words merely helped their distrust of me.
The cabin leaked too much, they said; I would sleep drier here. One man
gave it to me more directly: "If you figured on camping in this stable,
what has changed your mind?" How could I tell them that I shrunk from
any contact with what they were doing, although I knew that only so
could justice be dealt in this country? Their wholesome frontier nerves
knew nothing of such refinements.

But the Virginian understood part of it. "I am right sorry for your
annoyance," he said. And now I noticed he was under a constraint very
different from the ease of the others.

After the twelve hours' ride my bones were hungry for rest. I spread my
blankets on some straw in a stall by myself and rolled up in them; yet
I lay growing broader awake, every inch of weariness stricken from my
excited senses. For a while they sat over their councils, whispering
cautiously, so that I was made curious to hear them by not being able;
was it the names of Trampas and Shorty that were once or twice spoken--I
could not be sure. I heard the whisperers cease and separate. I heard
their boots as they cast them off upon the ground. And I heard the
breathing of slumber begin and grow in the interior silence. To one
after one sleep came, but not to me. Outside, the dull fall of the rain
beat evenly, and in some angle dripped the spouting pulses of a leak.
Sometimes a cold air blew in, bearing with it the keen wet odor of the
sage-brush. On hundreds of other nights this perfume had been my last
waking remembrance; it had seemed to help drowsiness; and now I lay
staring, thinking of this. Twice through the hours the thieves shifted
their positions with clumsy sounds, exchanging muted words with their
guard. So, often, had I heard other companions move and mutter in the
darkness and lie down again. It was the very naturalness and usualness
of every fact of the night,--the stable straw, the rain outside, my
familiar blankets, the cool visits of the wind,--and with all this the
thought of Steve chewing and the man in the gray flannel shirt, that
made the hours unearthly and strung me tight with suspense. And at last
I heard some one get up and begin to dress. In a little while I saw
light suddenly through my closed eyelids, and then darkness shut again
abruptly upon them. They had swung in a lantern and found me by mistake.
I was the only one they did not wish to rouse. Moving and quiet talking
set up around me, and the