'or
else'--she needs you. Henry, did that message--I mean the way it
was worded--sound like Nan Morgan?"

De Spain could hardly answer. "It did, and it didn't," he said
finally. "But--" his companions saw during the pause by which his lips
expressed the resolve he had finally reached that he was not likely to
be turned from it--"I am going to act just as if the word came from
Nan and she does need me."

More than one scheme for getting quickly into touch with Nan was
proposed and rejected within the next ten minutes. And when Lefever,
after conferring with Scott, put up to de Spain a proposal that the
three should ride into the Gap together and demand Nan at the hands of
Duke Morgan, de Spain had reached another conclusion.

"I know you are willing to take more than your share, John, of any
game I play. In the first place it isn't right to take you and Bob in
where I am going on my own personal affair. And I know Nan wouldn't
enjoy the prospect of an all-around fight on her account. Fighting is
a horror to that girl. I've got her feelings to think about as well as
my own. I've decided what to do, John. I'm going in alone."

"You're going in alone!"

"To-night. Now, I'll tell you what I'd like you to do if you want to:
ride with me and wait till morning, outside El Capitan. If you don't
hear from me by ten o'clock, ride back to Calabasas and notify
Jeffries to look for a new manager."

"On the contrary, if we don't hear from you by ten o'clock, Henry, we
will blaze our way in and drag out your body." Lefever put up his hand
to cut off any rejoinder. "Don't discuss it. What happens after ten
o'clock to-morrow morning, if we don't hear from you before that,
can't possibly be of any interest to you or make any difference." He
paused, but de Spain saw that he was not done. When he resumed, he
spoke in a tone different from that which de Spain usually associated
with him. "Henry, when I was a youngster and going to Sunday-school,
my old Aunt Lou often told me a story about a pitcher that used to go
to the well. And she told me it went many, many times, safe and sound;
but my Aunt Lou told me, further, the pitcher got so used to going to
the well safe and sound that it finally went once too many times, just
once too often, and got smashed all to hell. Aunt Lou didn't say it
exactly in that way--but such was the substance of the moral.

"You've pulled a good many tough games in this country, Henry. No man
knows better