tone.
You'd think I had a million friends among the cattlemen this morning."

"I heard old Barb Doubleday is grinning like a hangman today."

"If Belle's got some ink I'll write my letters right here."

Kate's spirits, which had risen at the hope of being so luckily rid of
one who might prove troublesome, fell at his refusal to leave. John
urged, but Laramie only asked Belle again for the ink. Lefever tried
to coax Belle to go to the train with him. Belle would do almost any
fool thing--as John bluntly averred--but this time she must have had
pity on Kate and would not leave her unprotected. Lefever went his
way. From a shelf near where Kate, with clasped hands, sat in silence
Belle took paper and ink in to Laramie and began to clear the table.

At this unlucky moment the front door was opened swiftly and a boy from
the butcher shop stuck his head inside.

"Miss Shockley," he called, "the milkman is on the 'phone now, if you
want him." Closing the door he ran back across the street. With a
sense of her wrongs keen upon her, Belle, forgetting her charge in the
kitchen, hurried after him.

Even then, Kate hoped that by keeping deathly still she might escape an
unpleasant meeting. She never breathed more carefully in her life, yet
she was doomed. She heard Laramie's chair pushed back and heard his
footsteps. She could not be sure which way he was walking, but she
thought only of flight. As stealthily and rapidly as possible, she
started for the back door. Without looking around she felt as if he
had come to the archway and was looking at her. With courage and
resolve, she grasped the knob to open the door. It was locked. She
fumbled with the key. Behind her, silence. She locked and unlocked
the door more than once, and with a fast-dying hope, for the wretched
door would _not_ open. Flushed with annoyance, she turned around only
to see Laramie standing precisely where she had imagined him.

They faced each other. Kate could not have found a word to say had her
life depended on it. Laramie held in his left hand an ink bottle, in
his right a pen. He, too, seemed surprised but he recovered himself:
"You are certainly unlucky with doors," he said. "If you'll tell me
where Belle keeps her ink, I'll tell you how to open that," he added
calmly.

Kate stiffened and shrugged her shoulders the least bit: "I haven't any
idea where Belle keeps the ink," she replied, clearing her throat of
its huskiness.