en, unable longer to restrain her curiosity in regard
to the doings below, turned to the stairway.

As she did so, two men mounted. They examined the three rooms of the
upper story hastily but carefully, paying scant attention to her, and
departed swearing. In a few moments they returned for the stranger's
trunk. Nell followed them down the stairs as far as the doorway. There
she heard and saw things, and fled in bitter dismay to the back of the
house when Billy Knapp was overpowered.

At the window she knelt, clasping her hands and sinking her head between
her arms. Women in the West, at least women like Nell, do not weep. But
she came near it. Suddenly she raised her head. A voice next her ear had
addressed her.

She looked here and there and around, but could discover nothing.

"Here, outside," came the low, guarded voice, "in the tree."

Then she saw that the little stranger had not stirred from his first
alighting-place.

"Beg yore pardon, ma'am, fer startling you or fer addressing you at all,
which I shouldn't, but----"

"Oh, never mind that," said the girl, impatiently, shaking back her
hair. So deprecating and timid were the tones, that almost without an
effort of the imagination she could picture the little man's blushes and
his half-sidling method of delivery. At this supreme moment his
littleness and lack of self-assertion jarred on her mood. "What're you
doin' there? Thought you'd vamoosed."

"It was safer here," explained the stranger, "I left no trail."

She nodded comprehension of the common-sense of this.

"But, ma'am, I took the liberty of speakin' to you because you seems to
be in trouble. Of course, I ain't got no right to _ask_, an' if you
don't care to tell me----"

"They're goin' to kill Billy," broke in Nell, with a sob.

"What for?"

"I don't jest rightly make out. They's after someone, and they thinks
Billy's cacheing him. I reckon it's you. Billy ain't cacheing nothin',
but they thinks he is."

"It's me they's after, all right. Now, you know where I am, why don't
you tell them and save Billy?"

The girl started, but her keen Western mind saw the difficulty at once.

"They thinks Billy pertects you jest th' same."

"Do you love him?" asked the stranger.

"God knows I'm purty tough," confessed Nell, sobbing, "but I jest do
that!" and she dropped her head again.

The invisible stranger in the gloom fell silent, considering.

"I'm a pretty rank proposition, myself," said he