l have to stop this brawling,
Adams! I can't have my man--"

Adams gives him the up and down.

"Aw, shut up!" he snarls--and blows.

Well, right now I'm a million miles up in the air and no more
interested in the thing than the bartenders was in final returns of the
prohibition vote. They's two things I can't figure at all. One of 'em
is why Adams should knock a man kickin' for roastin' De Vronde, who
didn't have a friend in the place, and the other is what Duke and them
camera men is doin' there.

About a week blows by, and then Miss Devine rides out alone one mornin'
on a big white stallion. In a hour the horse trots into camp with the
saddle empty. For the next twenty minutes they's more excitement in
and about Film City than they was at the burnin' of Rome, but while
Duke is gettin' up searchin' parties, Adams has cranked up Miss
Devine's roadster and is a speck of dust goin' towards Frisco.

It was around five o'clock that afternoon, when he comes back and Miss
Devine is sittin' beside him. Her ankle is all bound up with
handkerchiefs and Adams is drivin' very slow and careful. He stops and
then turns to help her outa the car, but she dodges his arm, steps down
all by herself and without any sign of a limp, walks into the general
offices.

Adams stands lookin' after her for a minute, kinda stunned.

"What was the matter?" I asks him, runnin' up.

"Why," he says, without lookin' at me; "she broke--she said she broke
her ankle. She--"

Then he turns and runs the car into the garage.

The next mornin' he quits!

Duke broke the news, comin' over to Miss Devine, while I'm tellin' her
how Kid Scanlan clouted his way up to the title.

"Well, Miss Devine," he growls, "I guess you win! Adams has left Film
City flat on its back. I thought that bird had the stuff in him, but I
guess you saw deeper than I did!"

"I guess I did!" says Miss Devine kinda slow. "I knew he'd never stay."

Duke clears his throat a coupla times, blows his nose and wipes his
forehead with a silk handkerchief--his only dissipation.

"And now I got a confession to make," he says, throwin' back his
shoulders like he's bracin' himself for a punch. "Ever since the day I
played you against Adams, I been takin' a movie of you and him. Every
time you was together they was a camera man--and a good one--in the
offin'. You didn't know it and neither did Adams, but the result is a
peach of a movie that'll make us a lot of money, i