“Well, if that’s all, I admire to say that I’ll set right down and run this here hotel myself till you get back.  But it ain’t right, your travelin’ down there alone.  We used to be right good friends, Annie.  Do you reckon I’d tell you to go see Jim if it wa’n’t right?  If he ever needed you, it’s right now.  If he’s goin’ to get well, your bein’ there’ll help him a pow’ful sight.  And if he ain’t, you ought to be there, anyhow.”

“I know it, Bud.  I wish Lorry was here.”

“I don’t.  I’m mighty glad he’s out there where he is.  What do you think he’d do if he knowed Jim was shot up?”

“He would go to his father—­”

“Uh-uh?”

“And—­”

“Go ahead.  You wa’n’t born yesterday.”

“He would listen to me,” she concluded weakly.

“Yep.  But only while you was talkin’.  That boy is your boy all right, but he’s got a lot of Jim Waring under his hide.  And if you want to keep that there hide from gettin’ shot full of holes by a no-account outlaw, you’ll just pack up and come along.”

Bud wiped his forehead, and puffed.  This sort of thing was not exactly in his line.

“Here’s the point, Annie,” he continued.  “If I get there afore Lorry, and you’re there, he won’t get into trouble.  Mebby you could hold him with your hand on the bridle, but he’s runnin’ loose right where he is.  Can’t you get some lady in town to run the place?”

“I don’t know.  I’ll see.”

Bud heaved a sigh.  It was noticeably warmer in Stacey than at Jason.

Bud’s reasoning, while rough, had appealed to Mrs. Adams.  She felt that she ought to go.  She had only needed some such impetus to send her straight to Waring.  The town marshal’s telegram had stunned her.  She knew that her husband had followed the Brewsters, but she had not anticipated the awful result of his quest.  In former times he had always come back to her, taking up the routine of their home life quietly.  But this time he had not come back.  If only he had listened to her!  And deep in her heart she felt that old jealousy for the lure which had so often called him from her to ride the grim trails of his profession.  But this time he had not come back.  She would go to him, and never leave him again.

Anita thought she knew of a woman who would take charge of the hotel during Mrs. Adams’s absence.  Without waiting for an assurance of this, Bud purchased tickets, sent a letter to his clerk, and spent half an hour in the barber shop.

“Somebody dead?” queried the barber as Bud settled himself in the chair.

“Not that I heard of.  Why?”

“Oh, nothing, Mr. Shoop.  I seen that you was dressed in black and had on a black tie—­”

Later, as Bud surveyed himself in the glass, trying ineffectually to dodge the barber’s persistent whisk-broom, he decided that he did look a bit funereal.  And when he appeared at the supper table that evening he wore an ambitious four-in-hand tie of red and yellow.  There was going to be no funeral or anything that looked like it, if he knew it.