mething different, something quite beyond his power to grasp? Surely
this girl could not fear him. Suddenly he remembered that Hardman had
fled to this house--was hidden there now. Pan's nerves tautened.

"Louise," he began, taking her hand again, and launching directly into
the reason for this interview he had sought, "we've had a great drive.
Blink and I have had luck. Oh, such luck! We sold over fifteen
hundred horses.... Well, we're going to Arizona, to a sunny open
country, not like this.... Now Blink and I want you to go with us."

"What! Go away with you? How, in God's name?" she gasped in utter
amaze.

"Why, as Blink's wife, of course. And I'll be your big brother,"
replied Pan, not without agitation. It was a pregnant moment. She
stared a second, white and still, with great solemn searching eyes on
his. Pan felt strangely embarrassed, yet somehow happy that he had
dared to approach her with such a proposition.

Suddenly she kissed him, she clung to him, she buried her face on his
shoulder and he heard her murmur incoherently something about
"honest-to-God men."

"What do you say, little girl?" he went on. "It's a chance for you to
be good again. It'll save that wild cowboy, who never had a decent
ambition till he met you. He loves you. He worships you. He hates
what you have to suffer here. He--"

"So this is Panhandle Smith?" she interrupted, looking up at him with
eyes like dark stars. "No! No! No! I wouldn't degrade even a
worthless cowboy."

"You're wrong. He'll _not_ be worthless, if you repay his faith.
Louise, don't turn your back on hope, on love, on a home."

"No!" she flashed, passionately.

"Why?" he returned, in sharp appeal.

"Because he's too good for me. Because I don't deserve your
friendship. But so help me God I'll love you both all the rest of my
miserable life--which won't be long."

He took her in his arms, as if to add force to argument. "But, you
poor child, this is no place for you. You'll only go to hell--commit
suicide or be killed in a drunken brawl."

"Panhandle, I may end even worse," she replied, in bitter mockery. "I
might marry Dick Hardman. He talks of it--when he's drunk."

Pan released her, and leaned back to see her face. "_Marry_ you! Dick
Hardman talks of that?" he burst out incredulously.

"Yes, he does. And I might let him when I'm drunk. I'd do anything
then."

At that moment the door opened noiselessly and Blinky ente