Whirling thus upon the crowd, she shocked them to a pause, with her parted lips, her flare of delicate color.

“Have you come here,” she cried, “for—­for Donnegan?”

“Lady,” began someone, and then looked about for Jack Landis, who was considered quite a hand with the ladies.  But Jack Landis was discovered fading out of view down the hillside.  One glance at that blue dress had quite routed him, for now he remembered the red-haired man who had escorted Lou Macon to The Corner—­and the colonel’s singular trust in this fellow.  It explained much, and he fled before he should be noticed.

Before the spokesman could continue his speech, the girl had whipped inside the door.  And the posse was dumbfounded.  Milligan saw that the advance was ruined.  “Boys,” he said, “we came to fight a man; not to storm a house with a woman in it.  Let’s go back.  We’ll tend to Donnegan later on.”

“We’ll drill him clean!” muttered the others furiously, and straightway the posse departed down the hill.

But inside the girl had found, to her astonishment, that Donnegan was stretched upon his bunk wrapped again in the silken dressing gown and with a smile upon his lips.  He looked much younger, as he slept, and perhaps it was this that made the girl steal forward upon tiptoe and touch his shoulder so gently.

He was up on his feet in an instant.  Alas, vanity, vanity!  Donnegan in shoes was one thing, for his shoes were of a particular kind; but Donnegan in his slippers was a full two inches shorter.  He was hardly taller than the girl; he was, if the bitter truth must be known, almost a small man.  And Donnegan was furious at having been found by her in such careless attire—­and without those dignity-building shoes.  First he wanted to cut the throat of big George.

“What have you done, what have you done?” cried the girl, in one of those heart-piercing whispers of fear.  “They have come for you—­a whole crowd—­of armed men—­they’re outside the door!  What have you done?  It was something done for me, I know!”

Donnegan suddenly transferred his wrath from big George to the mob.

“Outside my door?” he asked.  And as he spoke he slipped on a belt at which a heavy holster tugged down on one side, and buckled it around him.

“Oh, no, no, no!” she pleaded, and caught him in her arms.

Donnegan allowed her to stop him with that soft power for a moment, until his face went white—­as if with pain.  Then he adroitly gathered both her wrists into one of his bony hands; and having rendered her powerless, he slipped by her and cast open the door.

It was an empty scene upon which they looked, with big George rocking back and forth upon a rock, convulsed with silent laughter.  Donnegan looked sternly at the girl and swallowed.  He was fearfully susceptible to mockery.

“There seems to have been a jest?” he said.

But she lifted him a happy, tearful face.