to let Gordon be taken just for freeing him,"
Dorothy explained.

Helen shook her head with every indication of tremulous worry.

"But it isn't that alone," she insisted. "He's to be arrested for the
Jensen shooting. That was why the posse waited at his ranch after Santry
had been caught."

"For the Jensen shooting?" Dorothy showed her amazement very plainly.
"Are you sure?" she demanded, and when Helen nodded, exclaimed: "Why,
how utterly absurd! I understood that you were with him yourself when he
received word of it?"

"I was," Helen admitted. "He is supposed only to have planned the crime,
I believe. He's supposed to have been the principal, isn't that what
they call it?" She appealed to Mrs. Purnell.

"Oh, but do you think he could do such a thing?" Mrs. Purnell asked,
much shocked.

"I don't know. I hope not."

"I _do_ know!" Dorothy burst out emphatically. "I know Gordon Wade too
well to think for one minute that he did it; and every true friend of
his ought to speak out at once and say the same thing."

The challenge in her voice was unmistakable, and Mrs. Purnell moved
uneasily in her chair. She glanced anxiously at Helen and was relieved
to see that the latter had lost none of her poise.

"I hope so as fully as you do," Helen said sweetly, "but things move so
fast here in these mountains that I find it hard to keep up with them."

"Of course," Mrs. Purnell soothed, with a troubled look at her daughter.

"Who swore out the warrant, I wonder?" Dorothy asked, in a more tranquil
tone, a bit ashamed of her outburst. "Was it Mr. Moran?"

"I'm sure I don't know," Helen answered. "I supposed it was the Sheriff.
Why should Mr. Moran have anything to do with it?"

"Because he seems to have been concerned in all the trouble we have
had," Dorothy replied calmly. "This was a peaceful little community
until Mr. Moran moved into it."

Helen made no direct reply to this, and for awhile Dorothy allowed her
mother to sustain the conversation. She had no doubt but that Moran was
back of it all, and she was thinking of what Lem Trowbridge had said;
that if they could only "get something on" Moran and the Senator, a
solution of the whole problem would be at hand. She thought that she had
detected a defensive note in Helen's voice, and she was wondering why it
should have been there.

"But you haven't answered my question yet about Mr. Moran," Helen
presently challenged her. "You seemed to have something more in m