id Ronicky angrily. "Seems to me that everybody stands
around and gapes at this gent with the sneer a terrible lot, without a
pile of good reasons behind 'em. Never failed? Why, lady, here's one
night when he's failed and failed bad. He's lost you!"

"No," said Caroline.

"Not lost you?" asked Bill Gregg. "Say, you ain't figuring on going back
to him?"

"I have to go back."

"Why?" demanded Gregg.

"It's because of you," interpreted Ronicky Doone. "She knows that, if
she leaves you, Mark will start on your trail. Mark is the name of the
gent with the sneer, Bill."

"He's got to die, then, Ronicky."

"I been figuring on the same thing for a long time, but he'll die hard,
Bill."

"Don't you see?" asked the girl. "Both of you are strong men and brave,
but against John Mark I know that you're helpless. It isn't the first
time people have hated him. Hated? Who does anything but hate him? But
that doesn't make any difference. He wins, he always wins, and that's
why I've come to you."

She turned to Bill Gregg, but such a sad resignation held her eyes that
Ronicky Doone bowed his head.

"I've come to tell you that I love you, that I have always loved you,
since I first began writing to you. All of yourself showed through your
letters, plain and strong and simple and true. I've come tonight to tell
you that I love you, but that we can never marry. Not that I fear him
for myself, but for you."

"Listen here," said Bill Gregg, "ain't there police in this town?"

"What could they do? In all of the things which he has done no one has
been able to accuse him of a single illegal act--at least no one has
ever been able to prove a thing. And yet he lives by crime. Does that
give you an idea of the sort of man he is?"

"A low hound," said Bill Gregg bitterly, "that's what he shows to be."

"Tell me straight," said Ronicky, "what sort of a hold has he got over
you? Can you tell us?"

"I have to tell you," said the girl gravely, "if you insist, but won't
you take my word for it and ask no more?"

"We have a right to know," said Ronicky. "Bill has a right, and, me
being Bill's friend, I have a right, too."

She nodded.

"First off, what's the way John Mark uses you?"

She clenched her hands. "If I tell you that, you will both despise me."

"Try us," said Ronicky. "And you can lay to this, lady, that, when a
gent out of the West says 'partner' to a girl or a man, he means it.
What you do may be bad; what you are i