anger.

"How dare you insult her with such a question?" he asked, hoarsely. "How
could it be possible for Miss Rivers to know this renegade horse-thief?"

"Well, I'll tell you," said the man, drawing a long breath and looking at
the girl. "It ain't a pleasant thing to do; but as we have no courts up
here, we have to straighten out crimes in a camp the best way we can. My
name is Saunders. That man over there is right--this is Lee Holly; and I
am sure now that I saw him leave this cabin last night. I passed the cabin
and heard voices--hers and a man's. I heard her say: 'While I can't quite
decide to kill you myself, I hope some one else will.' The rest of their
words were not so clear. I told Overton when he came back, but the man
was gone then. You ask me how I dare think she could tell something of
this if she chose. Well, I can't help it. She is wearing a ring I'll swear
I saw Lee Holly wear three years ago, at a card table in Seattle. I'll
swear it! And he is lying here dead in her room, with a knife sticking in
him that she had possession of to-day. Now, gentlemen, what do you think
of it yourselves?"

CHAPTER XXIII.

GOOD-BY.

"Oh, 'Tana, it is awful--awful!" and poor Mrs. Huzzard rocked herself in a
spasm of woe. "And to think that you won't say a word--not a single word!
It just breaks my heart."

"Now, now! I'll say lots of things if you will talk of something besides
murders. And I'll mend your broken heart when this trouble is all over,
you will see!"

"Over! I'm mightily afraid it is only commencing. And you that cool and
indifferent you are enough to put one crazy! Oh, if Dan Overton was only
here."

The girl smiled. All the hours of the night had gone by. He had at least
twelve hours' start, and the men of the camp had not yet suspected him for
even a moment. They had questioned Harris, and he told them, by signs,
that no man had gone through his cabin, no one had been in since dark; but
he had heard a movement in the other room. The knife he had seen 'Tana
take into the other room long before dark.

"And some one quarreling with this Holly--or following him--may have
chanced on it and used it," contested Lyster, who was angered, dismayed,
and puzzled at 'Tana, quite as much as at the finding of the body. Her
answers to all questions were so persistently detrimental to her own
cause.

"Don't be uneasy--they won't hang me," she assured him. "Think of them
hanging any one for killing Lee