this
conclusion, but only a second longer to decide that if this was what
Emerson wanted to do, it was the right thing and should have his help.

"Well," he said, "if you want to pull out on the quiet, Nick and me
will stand off the Republicans over at Plumas till you get out of
their reach."

"Oh, I don't mean to run away." Mead picked up the bridle and with one
hand on the pommel turned suddenly around. There was a half smile
about his mouth, which his sad eyes belied. Tom's idea of the case had
just occurred to him. "Don't you worry about it, Tom. It has nothing
to do with the Whittaker case, nor with the political fights in Las
Plumas."

They remounted and cantered silently toward home. Tom was revolving in
his mind everything he knew about his friend, trying to find the key
to the present situation. After a long time he recalled the
conversation he and Ellhorn had had, as they sat on the top of the
cattle-pen fence at Las Plumas, concerning the possibility of Mead's
being in love.

"Golly! I can't ask him about that!" Tuttle thought, spurring his
horse to faster pace. "But I reckon I'll have to. I've got to find out
what's the matter with him, and then Nick and me have got to help him
out, if we can."

He rode close beside Mead and began: "Say, Emerson--" Then he coughed
and blushed until his mustache looked a faded yellow against the deep
crimson of his face. He glanced helplessly around, vaguely wishing
some enemy might suddenly rise out of the hills whom it would be
necessary to fight. But no living thing, save Emerson's own cattle,
was in sight. So, having begun, he rushed boldly on:

"Say, Emerson, I don't want to be too curious about your affairs,
but--this--this trouble you're in--has it--is it--anything about a--a
girl?"

Mead's spurs instinctively touched his horse into a gallop as he
answered, "Yes."

"Miss Delarue?"

"Yes."

"Wouldn't her father let her have you?"

Mead pulled his sombrero over his eyes with a sudden jerk, as the
thought drove into his brain that he had not asked for her. The idea
of asking Marguerite Delarue to marry him loomed before him as a
gigantic impossibility, a thing not even to be dreamed of. He set his
teeth together as he put into words for the first time the thing that
was making him heart-sick, and plunged his spurs into the horse's
flank with a thrust that sent it flying forward in a headlong run:

"She's going to marry Wellesly."

Tuttle lagged behind