start of surprise. "Come on in. The coffee's fine this morning;
and I just had a hunch I'd better not throw it out for a while yet.
There's a little waffle batter left, too."

Starr had choked down a cup of coffee and a sandwich at the station lunch
counter before he left San Bonito, and he was glad now that he was not
hungry. He stepped inside, but he did not smile back at Helen May; nor
could he have accepted her hospitality to save himself from starvation.
He felt enough like Judas as it was.

"Don't put down your gun yet," he said abruptly, standing beside the door
with his hat in his hand, as though his visit would be very short. "You
can shoot me if you want to, but that's about all the leeway I can give
you. I rounded up the revolution leaders last night. They're likely at
Fort Bliss by now, so you can take your choice between handing me a
bullet, or going along with me to Fort Bliss. Because if I live, that's
where I'll have to take you. And," he added as an afterthought, "I don't
care much which it is."

Helen May stood with her chin tilted down, and stared at him from under
her eyebrows. She did not speak for a minute, and Starr leaned back
against the closed door with his arms folded negligently and his hat
dangling from one hand, waiting her decision. He stared back at her,
somberly apathetic. He had spoken the simple truth when he said he did
not care which she decided to do. He had come to the limit of suffering,
it seemed to him. He could look into her tawny brown eyes now without any
emotion whatever.

"You don't smell drunk," said Helen May suddenly and very bluntly, "and
you don't look crazy. What is the matter with you, Starr of the desert?
Is this a joke, or what?"

"It didn't strike me as any joke," Starr told her passionlessly.
"Thirteen of them I rounded up. Holman Sommers was the head of the whole
thing. Elfigo Apodaca is in jail, held for the shooting of Estan Medina.
Luis Medina is in jail too, held as a witness and to keep Apodaca's men
from killing him before he can testify in court. I hated to see the kid
tangled up with it--and I hate to see you in it. But that don't give me
any license to let you off. You're under arrest. I'm a Secret Service
man, sent here to prevent the revolution that's been brewing all spring
and summer. I guess I've done it, all right." He stared at her with
growing bitterness in his eyes. His hurt began dully to ache again.
"Helen May, what in God's name did yo