cash, you’ll let up on her.”  “You don’t suppose,” returned Mrs. Patterson contemptuously, “that she’s got anything but what that man of hers—­Poindexter—­lets her have?” “The sheriff says,” retorted Patterson surlily, “that she’s notified him that she claims the rancho as a gift from her husband three years ago, and she’s in possession now, and was so when the execution was out.  It don’t make no matter,” he added, with gloomy philosophy, “who’s got a full hand as long as we ain’t got the cards to chip in.  I wouldn’t ‘a’ minded it,” he continued meditatively, “ef Spence Tucker had dropped a hint to me afore he put out.”  “And I suppose,” said Mrs. Patterson angrily, “you’d have put out too?” “I reckon,” said Patterson simply.

Twice or thrice during the evening he referred, more or less directly, to this lack of confidence shown by his late debtor and employer, and seemed to feel it more keenly than the loss of property.  He confided his sentiments quite openly to the sheriff in possession, over the whiskey and euchre with which these gentlemen avoided the difficulties of their delicate relations.  He brooded over it as he handed the keys of the shop to the sheriff when they parted for the night, and was still thinking of it when the house was closed, everybody gone to bed, and he was fetching a fresh jug of water from the well.  The moon was at times obscured by flying clouds, the avant-couriers of the regular evening shower.  He was stooping over the well, when he sprang suddenly to his feet again.  “Who’s there?” he demanded sharply.

“Hush!” said a voice so low and faint it might have been a whisper of the wind in the palisades of the corral.  But, indistinct as it was, it was the voice of a man he was thinking of as far away, and it sent a thrill of alternate awe and pleasure through his pulses.

He glanced quickly round.  The moon was hidden by a passing cloud, and only the faint outlines of the house he had just quitted were visible.  “Is that you, Spence?” he said tremulously.

“Yes,” replied the voice, and a figure dimly emerged from the corner of the corral.

“Lay low, lay low, for God’s sake,” said Patterson, hurriedly throwing himself upon the apparition.  “The sheriff and his posse are in there.”

“But I must speak to you a moment,” said the figure.

“Wait,” said Patterson, glancing toward the building.  Its blank, shutterless windows revealed no inner light; a profound silence encompassed it.  “Come quick,” he whispered.  Letting his grasp slip down to the unresisting hand of the stranger, he half dragged, half led him, brushing against the wall, into the open door of the deserted bar-room he had just quitted, locked the inner door, poured a glass of whiskey from a decanter, gave it to him, and then watched him drain it at a single draught.

The moon came out, and falling through the bare windows full upon the stranger’s face, revealed the artistic but slightly disheveled curls and mustache of the fugitive, Spencer Tucker.