ent. Pollard did not want to
be bothered with King and showed it so plainly that had King not been so
alive to the presence of the girl at whom he looked with the tail of his
eye and so nearly oblivious of the presence of the man whom he sat
facing, he must have noted it before he had been in the room five
minutes. Bud did not care to talk with Pollard, whom he agreed perfectly
with Buck Thornton in calling a rattlesnake, and yet he talked rather
wildly to him of branding and fence building and stray horses and
hold-up men and the weather and last year's politics. And Winifred, for
a little, watched both men with mirthful understanding.

But as the minutes slipped by and Pollard gave no sign of leaving the
room, as silences fell which were too awkward to go unnoticed and which
the girl had to fill, she began to be afraid that Pollard's watchfulness
was going to prove too much for her and that she would fail in the plan
which had seemed so simple. But she must not fail! Four days of the ten
had gone. She must find some way to keep Bud King here until something
carried Pollard out of the room if only for a moment, and during that
moment she must give the note to King.

She was sure that Pollard did not, could not suspect that she meant to
say anything to King, or that she counted on having him carry a message
for her. But she knew, too, that Henry Pollard was taking no chances he
did not have to take. He was a man to play close to the table.

She had time to determine that she _would_ succeed in this one vital
point, time to hope, to fear, to lose hope a dozen times, before her
chance came. She heard a step on the walk under the pear trees,
Broderick's step, she thought swiftly, despairingly. Usually Pollard
kept the front door locked; she had not locked it after she had let Bud
King in. Pollard would know it was Broderick and would merely call,
"Come in," not even leaving the room for the one necessary moment.
Broderick would come in, Bud King would go soon and she would have no
chance of doing the thing she had sworn to herself that she would do.

Her one hope was that she had mistaken the step and that it was not
Broderick. When the man outside came up the steps, she heard his spurs
jingle on the porch and saw that Pollard too was listening intently.

"Come in," called Pollard. "The door's open, Ben."

Why, why hadn't she locked the door? Now there would be two men to watch
her, now it would be impossible...

Bu