pton for the present.
And my business right now is ... my business!"

Thornton nodded that he understood and together they left the cabin.

CHAPTER XXV

IN THE DARK

It was a pitch black night, the stars hidden by dense drifting clouds,
and intensely still. Buck Thornton and Two-Hand Billy Comstock, riding
side by side with few words, turned straight out across the fields, the
marshal reining his horse close in to that other horse he could scarcely
see and leaving to the cowboy the task of finding their way.

They rode slowly until they turned into the level county road and then
swifter that they might come into Hill's Corners before it was midnight.
When at last the twinkling lights of Dead Man's Alley winked at them
Comstock struck a match and looked at his watch.

"Fifteen minutes of twelve," he said. "You're on time. And I guess you
can do the rest of your riding alone? So long. I'm apt to drop in on you
at the ranch any day."

Comstock had planned to ride straight to the Brown Bear saloon, to
invest in a stack of chips, and to spend the evening "seeing the town."
And Thornton, understanding that if the note from Winifred Waverly were
truthful in all that it said and in all that it suggested, it would be
as well if he were not seen tonight, turned out along the outskirts of
the village to come to Pollard's house without riding through the main
street.

"Easy, Comet, easy," he muttered to his horse, having no desire to come
to the appointed place before the appointed hour. "We've got fifteen
minutes and then won't have to keep the lady waiting. If she's there,
Comet!"

For even yet his suspicions were not all at rest, already he rode with
reins and quirt in the grip of his left hand, the right caught in the
loose band of his chaps. It lacked but a few minutes of midnight when he
entered the dark, silent street in which was Henry Pollard's house.

Here were a few straggling houses with many vacant lots between and no
single light to show that any were awake, no gleam from a window to cut
through the darkness which was absolute. Thornton drew his horse to the
side of the road where the grass had not been worn away by the wheels of
wagons and where the animal's footfalls were muffled, hardly to be heard
a score of paces away. Twice he stopped, frowning into the gloom about
him, seeking to force his eyes to penetrate the impenetrable wall of the
dark, straining his ears to catch some little sound thro