all her my dream girl and to think I'd got
to heaven because she'd taken the trouble to drive to the Halfway with
me and fight wolves. But she had hardly spoken to me since. And--well,
not only the bones and skull I'd buried had smashed up my theory that it
was only Collins who'd meant to hold up my gold, but I'd smashed it up,
for myself, for a reason that made me wild: Paulette Brown, whose real
name Marcia swore was something else, was still meeting a man in the
dark! Where, I couldn't tell, but I knew she did meet him; and naturally
I knew the man was not Collins, or ever had been. I did my best to get a
talk with her, but she ran from me like a rabbit. I was worried good and
hard. For from what I'd picked up, I knew the man she met could be
nobody at La Chance,--and any outsider who followed a girl there likely
had a gang with him and meant business, not child's play like Collins.

The thing was serious, and I had no right to be trusting my dream girl
and keeping silence to Dudley, but I went on doing it. There is no sense
in keeping things back. I was mad with love for her, and if she had
given me a chance I would have brushed Dudley out of my way like a
straw. I had to grip all the decency I had not to do it, anyway. But if
you think I just made an easy resignation of her and sat back meekly,
you're wrong. I sat back because I was helpless and too stupid to
formulate any way to deal with the situation. I don't know that I was
any more silent than I always am, though Marcia said so. I did get into
the way of pretending to write letters in the evenings, while Marcia and
Macartney talked low, and Dudley went up and down the room in his
eternal trudge of nervousness, throwing a word now and then to Paulette
seated sewing by the fire,--that I kept my back to so that the others
could not see my face.

But one night, nearly a month after Thompson was buried, I came in after
supper, and Paulette was in my usual place. She was writing a letter or
something, and Dudley was preaching to Macartney about the shortage of
men in the bunk house. Marcia, cross as two sticks because she was only
there to talk to Macartney herself, had Paulette's seat by the fire. I
sat down by the table where Paulette was writing, more sideways than
behind her.

If I had chosen to look I could have read every word she was writing.
But naturally I was not choosing to, for one thing, and for another my
eyes were glued to her face. Something in the