got up and dressed; unfastening her window, she stepped out on the
veranda. The street was quiet at that time in the morning. A sentry
stood on guard at the corner, and here and there a light flared in some
window where others were wakeful. But for the most part the town lay
asleep. Over in what was really the Mexican quarter, three or four
roosters were crowing as if they would never leave off. The sound of
them depressed Jean, and made her feel how heavy was the weight of her
great undertaking,--heavier now, when the end was almost in sight, than
it had seemed on that moonlight night when she had ridden over to the
Lazy A and had not the faintest idea of how she was going to accomplish
any part of her task which she had set herself. She shivered, and
turned back to get the gay serape which she had bought from an old
Mexican woman when they were coming out of that queer restaurant last
evening.

When she came out again, Lite was standing there, smoking a cigarette
and leaning against a post.

"You'd better get some sleep, Jean," he reproved her when she came and
stood beside him. "You had a pretty hard day yesterday; and to-day
won't be any easier. Better go back and lie down."

Jean merely pulled the serape snugger about her shoulders and sat down
sidewise upon the railing. "I couldn't sleep," she said. "If I could,
I wouldn't be out here; I'd be asleep, wouldn't I? Why don't you go to
bed yourself?"

"Ah-h, Art's learned to talk Spanish," he said drily. "I got myself all
worked up trying to make out what he was trying to say in his sleep,
and then I found out it wasn't my kinda talk, anyway. So I quit.
What's the matter that you can't sleep?"

Jean stared down at the shadowy street. A dog ran out from somewhere,
sniffed at a doorstep, and trotted over into Mexico and up to the
sentry. The sentry patted it on the head and muttered a friendly word
or two. Jean watched him absently. It was all so peaceful! Not at all
what one would expect, after seeing pictures of all those refugees and
all those soldiers fighting, and the dead lying in the street in some
little town whose name she could not pronounce correctly.

"Did you hear Art tell about taking a letter to dad the day before?"
she asked abruptly. "He wasn't telling the truth, not all the time.
But somehow I believe that was the truth. He said dad stuck it in the
pocket of his chaps. I believe it's there yet, Lite. I don't remember
ever lo