Her husband reached the door, from the inner room, almost as quickly as she did.  They both saw in the road two armed mounted men—­one of whom Ira recognized as the sheriff’s deputy.

“Has anybody been here, just now?” he asked sharply.

“No.”

“Seen anybody go by?” he continued.

“No.  What’s up?”

“One of them circus jumpers stabbed Hal Dudley over the table in Dolores monte shop last night, and got away this morning.  We hunted him into the plain and lost him somewhere in this d——­d dust.”

“Why, Sue reckoned she saw suthin’ just now,” said Ira, with a flash of recollection.  “Didn’t ye, Sue?”

“Why the h-ll didn’t she say it before?—­I beg your pardon, ma’am; didn’t see you; you’ll excuse haste.”

Both the men’s hats were in their hands, embarrassed yet gratified smiles on their faces, as Sue came forward.  There was the faintest of color in her sallow cheek, a keen brilliancy in her eyes; she looked singularly pretty.  Even Ira felt a slight antenuptial stirring through his monotonously wedded years.

The young woman walked out, folding the towel around her red hands and forearms—­leaving the rounded whiteness of bared elbow and upper arm in charming contrast—­and looked gravely past the admiring figures that nearly touched her own.  “It was somewhar over thar,” she said lazily, pointing up the road in the opposite direction to the barn, “but I ain’t sure it was any one.”

“Then he’d already passed the house afore you saw him?” said the deputy.

“I reckon—­if it was him,” returned Sue.

“He must have got on,” said the deputy; “but then he runs like a deer; it’s his trade.”

“Wot trade?”

“Acrobat.”

“Wot’s that?”

The two men were delighted at this divine simplicity.  “A man who runs, jumps, climbs—­and all that sort, in the circus.”

“But isn’t he runnin’, jumpin’, and climbin’ away from ye now?” she continued with adorable naivete.

The deputy smiled, but straightened in the saddle.  “We’re bound to come up with him afore he reaches Lowville; and between that and this house it’s a dead level, where a gopher couldn’t leave his hole without your spottin’ him a mile off!  Good-by!” The words were addressed to Ira, but the parting glance was directed to the pretty wife as the two men galloped away.

An odd uneasiness at this sudden revelation of his wife’s prettiness and its evident effect upon his visitors came over Ira.  It resulted in his addressing the empty space before his door with, “Well, ye won’t ketch much if ye go on yawpin’ and dawdlin’ with women-folks like this;” and he was unreasonably delighted at the pretty assent of disdain and scorn which sparkled in his wife’s eyes as she added:—­

“Not much, I reckon!”

“That’s the kind of official trash we have to pay taxes to keep up,” said Ira, who somehow felt that if public policy was not amenable to private sentiment there was no value in free government.  Mrs. Beasley, however, complacently resumed her dish-washing, and Ira returned to his riata in the adjoining room.  For quite an interval there was no sound but the occasional click of a dish laid upon its pile, with fingers that, however, were firm and untremulous.  Presently Sue’s low voice was heard.