That made things harder than ever for Starr.  If the tablet had been prescribed for heartache rather than headache, Starr would have swallowed thankfully the dose.  The murder, over against the other line of hills, had not seemed to him so terrible as those sheets of scribbled paper locked away inside Helen May’s desk.  The grief of Estan’s mother over her dead son was no more bitter than was Starr’s grief at what he believed was true of Helen May.  Indeed, Starr’s trouble was greater, because he must mask it with a smile.

All through breakfast he talked with her, looked into her eyes, smiled at her across the table.  But he was white under his tan.  She thought that was from his headache, and was kinder than she meant to be because of it; perhaps because of her dream too, though she was not conscious of any change in her manner.

Starr could have cursed her for that change, which he believed was a sly attempt to win him over and make him forget anything he may have read on those pages.  He would not think of it then; time enough when he was away and need not pretend or set a guard over his features and his tongue.  The hurt was there, the great, incredible, soul-searing hurt; but he would not dwell upon what had caused that hurt.  He forced himself to talk and to laugh now and then, but afterwards he could not remember what they had talked about.

As soon as he decently could, he went away again into the howling wind that had done him so ill a turn.  He did not know what he should do; this discovery that Helen May was implicated had set him all at sea, but he felt that he must get away somewhere and think the whole thing out before he went crazy.

He left the Basin, rode around behind it and, leaving Rabbit in the thicket where he had left him the day before, he toiled up the pinnacle and sat down in the shelter of a boulder pile where he would be out of the wind as well as out of sight, and where he could still stare somberly down at the cabin.

And there he faced his trouble bravely, and at the same time he fulfilled his duty toward his government by keeping a watch over the place that seemed to him then the most suspicious place in the country.  The office of Las Nuevas, even, was not more so, as Starr saw things then.  For if Las Nuevas were the distributing point for the propaganda literature, this cabin of Helen May’s seemed to be the fountain head.

First of all, and going back to the beginning, how did he really know that her story was true?  How, for instance, did he know that her father had not been one of the heads of the conspiracy?  How did he know that her father—­it might even be her husband!—­was dead?  He had simply accepted her word, as a matter of course, because she was a young woman, and more attractive than the average young woman.  Starr was terribly bitter, at that point in his reasoning, and even felt certain that he hated all women.  Well, then, her reason for being in the neighborhood would bear a lot of looking into.