“I think you’ll be safer here.  The court is too open,” she said.

“I reckon,” replied Lassiter.  “An’ it’s cooler here.  The day’s sure muggy.  Well, I went down to the village with Venters.”

“Already!  Where is he?” queried Jane, in quick amaze.

“He’s at the corrals.  Blake’s helpin’ him get the burros an’ packs ready.  That Blake is a good fellow.”

“Did—­did Bern meet Tull?”

“I guess he did,” answered Lassiter, and he laughed dryly.

“Tell me!  Oh, you exasperate me!  You’re so cool, so calm!  For Heaven’s sake, tell me what happened!”

“First time I’ve been in the village for weeks,” went on Lassiter, mildly.  “I reckon there ’ain’t been more of a show for a long time.  Me an’ Venters walkin’ down the road!  It was funny.  I ain’t sayin’ anybody was particular glad to see us.  I’m not much thought of hereabouts, an’ Venters he sure looks like what you called him, a wild man.  Well, there was some runnin’ of folks before we got to the stores.  Then everybody vamoosed except some surprised rustlers in front of a saloon.  Venters went right in the stores an’ saloons, an’ of course I went along.  I don’t know which tickled me the most—­the actions of many fellers we met, or Venters’s nerve.  Jane, I was downright glad to be along.  You see that sort of thing is my element, an’ I’ve been away from it for a spell.  But we didn’t find Tull in one of them places.  Some Gentile feller at last told Venters he’d find Tull in that long buildin’ next to Parsons’s store.  It’s a kind of meetin’-room; and sure enough, when we peeped in, it was half full of men.

“Venters yelled:  ’Don’t anybody pull guns!  We ain’t come for that!’ Then he tramped in, an’ I was some put to keep alongside him.  There was a hard, scrapin’ sound of feet, a loud cry, an’ then some whisperin’, an’ after that stillness you could cut with a knife.  Tull was there, an’ that fat party who once tried to throw a gun on me, an’ other important-lookin’ men, en’ that little frog-legged feller who was with Tull the day I rode in here.  I wish you could have seen their faces, ’specially Tull’s an’ the fat party’s.  But there ain’t no use of me tryin’ to tell you how they looked.

“Well, Venters an’ I stood there in the middle of the room with that batch of men all in front of us, en’ not a blamed one of them winked an eyelash or moved a finger.  It was natural, of course, for me to notice many of them packed guns.  That’s a way of mine, first noticin’ them things.  Venters spoke up, an’ his voice sort of chilled an’ cut, en’ he told Tull he had a few things to say.”

Here Lassiter paused while he turned his sombrero round and round, in his familiar habit, and his eyes had the look of a man seeing over again some thrilling spectacle, and under his red bronze there was strange animation.

“Like a shot, then, Venters told Tull that the friendship between you an’ him was all over, an’ he was leaving your place.  He said you’d both of you broken off in the hope of propitiatin’ your people, but you hadn’t changed your mind otherwise, an’ never would.