s instantly on edge again with
the second thought.

"Donnegan?" she whispered.

"Safe and sound," said Lester coldly.

She could not gather the truth of the statement.

"Then Nick got Landis back before Donnegan returned?"

"No."

Like any other girl, Nelly Lebrun hated a puzzle above all things in the
world, at least a puzzle which affected her new friends.

"Lester, what's happened?" she demanded.

At this Lester, who had been brooding upon the floor, raised his eyes
and then switched one leg over the other. He was a typical cowman, was
Lester, from his crimson handkerchief knotted around his throat to his
shop-made boots which fitted slenderly about his instep with the care of
a gloved hand.

"I dunno what happened," said Lester. "Which looks like what counts is
the things that didn't happen. Landis is still with that devil, Macon.
Donnegan is loose without a scratch, and Lord Nick is in his room with a
face as black as a cloudy night."

And briefly he described how Lord Nick had gone up the hill, seen the
colonel, come back, taken a horse litter, and gone up the hill again,
while the populace of The Corner waited for a crash. For Donnegan had
arrived in the meantime. And how Nick had gone into the cabin, remained
a singularly long time, and then come out, with a face half white and
half red and an eye that dared anyone to ask questions. He had strode
straight home to Lebrun's and gone to his room; and there he remained,
never making a sound.

"But I'll give you my way of readin' the sign on that trail," said
Lester. "Nick goes up the hill to clean up on Donnegan. He sees him;
they size each other up in a flash; they figure that if they's a gun it
means a double killin'--and they simply haul off and say a perlite
fare-thee-well."

The girl paid no attention to these remarks. She was sunk in a brown
study.

"There's something behind it all," she said, more to herself than to the
men. "Nick is proud as the devil himself. And I can't imagine why he'd
let Donnegan go. Oh, it might have been done if they'd met alone in the
desert. But with the whole town looking on and waiting for Nick to clean
up on Donnegan--no, it isn't possible. There must have been a showdown
of some kind."

There was a grim little silence after this.

"Maybe there was," said the Pedlar dryly. "Maybe there was a
showdown--and the wind-up of it is that Nick comes home meek as a
six-year-old broke down in front."

She stared at h