e the brat of that damned,
mincing brother of mine, that was always riding horseback and showing
off in town while I was weeding the tobacco-beds."

Nan clasped her hands. "Don't blame me because I'm your brother's
child. Blame me because I'm a woman, because I have a heart, because I
want to live and see you live, and to see you live in peace instead of
what we do live in--suspicion, distrust, feuds, alarms, and worse. I'm
not ungrateful, as you plainly say I am. I want you to get out of what
you are in here--I want to be out of it. I'd rather be dead now than
to live and die in it. And what is this anger all for? Nothing. He
offers you his friendship--" She could speak no further. Her uncle
with a curse left her alone. When she arose in the early morning he
had already gone away.

CHAPTER XXI

A TRY OUT

Sleepy Cat is not so large a place that one would ordinarily have much
trouble in finding a man in it if one searched well. But Duke Morgan
drove into town next morning and had to stay for three days waiting
for a chance to meet de Spain. Duke was not a man to talk much when he
had anything of moment to put through, and he had left home
determined, before he came back, to finish for good with his enemy.

De Spain himself had been putting off for weeks every business that
would bear putting off, and had been forced at length to run down to
Medicine Bend to buy horses. Nan, after her uncle left home--justly
apprehensive of his intentions--made frantic efforts to get word to de
Spain of what was impending. She could not telegraph--a publicity that
she dreaded would have followed at once. De Spain had expected to be
back in two days. Such a letter as she could have sent would not reach
him at Medicine Bend.

As it was, a distressing amount of talk did attend Duke's efforts to
get track of de Spain. Sleepy Cat had but one interpretation for his
inquiries--and a fight, if one occurred between these men, it was
conceded would be historic in the annals of the town. Its anticipation
was food for all of the rumors of three days of suspense. For the town
they were three days of thrilling expectation; for Nan, isolated,
without a confidant, not knowing what to do or which way to turn, they
were the three bitterest days of anxiety she had ever known.

Desperate with suspense at the close of the second day--wild for a
scrap of news, yet dreading one--she saddled her pony and rode alone
into Sleepy Cat after nightfa