your bow, and got our attention; why the
hell don't you go on?"

The man looked about nervously. He was rather alarmed at the interest he
had excited. The next moment Peter Hamilton had walked into the room.
There was something crucial in his entrance at this particular time; it
crystallized suspicion. The gossip took advantage of the greetings to
Hamilton to make his escape. Texas Tyler left the bunk-room immediately
and looked for him in the room with the dancers. The fiddles, in the hands
of a couple of Mexicans, had set the whole room whirling as if by magic.
As they danced they sang, joining with the "caller-out," who held his
vociferous post between the rooms, till the room was full of singing,
dancing men and women, who spun and pirouetted as if they had not a care
in the world. But Texas Tyler was not of these, as he looked through the
dancers for his man. There was a red flash in the pupils of his eyes, and
he told himself that he was going to do things the way they did them in
Texas, for, of course, he knew that the loose-lipped idiot had meant
Judith Rodney and Peter Hamilton. Never before had such an idea occurred
to him, and now that it had been presented to his mind's eye, he wondered
why he had been such a blind fool. Never had the singing to these dances
seemed so absurd.

"Hawk hop out and the crow hop in,
Three hands round and go it ag'in.
Allemane left, back to the missus,
Grande right and left and sneak a few kisses."

He rushed from the room and down to the stable. At sight of him some one
leaped on a horse and rode out into the darkness.

"Who was that?" asked Texas of a man lounging by the corral.

"That was--" and he gave the name of the loose-lipped man.

Texas cursed long and picturesquely. Then he went back to the bunk-room
and tried to pick a quarrel with Peter Hamilton, who good-naturedly
assumed that his old friend had been drinking and refused to take offence.

Peter went in to ask Kitty to dance with him. All that evening he had been
waiting anxiously for Judith. Meanwhile he had used all his influence as a
newly appointed member of the Wetmore outfit to soothe the ruffled
feelings of the cattle-men. Of the tragedy in the valley he had heard no
rumor.

Kitty had come to the point where she was willing to waive the
Recamier-Chateaubriand friendship in favor of one more personal and
ordinary. In fact, as Peter showed a disposition to regard as final her
answer to him on t