had been good to her and in return she had done
much to give him over into their hands, she had insulted and reviled
him, she had sworn to the sheriff that he had robbed her. Now suddenly
she felt that she could never sleep again if she did not atone to him.

She was already at the door, her hat and gloves in her hand, ready to
run down stairs, to saddle her horse, to ride to Thornton with word of
warning, when a new thought came to her.

They were waiting, they were going to wait ten days; that much she had
overheard. Waiting for what? For some new crime, for the monster crime
of all, for the last play for the last and biggest stake?

She, too, would wait. Not ten days but until she might slip away without
this danger of being seen, of her errand being guessed. In the meantime
she would learn what she could.

She had not forgotten that Henry Pollard was her uncle. The thought
added its bitterness. But she remembered, too, the look she had seen
upon Pollard's face when she had told him that Thornton had robbed her,
she remembered the look of cruel satisfaction she had surprised there
more than once, and she knew that were he more than uncle, closer than
uncle, she could not act otherwise than she must act now.

Then, suddenly, she sank down upon her bed, alone and lonely in the
thick darkness, weary and vaguely afraid.

"Buck Thornton," she whispered, "I am afraid I need your help as much as
you need mine now!"

CHAPTER XXII

THE YELLOW ENVELOPE AGAIN!

Old man King, red eyed with wrath, had gone out after the cattle
rustlers in his own direct fashion, seeking to follow the trail of
running steers through the mountain passes, his eye hard, his rifle
ready, his mind eager to suspect any man to whom that trail might lead.
But he found only confused tracks which ran toward the state border line
and which vanished before even his sharp eyes, leading nowhere.

Young Bud King, his own anger little less than his father's, went forth
on another trail, not after the running steers but after a man. And he
went to the town of Dead Man's Alley. Mentally he had made his list of
the men to whom one might look to for the commission of the crime which
had driven the Bar X outfit to action. Being no man's fool, young King
planned to go first to the source of the stream, as it were, and thence
to travel downward seeking to see who had muddied the waters. And his
"one chief bet" was that the source was in Hill's Corners