gnant hours that their various
enormities were made plain to her, chiefly through the expounding of
_ex-post-facto_ wisdom operating cold-bloodedly and without the urge of
a peril to be met.

With much the same acceptance of the bizarre as that which marks the
fantasy of dreams, she endured the discomforts of that night's journey
and found herself at daybreak looking into gravely welcoming eyes on the
station at Marlin Town.

Her own eyes felt sunken and hot with fatigue, but to Joe Gregory, who
had also spent a sleepless night, she seemed a picture of the fresh and
dauntless.

They went first to her father's bungalow, and there a new difficulty
presented itself. Larry Masters had gone away to some adjacent town and
had left his house tight locked.

"Boone's on the move today," Joe Gregory informed her, "but matters'll
come to a head ternight. Twell then things won't hardly bust, but when
ther time comes, whatever ye kin do hes need ter be done swiftly. When I
talked with ye last night I misdoubted we'd hev even this much time ter
go on."

Then as they sat on the doorstep of the closed house, which no longer
afforded her the conventional sanction of paternal presence, the deputy
sheriff outlined for her with admirable directness and vigour the
situation which had driven him to her for help. To clear away all
mystification he sketched baldly the little episode of the down-turned
photograph and the bitterness of the three words, "I'm ruined now."

"Thet's how come me ter know," he enlightened simply, "thet Boone war
sort of crazed-like--an' thet _you_ mout cure him, ef so be ye _would_."
Then with a sterner note he added: "Whatever took place betwixt ther two
of ye air yore own business, but thar's some of us thet would go down
inter hell ter save Boone Wellver. I needed ye, an', despite yer bein' a
woman, ef ye're a man in any sense at all, ye'll stand by me right now."

Anne rose from the doorstep where she had been dejectedly sitting and
held out a hand.

"You see, I came," she said briefly; "and I aim to be man enough to do
my best."

From the door of the wretched hotel as the morning grew to noon, she
watched the streets, and it seemed to her that, quite aside from the
usual gloom of the winter's day and the scowl of the heavy sky, there
was a new and intangible spirit of foreboding upon the town. That, she
argued, could be only the creative force of imagination.

She wished for Joe Gregory, but among ma