. When you began to act--as if you cared for
me--that day on Music--I couldn't believe you meant it at all. And
yet--I'm afraid I liked to try to think you did. When you looked at me
I felt as if you could see right through me."

Confidences never came to an end.

And diplomacy came into its own almost at once in de Spain's efforts
to improve his relations with the implacable Duke. The day came when
Nan's uncle could be taken home. De Spain sent to him a soft-spoken
emissary, Bob Scott, offering to provide a light stage, with his
compliments, for the trip. The intractable mountaineer, with his
refusal to accept the olive-branch, blew Bob out of the room. Nan was
crushed by the result, but de Spain was not to be dismayed.

Lefever came to him the day after Nan had got her uncle home. "Henry,"
he began without any preliminaries, "there is one thing about your
precipitate ride up Music Mountain that I never got clear in my mind.
After the fight, your cartridge-belt was hanging up in the barn at
Calabasas for two weeks. You walked in to us that morning with your
belt buckled on. You told us you put it on before you came up-stairs.
What? Oh, yes, I know, Henry. But that belt wasn't hanging
down-stairs with your coat earlier in the evening. No, Henry: it
wasn't, not when I looked. Don't tell me such things, because--I don't
know. Where was the belt when you found it?"

"Some distance from the coat, John. I admit that. I'll tell you: some
one had moved the belt. It was not where I left it. I was hurried the
morning I rode in and I can't tell you just where I found it."

Lefever never batted an eyelash. "I know you can't, Henry. Because you
won't. That Scotch hybrid McAlpin knows a few things, too, that he
won't tell. All I want to say is, you can trust that man too far. He's
got all my recent salary. Every time Jeffries raises my pay that
hairy-pawed horse-doctor reduces it just so much a month. And he does
it with one pack of fifty-two small cards that you could stick into
your vest pocket."

"McAlpin has a wife and children to support," suggested de Spain.

"Don't think for a moment he does it," returned Lefever vehemently. "I
support his wife and children, myself."

"You shouldn't play cards, John."

"It was by playing cards that I located Sassoon, just the same. A
little game with your friend Bull Page, by the way. And say, that man
blew into Calabasas one day here lately with a twenty-dollar bill;
it's a fact.