nervous, her eyes unfaltering on
his. She looked at once drawn and repelled, fascinated like a little
bird fluttering under the baleful eyes of a snake.

"What do you want me to do?" she asked finally.

"I, for one," he retorted, "refuse to squat here like a fool because
I'm told. I'm going to make a break for it. You can take the chance
with me or you may remain here and know that I'll do what can be done
outside."

Betty shook her head, sighing.

"I don't know what to do," she said miserably.

Jim pondered and frowned. Then he shrugged his shoulders.

"It's up to you, Betty Gordon," he said. "You're old enough to think
for yourself. I can't decide for you. But if you were mine, my sister
for instance, I'd grab you up and make a bolt for it. A clean bullet
is a damned sight more to my liking than the dirty paws of such as Rios
and Escobar and their following. They've got a guard around the house
which they seem to think sufficient" Again he shrugged. "I've got my
notion we can slip through and make the mountains at the rear."

"If I only knew I could trust you," moaned Betty.

A glint of anger shone in Jim's eyes.

"Suit yourself," he told her curtly. "I can promise you it will be a
lot easier for me in a scrimmage and a get-away without a woman to look
out for."

Immediately he was ashamed of having been brusque with her. For she
was only a little slip of a girl after all and obviously one who had
never been thrown out into the current of life where it ran strongest.
More than ever she made him think of the girl of olden times, the girl
hard to find in our modern world. All of her life she had had others
to turn to, men whom she loved to lean upon. Her father, her brothers
would have done everything for her; she would have done her purely
feminine part in making home homey. That was what she was born for,
the lot of the sweet tender girl who is quite content to let other
girls wear mannish clothing and do mannish work. Kendric knew
instinctively that Betty Gordon could have made the daintiest thing
imaginable in dresses, that she would tirelessly and cheerfully nurse a
sick man, that she would fight every inch of the way for his life, that
she would stand by a father driven to the wall, broken financially,
that she would put hope into him and bear up bravely and with a tender
smile under adversity--but that she would call to a man to kill a
spider for her. God had not fashioned her to dir