il for
Dry Town!"

"Thank you," she said as quietly as he had spoken. "But really Mr.
Templeton gave me enough advice to last me a year, I think. I have made
up my mind to go on to ... to Dead Man's Alley, as you call it."

"Well," he grinned back at her as though the discussion had been of no
moment and now was quite satisfactorily ended, "I ought to be glad,
oughtn't I? Since my trail runs that way, and since the Poison Hole
ranch is only twenty miles out from the Corners. Maybe you'll let me
ride over and see you?"

"Of course. I'll be glad to have you. That is," and her smile came back,
a very teasing smile, too, "if you'll care to call at the house where
I'm going to stop? I'm going to stay with my uncle."

"The chances are that I don't know him. I don't know half a dozen folks
in the town. What's his name?"

"His name," she told him demurely, "is Henry Pollard. I think you know
him."

He flushed a little as she had hoped that he would. He remembered. He
knew that he had spoken this morning at the bank of Henry Pollard from
whom he was buying his outfit, knew that he must have called him, as he
always did when he spoke of him, "Rattlesnake" Pollard. And Henry
Pollard was her uncle!

"I didn't know," he said slowly and a little lamely, "that he was your
uncle. But," he added cheerfully, his assurance coming back to him, "you
can't help that, you know. I don't blame you for it. Yes, I'll ride over
from the ranch. It's good of you to let me."

They finished the meal in a rather thoughtful silence. Thornton made a
cigarette and went to the door to look for the upclimbing moon; the girl
carried her chair to the fireplace and sat down, her hands in her lap,
her eyes staring into the coals.

The man was asking himself stubbornly why this girl, this type of girl,
dainty, frank-eyed, clean-hearted as he felt instinctively that she was,
was making this trip to that dirty town which straddled the state border
line like an evil, venomous toad and sneered in its ugly defiant fashion
at the peace officers of two states. He was trying to see what the
reason could be that carried her through this little-travelled country
to the house of such a man as not only Buck Thornton but every one in
this end of the cattle country knew Henry Pollard to be; trying above
all to seek the reason for her making the trip on horse back, alone,
over a wild trail, when the stage for Hill's Corners had left Dry Town
so little after her and