en the one that shot Crofty, you mean?" Art gave a short laugh. He
got up and stood in front of her. "Thanks, awfully. Good reason why
he couldn't see it! He knows well enough I didn't do it. He knows--who
did." He bit his lips then, as if he feared that he had said too much.

"Uncle Carl knows? Then why doesn't he tell? It wasn't dad!" Jean
took a defiant step toward him. "Art Osgood, if you dare say it was
dad, I--I'll kill you!"

Art smiled at her with a brief lightening of his eyes. "I believe you
would, at that," he said soberly. "But it wasn't your dad, Jean."

"Who was it?"

"I--don't--know."

"You do! You do know, Art Osgood! And you ran off; and they gave dad
eight years--"

Art spoke one word under his breath, and that word was profane. "I
don't see how that could be," he said after a minute.

Jean did not answer. She was biting her lips to keep back the tears.
She felt that somehow she had failed; that Art Osgood was slipping
through her fingers, in spite of the fact that he did not seem to fear
her or to oppose her except in the final accusation. It was the lack
of opposition, that lack of fear, that baffled her so. Art, she felt
dimly, must be very sure of his own position; was it because he was so
close to the Mexican line? Jean glanced desperately that way. It was
very close. She could see the features of the Mexican soldiers lounging
before the cantina over there; through the lighted window of the
customhouse she could see a dark-faced officer bending over a littered
desk. The guard over there spoke to a friend, and she could hear the
words he said.

Jean thought swiftly. She must not let Art Osgood go back across that
street. She could cover him with her gun--Art knew how well she could
use it!--and she would call for an American officer and have him
arrested. Or, Lite was somewhere below; she would call for Lite, and
he could go and get an officer and a warrant.

"How soon you going back?" Art asked abruptly, as though he had been
pondering a problem and had reached the solution. "I'll have to get a
leave of absence, or go down on the books as a deserter; and I wouldn't
want that. I can get it, all right. I'll go back with you and
straighten this thing out, if it's the way you say it is. I sure
didn't know they'd pulled your dad for it, Jean."

This, coming so close upon the heels of her own decision, set Jean all
at sea again. She looked at him doubtfully.

"I th