicken a blaze that would guide and welcome her. When the rider appeared an eager flame was laving the rocks in the yellow light, and Slavens was standing, peering beyond its radius. A glance told him that it was not she for whom he had lighted his guiding fire. It was a man.
"We don't want any more dust around here than we can help." He looked around for his hat, put it on, and went out, sleeves up, to see that his order was enforced. Agnes was alighting from a horse as he stepped out. A tall, slight man with a gray beard was demanding of Ten-Gallon what had happened there. Relief warmed the terror out of her eyes as Agnes ran forward and caught Dr. Slavens' hand.
Mackenzie would accept no more than the two hundred dollars which he had lost on Shanklin's game, together with the five hundred and ten advanced in the hope of regaining it. It was near midnight when they parted, Mackenzie to seek his lodging-place, Dr. Slavens to make the rounds of the stores in the hope of finding one open in which he could buy a new outfit of clothing.
Walker came over and stood beside the near wheel. "One of them was Hun Shanklin!" said he, whispering up loudly for the doctor's ear, a look of deep concern on his youthful face. Slavens nodded with what show of unconcern he could assume. For, knowing what he knew, he wondered what the gambler was there for, and why he seemed so anxious to keep the matter of his identity to himself.
Meantime a wave of information was running through the crowd. "It's Number One," men repeated to each other, passing the word along. "Number One got here!" Hurrying to the hotel, Agnes was skirting through the thinner edges of the gathering at the very moment when Dr. Slavens turned from the window, his papers in his hand.
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