' I'm certainly in your debt."

"What's the trouble between you about?" asked James.

"I've found out that he an' Miss Harriman were in Uncle James's rooms
the night he was killed. I want them to come through an' tell what
they know."

"How did you find that out?"

The eyes of the oil broker were hard as jade. They looked straight
into those of his cousin.

"I can't tell you that exactly. Put two an' two together."

"You mean you _guess_ they were there. You don't _know_ it."

A warm, friendly smile lit the brown face of the rough rider. He
wanted to remain on good terms with James if he could. "I don't know
it in a legal sense. Morally, I'm convinced of it."

"Even though they deny it."

"Practically they admitted rather than denied."

"Do you think it was quite straight, Kirby, to go to Miss Harriman with
such a trumped-up charge? I don't. I confess I'm surprised at you."
In voice and expression James showed his disappointment.

"It isn't a trumped-up charge. I wanted to know the truth from her."

"Why didn't you go to Jack, then?"'

"I didn't know at that time Jack was the man with her."

"You don't know it now. You don't know she was there. In point of
fact the idea is ridiculous. You surely don't think for a moment that
she had anything to do with Uncle James's death."

"No; not in the sense that she helped bring it about. But she knows
somethin' she's hidin'."

"That's absurd. Your imagination is too active, Kirby."

"Can't agree with you." Lane met him eye to eye.

"Grant for the sake of argument that she was in Uncle's room that
night. Your friend Miss Rose McLean was there, too--by her own
confession. When she came to Jack and me with her story, we respected
it. We did not insist on knowing why she was there, and it was of her
own free will she told us. Yet you go to our friend and distress her
by implications that must shock and wound her. Was that generous? Was
it even fair?"

The cattleman stood convicted at the bar of his own judgment. His
cousins had been magnanimous to Esther and Rose, more so than he had
been to Miss Harriman. Yet, even while he confessed fault, he felt
uneasily that there was a justification he could not quite lay hold of
and put into words.

"I'm sorry you feel that way, James. Perhaps I was wrong. But you
want to remember that I wasn't askin' about what she knew with any idea
of makin' it public or tellin' the police. I meant to keep