e with
keen, hard eyes.

"You're making a bold play, Mr. Hume."

"Well?" challenged Hume. "Isn't it high time for it? We might have
bought the water from Shandon before and have been better off. You
wouldn't stand for it; you had to gobble everything for nothing. We
took the chance. It wasn't a bad gamble either, considering Shandon
was away the first year and is a fool to boot. But you've lost on it.
Now when you go to him and ask for the water he's going to laugh at
you. But lock him up, charged with murder, make him believe that we
can stretch his neck for him and he'll hang, or by God, he will come to
time. Now I want a drink and something to eat. You and Conway can
spend the day talking if you like; I've got a day's work cut out ahead
of me."

"You're going with MacKelvey?"

Hume laughed and threw back his coat, showing the deputy sheriff's star
under it.

"I had Mac swear me in six months ago," he answered. "Yes, I'm going
with him."

Martin Leland rose and preceded Hume to the door.

"I shall ask my wife to see that you have something to eat right away,"
he said quietly. "First, Mr. Hume, I want you to know that Garth has
not been doing any talking, as you have suspected."

Hume merely lifted his heavy shoulders.

"And," Leland added, a little more sharply, "I want you to know also
that there is a woman here, a Miss Hazleton, whom we don't know
anything about excepting that she went to Shandon's last night, and
after her talk with him he rushed out to Garth demanding to be told
about the mortgage. Just where she fits in I don't know. She might be
anything from a chorus girl to a Reno widow."

"Oho," cried Hume, his brows suddenly drawn blackly. "He's getting a
woman mixed up in his affairs, is he? That shows how much sense he
has. Where is she now?"

"Here. She has asked to go out with us tomorrow."

Hume made no answer but shoving his hands into his pockets strode after
Leland into the living room. He stopped at the door, a little startled
by the vision which confronted him as Helga Strawn turned quickly from
the window, where she had been frowning at the blinding glare of the
snow without, and faced him.

She wore the clothes in which she had gone through the storm, but a hot
iron had taken the wrinkles out and they fitted her superb figure
admirably. Hume did not notice the clothes, he saw only the woman.
She inclined her head just a little to her host, with no softening of