ns? That was what the gamblers' trust
of Comanche wanted to know. In order to insure it they had the city
incorporated, and put in a good, limber-wristed bartender as chief of
police.

It was to that dignitary that Dr. Slavens' friends had come with their
appeal for assistance. There was discouragement in the very air that
surrounded the chief, and in the indifference with which he heard their
report. He looked at Agnes with the slinking familiarity of a man who
knows but one kind of woman, and judges the world of women thereby. She
colored under the insult of his eyes, and Bentley, even-tempered and
slow to wrath as he was, felt himself firing to fighting pitch.

"Well," said the chief, turning from them presently with a long gape,
terminating in a ructatious sigh, "I'll shake out all the drunks in the
calaboose this afternoon, and if your friend's among 'em I'll send him
on over to you. No harm could happen to him here in Comanche. He'd be as
safe here, night or day, as he would be playin' tennis in the back yard
at home."

The chief mentioned that game with scorn and curling of the lip. Then he
gazed out of the window vacuously, as if he had forgotten them, his
mashed cigar smoking foully between his gemmed fingers.

Bentley looked at Agnes in amazed indignation. When he squared off as if
to read his mind to the chief she checked him, and laid her hand on his
arm with a compelling pressure toward the door.

"That man's as crooked as the river over there!" he exclaimed when they
had regained the sunlight outside the smoke-polluted office.

"That's plain," she agreed; "and it doesn't mitigate my fears for the
doctor's safety in the least."

"Walker and I were wrong in our opinion; something has happened to
Slavens," said Bentley.

"Your opinion?" she questioned.

"Well, I should say Walker's rather," he corrected. "I only concurred
weakly along toward the end. Walker has held out all the time that
Slavens went out to hold a celebration all by himself."

"No; he didn't do that," said she calmly. "I thought so for a little
while this morning, too. But I know he didn't. Do you suppose----"

She stopped, as if considering something too extravagant to utter.

"Suppose?" he repeated.

"He talked a good deal about going into the canyon to clear up the
mystery of that newspaperman and earn the reward," said she.

Bentley shook his head.

"He'd hardly start at night and without preparation."

"He seemed to b