nd since he's dead it harms no
one to tell it to you, though I'd never breathe it to another. He was
fairly gone on you. Now that's the fair truth: the man was gone on
you. I knowed it, where others didn't know it. I was the only one he
could always ask about whether you'd been here, and when; and when you
might be expected coming again--and all such things like that.

"You don't have to knock me down, Miss Nan, to put me wise about a
man's being keen on a girl. I'm a married man," declared McAlpin with
modest pride. "He thought all the time he was fooling me, and keeping
covered. Why, I laughed to myself at his tricks to get information
without letting on! Now, that afternoon he came in here kind of moody.
It was an anniversary for him, and a hard one--the day his father was
shot from ambush--a good many years ago, but nary one of us had forgot
it. Then he happened to see your pony--this same pony you're riding
to-day--a-standing back there in the box-stall. He asked me whose it
was; and he asked me about you, and, by jinx! the way he perked up
when I told him you were coming in on the stage that afternoon! When
he heard you'd been sick, he was for going down to the hotel to get a
cup of coffee--for you!" McAlpin, like any good story-teller, was
already on his feet again. "He did it," he exclaimed, "and you know
what _he_ got when he stepped into the barroom." He took hold of de
Spain's coat and held it aside to enter his exhibit. "There," he
concluded, "is his cartridge-belt, hanging there yet. The boy is
dead--why shouldn't I tell you?"

Nan rode home much more excited, more bewildered than when she had
ridden over. What should she do? It was already pretty clear to her
that de Spain had not ridden unarmed to where she found him to ambush
any of the Morgans. He was not dead; but he was not far from it if
McAlpin was right and if she could credit her own senses in looking at
him. What ought she to do?

Other things McAlpin had said crowded her thoughts. Strangest shock of
all that this man of all other men should profess to care for her. She
had shown anger when McAlpin dared speak of it; at least, she thought
she had. And she still did not know how, sufficiently, to resent the
thought of such audacity on de Spain's part; but recalling all she
could of his words and actions, she was forced to confess to herself
that McAlpin's assertions were confirmed in them--and that what
McAlpin had said interpreted de Spain's u