come in town with you today?" countered John.

"He rarely does," said Kate.

John nodded soothing assent to her explanation: "How's Van Horn?" he
asked casually. "And Stone?" he added, with undiminished interest.
"All well," was his echo to her perfunctory answers. "Say, Belle, was
Jim Laramie in town yesterday?"

Belle shook her head. "How about the day before?" he asked. Again she
said, "no"; and went on with an impatient comment of her own: "You're
always asking questions. What for? That's what I want to know."

John laid his cigarette on the rim of his plate and appealed to Kate:
"Did you ever in your life see a more unreasonable woman than Belle?
How am I to find things out without asking questions of my friends?
And among them I number you both," he added.

Leaning forward, he spoke on: "Now I'll tell you why I asked those
harmless little questions--for I wouldn't ask either of you any other
kind. This news will get to each of you, about evening. By morning it
will be all over Sleepy Cat and by tomorrow noon across the Spanish
Sinks. This morning, early, Van Horn, Tom Stone, Pettigrew with
Bradley, and a bunch of Texas men and cowboys rode over into the
Falling Wall country and there's been hell to pay there every minute
since daylight--that's the word I got about half an hour ago, by
telephone, from a little ranch away up on the head-waters of the Crazy
Woman."

He drew his handkerchief and wiped his brow. "The only man up
there--Belle knows that--that I'm any ways interested in, is Jim
Laramie. According to what I can hear, Jim is home. That's worrying
me just a little.

"What will Jim do? That's what I'm thinking of. How will he stack up
if that bunch goes to his ranch on the Turkey? He hates 'em like
poison. They've gone up there, you understand," he added, speaking to
Kate, as if some further explanation were due a comparative stranger,
"to clean out the rustlers. You can imagine it'll be done--or at least
attempted--without much talk. There won't be very much talk. I've
known for some little time what's been going forward. They tried to
get Jim to join them; offered him about anything he wanted; offered to
see that the contests on his preemption and homestead be withdrawn;
offered him quite a bunch of cattle, I heard; and some money."

Belle's face, her staring eyes and strained expression as she listened,
showed how well she knew what the news meant. "What answer did Jim
give?