o the door, and his fat face was congested. "I'm not here to be
insulted by a jail-bird. Put him out!"

Trowbridge's eyes gleamed exultantly, although he still kept a tight
hold on Santry, for this was the sort of thing he had expected to meet.
He had not thought that Rexhill would confess complicity in the
kidnaping this early in the game; but he had looked for an outburst of
anger which would give him the chance he wanted to free his own mind of
the hate that was in it. He had wanted the chance to make Rexhill feel
that his hour of atonement was close at hand, and getting nearer every
minute.

"Easy, now!" he admonished. "We're going, both of us, but we won't be
put out. You've said just what I looked for you to say. You've denied
knowledge of this thing. I think with Santry here that you're a liar, a
God-forsaken liar." He drew closer to the Senator, who seemed about to
burst with passion, and held him with a gaze his fury could not daunt.
"May Heaven help you, Senator, when we're ready to prove all this
against you. If you're in Crawling Water then, we'll ride you to hell on
a rail."

"Now," Trowbridge said to Santry, when they were downstairs again, "you
get out of town hot-foot. Ride to my place. Take this!" He scribbled a
few lines on the back of an envelope. "Give it to my foreman. Tell him
to meet me with the boys where the trail divides. We'll find Wade, if we
have to trade our beds for lanterns and kill every horse in the valley."

The two men shook hands, and Santry's eyes were fired with a new hope.
The old man was grateful for one thing, at least: the time for action
had arrived. He had spent his youth on the plains in the days when every
man was a law unto himself, and the years had not lessened his spirit.

"I'll be right after you, Bill," Trowbridge concluded. "I'm going first
to break the news to Miss Purnell. She'd hear it anyway and be anxious.
She'd better get it straight from me."

Lem Trowbridge had seen only one woman faint, but the recollection was
indelibly impressed upon his mind. It had happened in his boyhood, at
the ranch where he still lived, when a messenger had arrived with word
of the death of the elder Trowbridge, whose horse had stepped into a
prairie-dog hole and fallen with his rider. The picture of his mother's
collapse he could never forget, or his own horrible thought that she,
too, had passed away, leaving him parentless. For months afterwards he
had awakened at night, cry