ut she had lived on the border
too long to be inquisitive. The other lifted her head, flinging back her
loosened hair with one hand.

"Mr. Keith dropped it," she exclaimed. "Where do you suppose he got it?"
Then she gave a quick, startled cry, her eyes opening wide in horror.
"The Cimmaron Crossing, the murder at the Cimmaron Crossing! He--he
told me about that; but he never showed me this--this. Do you--do you
think--"

Her voice failed, but Kate Murphy gathered her into her arms.

"Cry here, honey," she said, as if to a child. "Shure an' Oi don't know
who it was got kilt out yonder, but Oi'm tellin' ye it niver was Jack
Keith what did it--murther ain't his stoyle."

Chapter XVI. Introducing Doctor Fairbain

Headed as they were, and having no other special objective point in
view, it was only natural for the two fugitives to drift into Sheridan.
This was at that time the human cesspool of the plains country, a
seething, boiling maelstrom of all that was rough, evil, and brazen
along the entire frontier. Customarily quiet enough during the hours
of daylight, the town became a mad saturnalia with the approach of
darkness, its ceaseless orgies being noisily continued until dawn. But
at this period all track work on the Kansas Pacific being temporarily
suspended by Indian outbreaks, the graders made both night and day alike
hideous, and the single dirty street which composed Sheridan, lined with
shacks, crowded with saloons, the dull dead prairie stretching away on
every side to the horizon, was congested with humanity during every hour
of the twenty-four.

It was a grim picture of depravity and desolation, the environment
dull, gloomy, forlorn; all that was worthy the eye or thought being
the pulsing human element. All about extended the barren plains, except
where on one side a ravine cut through an overhanging ridge. From the
seething street one could look up to the summit, and see there the
graves of the many who had died deaths of violence, and been borne
thither in "their boots." Amid all this surrounding desolation was
Sheridan--the child of a few brief months of existence, and destined to
perish almost as quickly--the centre of the grim picture, a mere cluster
of rude, unpainted houses, poorly erected shacks, grimy tents flapping
in the never ceasing wind swirling across the treeless waste, the ugly
red station, the rough cow-pens filled with lowing cattle, the huge,
ungainly stores, their false fr