“Was this your friendship?” she said, her voice shaking with hate and sorrow, “to bring me here as a lure for Whistling Dan?  Listen to me, all of you!  He’s escaped you now, and he’ll come again.  Remember him, for he shan’t forget you!”

“You hear her?” said Silent to Haines.

“Is this what you want me to turn loose?”

“Silent,” said Haines, “it isn’t the girl alone you’ve double crossed.  You’ve crooked me, and you’ll pay me for it sooner or later!”

“Day or night, winter or summer, I’m willing to meet you an’ fight it out.  Rhinehart and Purvis, take this girl back to the clearing!”

They approached, Purvis still staring at the hand from which only a moment before his gun had been knocked by the shot of Whistling Dan.  It was a thing which he could not understand—­he had not yet lost a most uncomfortable sense of awe.  Haines made no objection when they went off, with Kate walking between them.  He knew, now that his blind anger had left him, that it was folly to draw on a fight while the rest of Silent’s men stood around them.

“An’ the rest of you go back to the clearin’.  I got somethin’ to talk over with Lee,” said Silent.

The others obeyed without question, and the leader turned back to his lieutenant.  For a moment longer they remained staring at each other.  Then Silent moved slowly forward with outstretched hand.

“Lee,” he said quietly, “I’m owin’ you an apology an’ I’m man enough to make it.”

“I can’t take your hand, Jim.”

Silent hesitated.

“I guess you got cause to be mad, Lee,” he said.  “Maybe I played too quick a hand.  I didn’t think about double crossin’ you.  I only seen a way to get Whistlin’ Dan out of our path, an’ I took it without rememberin’ that you was the safeguard to the girl.”

Haines eyed his chief narrowly.

“I wish to God I could read your mind,” he said at last, “but I’ll take your word that you did it without thinking.”

His hand slowly met Silent’s.

“An’ what about the girl now, Lee?”

“I’ll send her back to her father’s ranch.  It will be easy to put her on the right way.”

“Don’t you see no reason why you can’t do that?”

“Are you playing with me?”

“I’m talkin’ to you as I’d talk to myself.  If she’s loose she’ll describe us all an’ set the whole range on our trail.”

Haines stared.

Silent went on:  “If we can’t turn her loose, they’s only one thing left—­an’ that’s to take her with us wherever we go.”

“On your honour, do you see no other way out?”

“Do you?”

“She may promise not to speak of it.”

“There ain’t no way of changin’ the spots of a leopard, Lee, an’ there ain’t no way of keepin’ a woman’s tongue still.”

“How can we take a girl with us.”

“It ain’t goin’ to be for long.  After we pull the job that comes on the eighteenth, we’ll blow farther south an’ then we’ll let her go.”