“Bring any word down with you from up there?” asked Ellsworth.  Curly nodded.  “I brung a letter,” said he.

“That so?  What’s it about?”

“Well, sir, it bein’ a letter to a lady—­”

“You mean my daughter?  Now, what—­”

“Yes, it’s for her,” admitted Curly; “but it’s personal.”

“Well, I didn’t know but it might be news from that young man, Anderson.  You know he went with the posse.  Do you happen to know?”

“You ask her.  It is, though.”

“Did he send you down here?”

“I’m almighty hungry; I ain’t had no breakfast, nor nothing.”  Whereupon Curly bolted.

Ellsworth, disturbed, went in search of Constance.  He found her, a crumpled and pathetic figure.  The news then had, indeed, been bad!

“Now, now, child,” he began, “what’s up here?  You’ve a letter, the man tells me.”

She covered it with her hand as it lay in her lap.  “Is it from him, young Anderson?” he asked.  She nodded.

“It’s written by a friend of his,” she answered presently.  “He himself couldn’t write.  He was too—­ill.”

“Sent for you?” His voice was grave.

“Yes,” she whispered, “when it was too late.”

“We’ll go,” he said with decision.  “Get ready.  Maybe there is some mistake.”

“Don’t,” she begged, “there is no mistake.  I knew it would happen; I felt it.”

“By Jove, I hope it’s not true; I was beginning to think a good deal of that boy myself.”

Constance was passing through the door on her way to her room.  She turned and blazed at him.  “Then why didn’t you talk that way before?”

She disappeared, and left him staring after her, through the open door.

An hour later a buckboard, driven by a silent Mexican, rolled down the Sky Top canon, bound for the northern trail.

Curly finished his breakfast, and then went out in search of his horse, which presently he found standing dejectedly, close where it had been left, apparently anchored by the reins thrown down over its head and dragging on the ground.  Curly seated himself on the ground near by and addressed his misanthropic steed in tones of easy familiarity.

“Pinto,” said he, “you remind me of a heap of folks I know.  You think them reins holds you, but they don’t.  They ain’t tied to nothing.  You’re just like them, hitched tight to a fool notion, that’s all.  If I don’t take your bridle off, you’ll stand there and starve to death, like a good many fool folks I’ve heard of.  You’ve got to eat, Pinto.”

Curly arose and with a meditative finger traced the outlines of the continental maps displayed on Pinto’s parti-colored flanks.  That cynical beast, with small warning, kicked at him viciously.

“Oh, there you go!” remonstrated Curly; “can’t you get tired enough to be decent?  Git on away—­vamos!”