s into the sunshine.

For a few minutes Dicksie fingered wildly on the piano at some
half-forgotten air, and in a fever of excitement walked out on the
porch to see where they were. To her relief, she saw Marion sitting
near Sinclair under the big tree in front of the house, where the
horses stood. Dicksie, with her hands on her girdle, walked forlornly
back and forth, hummed a tune, sat down in a rocking-chair, fanned
herself, rose, walked back and forth again, and reflected that she was
perfectly helpless, and that Sinclair might kill Marion a hundred
times before she could reach her. And the thought that Marion was
perhaps wholly unconscious of danger increased her anxiety.

She sat down in despair. How could Whispering Smith have allowed any
one he had a care for to be exposed in this dreadful way? Trying to
think what to do, Dicksie hurried back into the living-room, walked to
the piano, took the pile of sheet-music from the top, and sat down to
thumb it over. She threw song after song on the chair beside her. They
were sheets of gaudy coon songs and ragtime with flaring covers, and
they seemed to give off odors of cheap perfume. Dicksie hardly saw the
titles as she passed them over, but of a sudden she stopped. Between
two sheets of the music lay a small handkerchief. It was mussed, and
in the corner of it "Nellie" was written conspicuously in a laundry
mark. The odor of musk became in an instant sickening. Dicksie threw
the music disdainfully aside, and sprang up with a flushed face to
leave the room. Sinclair's remark about the first woman to cross his
threshold came back to her. From that moment Dicksie hated him. But no
sooner had she seated herself on the porch than she remembered she had
left her hat in the house, and rose to go in after it. She was
resolved not to leave it under the roof another moment, and she had
resolved to go over and wait where her horse was tied. As she
reentered the doorway she stopped. In the room she had just left a
cowboy sat at the table, taking apart a revolver to clean it. The
revolver was spread in its parts before him, but across the table lay
a rifle. The man had not been in the room when she left it a moment
before.

Dicksie passed behind him. He paid no attention to her; he had not
looked up when she entered the room. Passing behind him once more to
go out, Dicksie looked through the open window before which he sat.
Sinclair and Marion sitting under the cottonwood tree