r surgery is often
demanded in a crisis. If she were willing, as she said, to sacrifice
him, he felt that he might properly make use of her and her moods to
save himself and her as well. He realized that if she were to shout
abroad through Crawling Water the conversation that had passed between
him and Moran, the likelihood of either of the two men getting out of
the county alive would be extremely remote.

"So that was it, eh? And I complimented you upon your good sense!" His
laugh was less of an effort now. "Well, doesn't it hold good now as well
as it did then? Come, my dear, sit down and we'll thresh this out
quietly."

She shook her head stubbornly, but the woman in her responded to the new
note of confidence in his voice, and she waited eagerly for what he had
to say, hopeful that he might still clear himself.

"You tell me that I must fight fair. Well, I usually do fight that way.
I'm doing so now. When I spoke yesterday of crushing Wade, I meant it
and I still mean it. But there are limits to what I want to see happen
to him; for one thing, I don't want to see him hung for this Jensen
murder, even if he's guilty."

"You know he isn't guilty."

"I think he isn't." Her eyes lighted up at this admission. "But he must
be tried for the crime, there's no dodging that. The jury will decide
the point; we can't. But even if he should be convicted, I shouldn't
want to see him hung. Why, we've been good friends, all of us. I--I like
him, even though he did jump on to me yesterday. That was why"--he
leaned forward, impelled to the falsehood that hung upon his tongue by
the desperate necessity of saving himself his daughter's love and
respect--"I arranged with Moran to have the boy arrested on such a
warrant. He is bound to be arrested"--Rexhill struck the table with his
fist--"and if he should need a basis for an appeal after conviction, he
could hardly have a better one than the evidence of conspiracy, which a
crooked warrant would afford. I wanted to give him that chance because I
realized that he had enemies here and that his trial might not be a fair
one. When the right moment came I was going to have that warrant looked
into."

"Father!"

Helen dropped on her knees before him, her eyelashes moist with tears
and her voice vibrant with happiness.

"Why didn't you explain all that before, Father? I knew that there must
be _some_ explanation. I felt that I couldn't have loved you all my
life for nothing. But do