ween them there is, at least, no open quarrel to furnish a plausible
reason for her silence. We would only make ourselves absurd, Dan, by any
public charge. But there is some way to get the truth. Try your methods
and then--well, I'll try mine."

This was in the forenoon. That evening the Dago Duke leaned against the
door-jamb of the White Elephant Saloon and watched Dan Treu coming from
Dr. Harpe's office with failure written upon his face. His white teeth
gleamed in a smile of amusement as he waited for the sheriff.

"Don't swear, Dan. Never speak disrespectfully of a lady if you can help
it."

"Dago," said the sheriff, with his slow, emphatic drawl, "I wish she
was a man just for a minute--half a minute--one second would do."

"She laughed at you, yes?"

"She laughed at me, yes? Well, I guess she did. She gave me the merry
ha! ha! I told her you had seen two men on horseback pass her out there
in the hills, that I had seen the mark of her buggy wheels and the
tracks of the two horses on the run and that the print of moccasins led
from the sheep-wagon into the brush. She looked at me with that kind of
stare where you can see the lie lying back of it and said--

"I didn't see anybody. I've told you that and I'll swear to it if
necessary."

"'Look here, Doc,' I says, 'if you don't tell that you saw these men
we'll tell it for you.'"

"That's when she laughed, cackled would be a better word, it sure wasn't
a laugh, you'd call ketchin', and says--

"'You fly at it. Try startin' something like that and see what happens
to you. I got some pull in this town and you'll find it out if you don't
know it. You'll wake up some mornin' and find yourself out of a job. Who
do you think would take that drunken loafer's word against mine? And
beside, why should I keep anything back that would clear Essie Tisdale?
You're crazy, man! Why, she's a friend of mine.'

"You called the turn on her all right, Dago; she said just about what
you said she would say."

"You haven't got the right kind of a mind, Dan, to sabe women of her
sort. It takes a Latin to do that. There's natural craft and intrigue
enough of the feminine in the southern races to follow their illogical
reasoning and to understand their moods and caprices as an Anglo-Saxon
never can. You are like a big, blundering, honest watch-dog, Dan,
trying to do field work that requires a trained hunting dog with a fine
nose and hereditary instincts. If this was a horse-steal