“Murder, but a very clumsy scheme.  Three men leave town and commit a murder and then expect to go undetected?  Not even in the mountain desert!”

“But you don’t understand, you don’t understand!  They’re wise as foxes.  They’ll take no risk.  They don’t even leave town together or travel by the same routes.  Harry Masters starts first.  He rides out at eight o’clock in the morning and takes the north trail.  He rides down the gulch and winds out of it and strikes for the shack at the ford.  At half past eight the Pedlar starts.  He goes past Sandy’s place and then over the trail through the marsh.  You know it?”

“Yes.”

“Last of all, Joe Rix starts at nine o’clock.  Half an hour between them.”

“How does he go to the shack?”

“By the south trail.  He takes the ridge of the hills.  But they’ll all be at the shack long before you and they’ll shoot you down from a distance as you come up to it.  Plain murder, but even for cowardly murder they daren’t face you except three to one.”

He was thoughtful.

“Suppose they were to be met on the way?”

“You’re mad to think of it!”

“But if they fail this time they’ll try again.  They must be taught a lesson.”

“Three men?  Oh, my dear, my dear!  Promise!”

“Very well.  I shall do nothing rash.  And I shall never forget that you’ve come to tell me this and been in peril, Nell, for if they found you had come to me—­”

“The Pedlar would cut my throat.  I know him!”

“Ah!  But now you must go.  I’ll take you down the hill, dear.”

“No, no!  It’s much easier to get back alone.  My face will be covered.  But there’s no way you could be disguised.  You have a way of walking—­good night—­and God bless you!”

She was in his arms, straining him to her; and then she slipped out the door.

And sure enough, there was the colonel in his chair not fifty feet away with a girl pushing him.  The moonlight was too dim for Nelly Lebrun to make out the face of Lou Macon, but even the light which escaped through the filter of clouds was enough to set her golden hair glowing.  The color was not apparent, but its luster was soft silver in the night.  There was a murmur of the colonel’s voice as Nelly came out of the cabin.

And then, from the girl, a low cry.

It brought the blood to the cheeks of Nelly as she hurried down the hill, for she recognized the pain that was in it; and it occurred to her that if the girl was in love with Jack Landis she was strangely interested in Donnegan also.

The thought came so sharply home to her that she paused abruptly on the way down the hill.  After all, this Macon girl would be a very strange sort if she were not impressed by the little red-headed man, with his gentle voice and his fiery ways, and his easy way of making himself a brilliant spectacle whenever he appeared in public.  And Nelly remembered, also, with the keen suspicion of a woman in love how weakly Donnegan had responded to her embrace this night.  How absent-mindedly his arms had held her, and how numbly they had fallen away when she turned at the door.