for the door.

"Father!" Kate protested, taking a quick step after him as he passed
out. "You don't do him justice. You don't know him."

But slamming the door shut behind him, he cut off her words. If they
reached his ears he gave them no heed.

CHAPTER XXXIX

BARB MAKES A SURPRISING ALLIANCE

By a happy chance, on the night of Laramie's great hour, Sawdy and
Lefever returned from Medicine Bend. It was late when they
arrived--into the early morning hours, in fact, and at the Mountain
House the bar was not only closed but securely closed--barricaded
against just such marauders. Even the night clerk had gone to bed.
But this was less of an embarrassment, for the two adventurers, turning
on the lights, took his pass keys from the drawer and, opening the
doors of one room after another in the face of a variety of protests,
kept on till they found satisfactory quarters that "seemed"
unoccupied--quarters in which at least the beds were unoccupied.

The hardy scouts slept late. They breakfasted late, in what Sawdy
called the hotel "ornery," and while they were reducing the visible
supply of ham and eggs, Tenison walked in on them to ask about
complaints made at the office by indignant guests whose privacy had
been invaded during the night. Rebuffed on this subject, all knowledge
being disclaimed, Tenison was called on for the story of events since
the two had been away, and of these Laramie's escape from the canyon
came first. Tenison reported further, in confidence, Laramie's success
with Kate. Had the news provided every man in the Falling Wall with a
brand-new wife, it could not have been more to the humor of Sawdy and
Lefever.

Sawdy rose and stretched himself from the waist down to make sure his
legs touched the floor: "I've got to have a good cigar on that," he
declared. "Take away, Mabel." He nodded courteously to the waitress.
"Harry, we had the dustiest trip I ever seen in my life," he added, as
with his companions he left the table. "The old Ogallala trail wasn't
a marker to it. Why, the dust was a mile deep. My tonsils are plumb
full of it yet."

Not everyone in Sleepy Cat was so quick to credit the news that Kate
Doubleday was going to marry Jim Laramie. The cattlemen sympathizers
looked grumpy, when approached on the subject. They preferred not to
talk, but if taunted would retort with an intimating oath: "That show
ain't over yet."

"Jim Laramie acts as if it was, anyway," grumb