tood for a minute outside her door to make sure that all was
quiet and that she slept. But Jean, now that she knew where she was,
lay wide awake and thinking. Suddenly she sat up again, staring
straight before her.

That letter,--the letter Art had taken to her father, the letter he had
read and put in the pocket of his chaps! Was that what the man had
been hunting for, those nights when he had come searching in that
secret, stealthy way? She did not remember ever having looked into the
pocket of her father's chaps, though they had hung in her room all
those three years since the tragedy. Pockets in chaps were not, as a
general thing, much used. Men carried matches in them sometimes, or
money. The flap over her dad's chap-pocket was buttoned down, and the
leather was stiff; perhaps the letter was there yet.

She got up and turned on the light, and looked at her watch. She
wanted to start then, that instant, for Los Angeles. She wanted to
take her dad's chaps out of her trunk where she had packed them just
for the comfort of having them with her, and she wanted to look and see
if the letter was there still. There was no particular reason for
believing that this was of any particular importance, or had any
bearing whatever upon the crime. But the idea was there, and it nagged
at her.

Her watch said that it was twenty-five minutes after two o'clock. The
train, Lite had told her, would leave for Tucson at seven-forty-five in
the morning. She told herself that, since it was too far to walk, and
since she could not start any sooner by staying up and freezing, she
might just as well get back into bed and try to sleep.

But she could not sleep. She kept thinking of the letter, and trying
to imagine what clue it could possibly give if she found it still in
the pocket. Carl had sent it, Art said. A thought came to Jean which
she tried to ignore; and because she tried to ignore it, it returned
with a dogged insistence, and took clearer shape in her mind, and
formed itself into questions which she was compelled at last to face
and try to answer.

Was it her Uncle Carl who had come and searched the house at night,
trying to find that letter? If it were her uncle, why was he so
anxious to find it, after three years had passed? What was in the
letter? If it had any bearing whatever upon the death of Johnny Croft,
why hadn't her dad mentioned it? Why hadn't her Uncle Carl said
something about it? Was the let