er, Laramie said nothing. When, however, he
discovered that Kate was missing, he crustily short-circuited Belle's
excuses. Words passed. It became clear that Laramie would start out
and search the town if Kate were not produced.

"She wanted to see _me_," he insisted, doggedly. "Now I want to see
_her_."

Carpy found he must again intervene. He despatched McAlpin as a
diplomatic envoy over to his own house whither he had taken Kate as his
guest when she peremptorily declined to return to Belle's.

CHAPTER XXXVI

MCALPIN AT BAY

However others may have felt that night about Laramie's affairs, one
man, McAlpin, was proud of his ride, desperately wounded, all the way
to town. Laramie had made a confidant of no one but Kate. His
experience in being trapped was not so pleasant that he liked to talk
about it and neither McAlpin's shrewd questioning nor Carpy's
restrained curiosity was gratified that night.

In the circumstances, McAlpin's fancy had full play; and distrustful of
his imagination unaided, he repaired early to the Mountain House bar to
stimulate it. Thus it gradually transpired along the bar, either from
the stimulant or its reaction or from McAlpin's excitement, that a big
fight had taken place that morning in the Falling Wall from which only
Laramie had returned alive. It was known that he had come back and
inference as to who the dead men might be could center only on his two
active enemies, Tom Stone and Harry Van Horn. The pawky barn boss, who
possessed perfectly the art of tantalizing innuendo, thus stirred the
bar-room pool to the depths.

McAlpin chose the rustler's end of the bar--as Abe Hawk's old stand was
called--and held the interest of the room against all comers. As the
place filled for the evening, his cap, its vizor more than ordinarily
awry, was a conspicuous object and it became a favor on his part to
accept the courtesies of the bar at any man's hands.

"I knowed how it had to end," he would repeat when he had rambled again
around all aspects of the mysterious encounter. "I knowed if they kept
after Jim how it _had_ to end. Why, hell, gentlemen," he would aver,
planting a hob-nailed barn boot on the foot-rail, while swinging on one
elbow from the polished face of the mahogany, "I've _seen_ the boy stop
a coyote on the go, at 900 yards--what could you expect? No, no, not
again. What? Well, go ahead; just a dash o' bitters in mine, Luke.
Thank you.

"Well, boys,