him, my foolish hanging on to him as
though he were a hitching-post, for he finally said in a remote voice:
"I guess we've had about enough of this." He led me rather
ceremoniously to a chair, and slowly let me down in it. Then he
crossed over to the old leather holster and picked it up, and stooped
for the revolver, and pushed it down in the holster and buckled the
cover-flap and tossed the whole thing up to the top of the
book-cabinet again. Then, without speaking to me, he walked slowly out
of the room.

I was tempted to call him back, but I knew, on second thought, that it
would be no use. I merely sat there, staring ahead of me. Then I shut
my eyes and tried to think. I don't know why, but I was thinking about
the bigness of Betelgeuse, which was twenty-seven million times as big
as our sun and which was going on through its millions of miles of
space without knowing anything about Chaddie McKail and what had
happened to her that morning. I was wondering if there were worlds
between me and Betelgeuse with women on them, with women as alone as I
was, when I felt a pair of small arms tighten about my knees and an
adoring small voice whispered "Mummsy!" And I forgot about Betelgeuse.
For it was my Dinkie there, with his little rough hand reaching
hungrily for mine....

Minty has been removed from Casa Grande. I took him over to the
Teetzel ranch in the car, and young Dode Teetzel is to get a dollar a
week for looking after him and feeding him. Only Elmer and I know of
his whereabouts. And once a week the boy can canter over on Buntie and
keep in touch with his pup.

We have a tacit understanding that the occurrences of yesterday
morning are a closed chapter, are not to be referred to by word or
deed. Duncan himself found it necessary to team in to Buckhorn and
left word with Struthers that he would stay in town over night. The
call for the Buckhorn trip was, of course, a polite fabrication, an
expedient _pax in bello_ to permit the dust of battle to settle a
little about this troubled house of McKail. All day to-day I have
felt rather languid. I suppose it's the lethargy which naturally
follows after all violence. Any respectable woman, I used to think,
could keep a dead-line in her soul, beyond which the impulses of evil
dare not venture. But I must have been wrong.... All week I've been
looking for a letter from Peter Ketley. But for once in his life he
seems to have forgotten us.

_Sunday the Twentieth