ight. She had
seen men desperately ill, and men desperately stricken. This man was
either both or she could never again believe her senses. And if he was
not helped soon he would die.

But who was to help him? Certainly none of his friends could know
where he was hidden or of his plight--no help could come from them
unless she told them. If she told them they would try to reach him.
That would mean an appalling--an unthinkable--fight. If she told her
uncle, could she keep him from killing de Spain? She believed not. He
might promise to let him go. But she knew her uncle's ferocious
resentment, and how easy it would be for him to give her fine words
and, in spite of them, for de Spain to be found dead some morning
where he lay--there were plenty of men available for jobs such as
that.

All came back to one terrifying alternative: Should she help this
wretched man herself? And if he lived, would he repay her by shooting
some one of her own kin?

The long ride to Calabasas went fast as the debate swept on, and the
vivid shock of her strange experience recurred to her imagination.

She drew up before the big barn. Jim McAlpin was coming out to go to
supper. Nan asked for her package and wanted to start directly back
again. McAlpin refused absolutely to hear of it. He looked at her
horse and professed to be shocked. He told her she had ridden hard,
urged her to dismount, and sent her pony in to be rubbed, assuring Nan
heartily there was not a man, outside the hostlers, within ten miles.
While her horse was cared for, McAlpin asked, in his harmless Scotch
way, about Gale.

Concerning Gale, Nan was non-committal. But she listened with
interest, more or less veiled, to whatever running comment McAlpin had
to offer concerning the Calabasas fight. "And I was sorry to see Gale
mixed up in it," he concluded, in his effort to draw Nan out, "sorry.
And sorrier to think of Henry de Spain getting killed that way. Why, I
knowed Henry de Spain when he was a baby in arms." He put out his hand
cannily. "I worked for his father before he was born." His listener
remained obdurate. There was nothing for it except further probing, to
which, however, Jim felt abundantly equal. "Some say," he suggested,
looking significantly toward the door of the barn, and significantly
away again, "that Henry went down there to pick a fight with the boys.
But," he asserted cryptically, "I happen to know _that_ wasn't so."

"Then what did he go down the