She wrenched herself suddenly away, rising.

“I’m tired of supposing!” she cried.

“Then we’ll call it all real.  What of that?”

That colour was unmistakably high now; it ran down from her cheeks and even stained the pure white of the throat where the flap of the shirt was open.  He was excited as a hunter who has tracked some new and dangerous animal and at last driven it to bay, holding his gun poised, and not knowing whether or not it will prove vulnerable.

He stepped close, eager, prepared for any wild burst of temper; but she let him take her hands, let him draw her close, bend back her head; hold her closer still, till the warmth and softness of her body reached him, but when his lips came close she said quietly:  “Are you a rotter, Bard?”

He stiffened and the smile went out on his lips.  He stepped back.

She repeated:  “Are you a rotter?”

He raised the one hand which he still retained and touched it to his lips.

“I am very sorry,” said Anthony, “will you forgive me?”

And with her eyes large and grave upon him she answered:  “I wonder if I can!”

Butch Conklin looked up, raising his bandaged head slowly, like a white flag of truce, with a stain of red growing through the cloth.  He stared at the two, raised a hand to his head as though to rub away the dream, found a pain too real for a dream, and then, like a crab which has grown almost too old to walk, waddled on hands and knees, slowly, from the room and melted silently into the dark beyond.

CHAPTER XVIII

FOOLISH HABITS

A sharp noise of running feet leaped from the dust of the street and clattered through the doorway; the two turned.  A swarthy man, broad of shoulder, was the first, and afterward appeared Nash.

“Conklin?” called Deputy Glendin, and swept the room with his startled glance.  “Where’s Conklin?”

He was not there; only a red stain remained on the floor to show where he had lain.

“Where’s Conklin?” called Nash.

“I’m afraid,” whispered Bard quickly to the girl, “that it was more than a game of suppose.”

He said easily to the other two:  “He had enough.  His share of trouble came to-night; I let him go.”

“Young feller,” growled Glendin, “you ain’t been in town a long while, but I’ve heard a pile too much about you already.  What you mean by takin’ the law into your own hands?”

“Wait,” said Nash, his keen eyes on the two, “I guess I understand.”

“Let’s have it, then.”

Still the steady eyes of Nash passed from Sally Fortune to Bard and back again.

“This feller bein’ a tenderfoot, he don’t understand our ways; maybe he thinks the range is a bit freer than it is.”

“That’s the trouble,” answered Glendin, “he thinks too damned much.”

“And does quite a pile besides thinkin’,” murmured Nash, but too low for the others to hear it.