, but it sufficed to quiet the little fellow. The only
thing further to be settled was as to who should leave the room last,
since neither party was willing to go first. Tenison, after a formal
conference with Lefever and Logan, offered to take Sandusky and Logan
by a private stairway to the billiard-room, while Lefever took de
Spain and Scott out by way of the main entrance. This was arranged,
and when the railroad men reached the street rain had ceased falling.

Scott warned de Spain to keep within doors, and de Spain promised to
do so. But when they left him he started out at once to see whether he
could not, by some happy chance, encounter Nan.

CHAPTER IX

A CUP OF COFFEE

He was willing, after a long and bootless search, to confess to
himself that he would rather see Nan Morgan for one minute than
all women else in the world for a lifetime. The other incidents of
the evening would have given any ordinary man enough food for
reflection--indeed they did force de Spain to realize that his life
would hang by a slender thread while he remained at Sleepy Cat and
continued to brave the rulers of the Sinks.

But this danger, which after all was a portion of his responsibility
in freeing his stages from the depredations of the Calabasas gang,
failed to make on him the moving impression of one moment of Nan
Morgan's eyes. She could upset him completely, he was forced to admit,
by a glance, a word, a gesture--a mere turn of her head. There was in
the whole world nothing he wanted to do so much as in some way to
please her--yet it seemed his ill luck to get continually deeper into
her bad graces. It had so stunned and angered him to meet her intent
on entering a gambling-hall that he was tormented the whole night.
Association with outlaws--what might it not do for even such a girl?
While her people were not all equally reprobate, some of them at least
were not far better than the criminals of Calabasas. To conceive of
her gambling publicly in Sleepy Cat was too much. He had even taken a
horse, after cautiously but persistently haunting the streets for an
hour, and ridden across the river away out on the mountain trail,
hoping to catch a sight of her.

On his way back to town from this wild-goose chase, he heard the sound
of hoofs. He was nearing the river and he turned his horse into a
clump of trees beside the bridge. The night was very dark, but he was
close to the trail and had made up his mind to speak to N