hich
came to his lips:

"What the devil--"

His half-opened eyes caught my gesture for silence, and he stopped
instantly, his lips widely parted.

"Meet me outside," I whispered, warningly. "But be careful about it."

The slight noise had failed to disturb the woman, and I succeeded in
slipping through the unlatched door without noting any change in her
posture. Tim, now thoroughly awake, and aware of something serious in
the air, was not long in joining me without, and I drew him aside into
a spot of deeper blackness under the trees. He was still indignant
over the pinching, and remained drunk enough to be quarrelsome. I cut
his muffled profanity short.

"That's quite enough of that, Tim," I said sharply, and was aware that
he stared back at me, plainly perplexed by the change in my tone and
manner. "You are an officer of the law; so am I, and it is about time
we were working together."

He managed to release a gruff laugh.

"You--you damn bum; hell, that's a good joke--what'r yer givin' me now?"

"The exact truth; and it will be worth your while, my man, to brace up
and listen. I am going to give you a chance to redeem yourself--a last
chance. It will be a nice story to tell back in St. Louis that you
helped to kidnap a wealthy young white woman, using your office as a
cloak for the crime, and, besides that, killing two men to serve a
river gambler. Suppose I was to tell that sort of tale to Governor
Clark, and give him the proofs--where would you land?"

He breathed hard, scarcely able to articulate, but decidedly sober.

"What--what's that? Ain't you the fellar thet wus on the boat?
Who--who the devil are yer?"

"I am an officer in the army," I said gravely, determined to impress
him first of all, "and I worked on that steamer merely to learn the
facts in this case. I know the whole truth now, even to your late
quarrel with Kirby. I do not believe you realized before what you were
doing--but you do now. You are guilty of assisting that contemptible
gambler to abduct Eloise Beaucaire, and are shielding him now in his
cowardly scheme to compel her to marry him by threat and force."

"The damn, low-lived pup--I told him whut he wus."

"Yes, but that doesn't prevent the crime. He's all you said, and more.
But calling the man names isn't going to frighten him, nor get that
girl out of his clutches. What I want to know is, are you ready to
help me fight the fellow? block his game?"

"How?