Donnegan, by this time, was dead.  She began to feel that it would be hard to look Lord Nick in the face again.  His other killings had often seemed to her glorious.  She had rejoiced in the invincibility of her lover.

Now he suddenly took on the aspect of a murderer.

She found the house hushed.  Perhaps everyone was at the gaming house; for now it was midafternoon.  But when she opened the door to the apartment which they used as a living room she found Joe Rix and the Pedlar and Lester sitting side by side, silent.  There was no whisky in sight; there were no cards to be seen.  Marvel of marvels, these three men were spending their time in solemn thought.  A sudden thought rushed over her, and her cry told where her heart really lay, at least at this time.

“Lord Nick—­has he been—­”

The Pedlar lifted his gaunt head and stared at her without expression.  It was Joe Rix who answered.

“Nick’s upstairs.”

“Safe?”

“Not a scratch.”

She sank into a chair with a sigh, but was instantly on edge again with the second thought.

“Donnegan?” she whispered.

“Safe and sound,” said Lester coldly.

She could not gather the truth of the statement.

“Then Nick got Landis back before Donnegan returned?”

“No.”

Like any other girl, Nelly Lebrun hated a puzzle above all things in the world, at least a puzzle which affected her new friends.

“Lester, what’s happened?” she demanded.

At this Lester, who had been brooding upon the floor, raised his eyes and then switched one leg over the other.  He was a typical cowman, was Lester, from his crimson handkerchief knotted around his throat to his shop-made boots which fitted slenderly about his instep with the care of a gloved hand.

“I dunno what happened,” said Lester.  “Which looks like what counts is the things that didn’t happen.  Landis is still with that devil, Macon.  Donnegan is loose without a scratch, and Lord Nick is in his room with a face as black as a cloudy night.”

And briefly he described how Lord Nick had gone up the hill, seen the colonel, come back, taken a horse litter, and gone up the hill again, while the populace of The Corner waited for a crash.  For Donnegan had arrived in the meantime.  And how Nick had gone into the cabin, remained a singularly long time, and then come out, with a face half white and half red and an eye that dared anyone to ask questions.  He had strode straight home to Lebrun’s and gone to his room; and there he remained, never making a sound.

“But I’ll give you my way of readin’ the sign on that trail,” said Lester.  “Nick goes up the hill to clean up on Donnegan.  He sees him; they size each other up in a flash; they figure that if they’s a gun it means a double killin’—­and they simply haul off and say a perlite fare-thee-well.”

The girl paid no attention to these remarks.  She was sunk in a brown study.