m than the furnishing of a room was what had become of Dick Lane.
After the wedding ceremony no chance had come to him to speak privately
to Allen.

The festivities of the wedding had been shortened. Slim had gathered a
posse and taken up the trail of the slayers. Jim Allen had joined
them. The hazing of Jack, and the hasty departure of the bridal pair
on horseback in a shower of corn, shelled and on cob, prevented the two
men from meeting.

The older man had volunteered no explanation. Jack knew that in his
heart Allen did not approve of his actions, but was keeping silent
because of his daughter.

Jack could restrain himself no longer. "Jim--what happened that
night?" he asked brokenly.

Allen showed his embarrassment. "Meanin'--" Then he hesitated.

"Dick," was all Jack could say.

"I seed him. If I hadn't, he'd busted up the weddin' some," was his
laconic answer.

"Where is he?"

Allen relighted his pipe. When he got the smoke drawing freely, he
gazed at Jack thoughtfully and answered: "He's gone. Back where he
came from--into the desert." Jim puffed slowly and then added: "Looks
like you didn't give Dick a square deal."

Allen liked his son-in-law, and was going to stand by him, but in
Arizona the saying "All's fair in love and war" is not accepted at its
face value.

"I didn't," acknowledged Jack. "I was desperate at the thought of
losing her. She loved me, and had forgotten him--she's happy with me
now."

"I reckon that's right," was Jim's consoling reply.

To clinch his argument and soothe his troublesome conscience, Jack
continued: "She never would have been happy with him."

"That's what I told him," declared Allen. "He knew it, an' that's why
he went away--an' Echo--no matter what comes, she must never know.
She'd never forgive you--an', fer that matter, me, neither."

Jack looked long out of the window toward the distant mountains--the
barrier behind which Dick was wandering in the great desert, cut off
from the woman he loved by a false friend.

"How I have suffered for that lie!" uttered Jack, in tones full of
anguish. "That's what hurts me most--the thought that I lied to her.
I might have killed him that night," pondered Jack. He shuddered at
the thought that he had been on the point of adding murder to the lie.
He had faced the same temptation which Dick had yet to overcome.

"Mebbe you did. There's more'n one way of killin' a man," suggested
Allen.

Jack swung r