“Don’t cry about it, my dear,” he said gently.  He even smiled a little.  “Tell me about it.  You were robbed of it?  Before you had more than got out of light of Dry Town?”

“How do you know?” she cried.

“I don’t know, my dear.  But I do know that the stage came on through, with no attempt at a hold-up, and I guessed that our little ruse didn’t fool anybody.  When I got the empty strong box from the bank I knew pretty well what to look for.”

“But,” she told him, flushed with her hope, “we’ll get it back!  For I know who robbed me, I can swear to him!”

Pollard’s hand, lying upon the bed spread, had shut tight.  She noticed that and no other sign of emotion.

“And I know!” he said harshly.  “Yes, I’ll get it back!  Now, tell me how it happened.”

“It was a man named Buck Thornton....”

She saw the quick change of light in his eyes and in the instant knew that if Buck Thornton hated Henry Pollard he was hated no less in return.  Further, she saw that back of the hatred there was a sort of silent laughter as though the thing she had said had pleased this man as no other thing could have pleased him, that in some way which she could not understand, this information had moved him as he had not been moved by news of his heavy loss.  And she wondered.

“You are ready to swear to that?” he asked sharply, his eyes searching and steady and eager upon hers.  “You will swear that it was Thornton who robbed you?”

“Yes,” she cried hotly as she remembered the insult of a kiss and in the memory forgot the robbery itself.

“I’ll get him now,” he muttered.  “Both ways; going and coming!  Tell me all about it, Winifred.”

She began, speaking swiftly, telling him of her meeting with Thornton at the bank, of her suspicion that he had overheard her talk with the banker.  Then of her second meeting with the man after she had seen him on the trail behind her, the encounter at the Harte cabin....  A sudden banging of the kitchen door, and he had stopped her abruptly, putting his hand warningly upon her arm.

“Later.  It can wait.  That is Mrs. Riddell.  She will show you to your room.  And it will be better, my dear, if you say nothing to her.  Or to any one else just yet.”

She got to her feet and went to the door.  Turning there, to smile back at her uncle, she saw that his pillows had slipped a little and that under them lay a heavy revolver.  And she surprised upon the man’s face a look which was gone so quickly that she wondered if she had seen right in the darkened room, a look so filled with malicious triumph.  Instead of being profoundly disturbed by the tidings of her adventure, the man appeared positively to gloat....  Now, more than ever, did she regret that she had come to the town of Dead Man’s Alley.

CHAPTER XIII

THE RANCH ON BIG LITTLE RIVER