As the horses traversed the two miles of winding trail, Alice Marcum glanced from time to time at the Texan who rode silently at her side.  The man’s face was grave and he seemed entirely oblivious to her presence.  Only once did she venture to speak to him.

“I suppose I ought to thank you, Mr.——­”

“Tex’ll do,” supplied the man, without even the courtesy of a glance.

“—­for the very changed attitude of the sheriff, and for the fact that I am to be lodged in the hotel instead of the jail.”

The girl thought the Texan’s lips drew into their peculiar smile, but he gave no further evidence of having heard and rode on in silence, with his attention apparently fixed upon the tips of his horse’s ears.  At the edge of town the crowd, with Endicott in its midst, swerved toward the railroad and the girl found herself alone with her jailer.  She drew up her horse sharply and glanced back toward the prisoner.

“This way,” said a voice close beside her; “we’ll go to the hotel, I guess there’s enough of ’em to see that the pilgrim gets locked up safe.”

“But I—­I want to speak to him.  To tell him——­”

“Never mind what you want to tell him.  It’ll keep, I reckon.”

At the door of the wooden hotel the cowpuncher swung from his horse.  “You wait here a minute; I’ll go fetch Jennie.  She’s prob’ly over to the dance.  She’ll fix you up with a room an’ see that you get what you want.”

“But my bag?”

“Yer what?”

“My bag—­with all my things in it.  I left it in the car.”

“Oh, yer war-bag!  All right, I’ll get that after I’ve got Jennie cut out an’ headed this way.”

He stepped into the dance-hall next door and motioned to a plump, round-faced girl who was dancing with a young cowboy.  At the conclusion of the dance the girl laughingly refused to accompany her partner to the bar, and made her way toward the Texan.

“Say, Jennie,” the man said, after drawing her aside; “there’s a girl over to the hotel and I want you to go over an’ fix her up with a room.  Give her Number 11.  It’s handy to the side door.”

The girl’s nose went up and the laughing eyes flashed scornfully.  “No, you don’t, Tex Benton!  What do you think I am?  An’ what’s more, you don’t pull nothin’ like that around there.  That hotel’s run decent, an’ it’s goin’ to stay decent or Hank can get someone else fer help.  They’s some several of the boys has tried it sence I be’n there but they never tried it but onct. An’ that goes!” The girl turned away with a contemptuous sniff.

“Jennie!” The Texan was smiling.  “This is a little different case, I reckon.”

“They’re all different cases,” she retorted.  “But everything’s be’n tried from a sister come on a unexpected visit, to slippin’ me five—­Cinnabar Joe tended to that one’s case hisself, an’ he done a good job, too.  So you might’s well save yer wind ’cause there ain’t nothin’ you can think up to say that’ll fool me a little bit.  I ain’t worked around hotels fer it’s goin’ on six years fer nothin’, an’ I wouldn’t trust no man—­cowboys an’ drummers least of all.”