Van Horn's in
town."

McAlpin gasped and swallowed: "What d' y' mean, Harry?"

"Damnation!" thundered Tenison. "You heard me, didn't you?"

"I did."

"Do as you're told."

CHAPTER XLIII

THE LAST CALL

The canny Scot knew well what the message meant. With little
ostentation and much celerity he hurried up street. Belle, at her,
door with Kate, drawn-faced, could only say that Laramie had promised
to come there before starting. "Warn him," was McAlpin's excited word.
"You know Van Horn, Belle."

Red-faced and heated, McAlpin ambled rapidly in and out of every place
where he could imagine Laramie might be. Deathly afraid of running
into Van Horn--who bore him, he well knew, no love--but doggedly bent
on his errand, McAlpin asked fast questions and spread the rapid-fire
news as he traveled. More than once he had word of Laramie, yet
nowhere could he, in his exasperation, set eyes on him. How nearly he
succeeded in his mission he never knew till he had failed.

Laramie had completed his dispositions and was free, after a brief
round of errands, to start north, when Carpy encountered him in the
harness shop next to the drug store. Laramie was in haste. But Carpy
insisted he must speak with him and, against protest, took him by way
of the back door of the shop over to the back door of the drug store
and into the little room behind the prescription case.

The doctor sat down and motioned Laramie, despite his impatience, to a
chair: "It won't take long to tell you what I've got to tell you," said
Carpy, firmly, "but you'll be a long time forgetting it. And the time
you ought to know it is now.

"Jim!" Carpy, facing him four feet away, looked squarely into
Laramie's eyes. "I know you pretty well, don't I? All right! I'm
going to talk pretty plain. You're going to marry Kate Doubleday.
Whatever her father's faults--and they've been a-plenty--they'd best be
let lie now. That's what Kate would want, I'm thinkin'--that's what
her husband would want--anyway, her children would want it. Barb,
after he deserted Kate's mother, went out into the Black Hills. He got
into trouble there--a partnership scrape. I don't know how much or how
little he was to blame; but his partner got the best of him and Barb
shot him.

"The partner's friends had the pull. Barb was sentenced for
manslaughter. He broke away the night he was sentenced. He came out
into this country, took his own name again, got into r