ean a man that makes his living by gambling--or hangs around a
gambling house all the time, or plays regularly--then I couldn't fairly
and squarely be called a gambler. If you mean a man that plays cards
_sometimes_, or _has_ once in a while bet on a game in a gambling
house, then, I suppose"--he was so evidently squirming that Kate meanly
enjoyed his discomfort--"you might call me that. It would all depend
on whether the one telling it liked me or didn't like me. I haven't
been in Tenison's rooms for months, nor played but one game of poker."

"I despise gambling."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Why should I?"

"In one sense everybody's a gambler. Everybody I know of is playing
for something. Take your father and me: He's playing for my life; I'm
playing for you. He's playing for a small stake; I'm playing for a big
one."

She could not protest quick enough: "You talk wildly."

"No," he persisted evenly, "I only look at it just as it is."

"Don't ask me to believe all the cruel things said of my father any
more than you want me to believe the things said of you. I am terribly
sorry to see you wounded. And now"--her words caught in her
throat--"Belle blames me even for that."

"How on earth does she blame you for that?"

Despite her efforts to control herself, Kate, as she approached the
unpleasant subject, began to tremble inwardly with the fear that it
must after all be as Belle had rudely asserted--that her father was
behind these efforts against Laramie's life. For nothing had shaken
her tottering faith in her father more than the blunt words Laramie
himself had just now indifferently spoken.

"If I am in any way to blame, it is innocently," she hurried on. "I
will tell you everything; you shall judge. My father was bitterly
angry when he learned I had been seen at Abe Hawk's funeral. I told
him about my getting lost, about falling into the place at the
bridge--how you did everything you could and how Abe Hawk had done all
he could. He was so angry he would listen to nothing----" she stopped,
collected herself, tried to go on, could not.

"Oh, I hate this country!" she exclaimed. "I hate the people and
everything in it! And I'm going away from it--as far as I can get.
But I wouldn't go," she said determinedly, "without seeing you and
telling you this much."

Laramie spoke quietly but with confidence: "You are not going away from
this country."

Kate had picked up a stem of hay and looki