anderson resorted to the handkerchief.

"I don't reckon they've talked about me that strong," he said.

"But they have! Oh, I'm so happy, Will. Why, when Dale hears about it
he'll be positively venomous--and scared. I don't think he will bother
the Double A again--after he hears of it!"

But Sanderson merely smirked mirthlessly; he saw no reason for being
joyful over the lie he had told. He was getting deeper and deeper into
the mire of deceit and prevarication, and there seemed to be no escape.

And now, when he had committed himself, he realized that he might have
evaded it all, this last lie at least, by telling Mary that he had
picked the note up on the desert, or anywhere, for that matter, and she
would have been forced to believe him.

He kept her away from him, fending off her caresses with a pretense of
slight indisposition until suddenly panic-stricken over insistence, he
told her he was going to bed, bolted into the room, locked the door
behind him, and sat long in the darkness and the heat, filling the room
with a profane appreciation of himself as a double-dyed fool who could
not even lie intelligently.

CHAPTER VII

KISSES--A MAN REFUSES THEM

There was a kerosene lamp in Sanderson's room, and when, after an hour
of gloomy silence in the dark, he got up and lit the lamp, he felt
decidedly better. He was undressing, preparing to get into bed, when
he was assailed with a thought that brought the perspiration out on him
again.

This time it was a cold sweat, and it came with the realization that
discovery was again imminent, for if, as Mary had said, she had kept
Sanderson's letter to her father, there were in existence two
letters--his own and Will Bransford's--inevitably in different
handwriting, both of which he had claimed to have written.

Sanderson groaned. The more he lied the deeper he became entangled.
He pulled on his trousers, and stood shoeless, gazing desperately
around the room.

He simply must destroy that letter, or Mary, comparing it with the
letter her brother had written would discover the deception.

It was the first time in Sanderson's life that had ever attempted to
deceive anybody, and he was in the grip of a cringing dread.

For the first time since he occupied the room he inspected it, noting
its furnishings. His heart thumped wildly with hope while he looked.

It was a woman's room--Mary's, of course. For there were decorations
here and there--a delicate