ulse it was too late.

The leader of the party turned in his saddle, and called to the man at
Marion's side, who rode quickly forward and joined his companions.
There was a conversation inaudible to her ears, and while she still
pondered over her inexplicable hesitation the cowboys and the golden
horse, followed by Marion, approached the group of squat, unpainted
houses that bore without apology the name of Paradise.

CHAPTER III

SETH HUNTINGTON'S OPPORTUNITY

It was Thursday, the one day of the week when Paradise needed no
apologist. For on Thursdays the stage arrived from Tellurium, bringing
the mail and, now and then, a passenger, and always a whiff of the
outside world. No resident of Paradise Park would willingly have
missed the arrival of the stage; and on this occasion fully two-thirds
of the male population, with nine-tenths of the female, had already
assembled. But the stage was not due for an hour or more. The women
bargained and gossiped in Thompson's store; the men, most of them,
were gathered around a stiff game of freeze-out in the Square Deal
Saloon; and only the score or more of saddle horses hitched in front
of the store, and the dozen or so of buckboards and road wagons parked
in the rear of it, showed that Paradise was in its weekly state of
mild and patient expectancy.

So the three cow-punchers, the yellow horse, and Marion rode into
Paradise without being seen or heard, and halted in front of the
post-office.

"Hal-lo! Hallo!" sang out the leader of the cowboys. And then, with
the petulance of one that is "all in": "Is this a dam' graveyard?"

A thin man in his shirt sleeves, with a whisky glass in one hand and a
towel in the other, came to the door of the Square Deal Saloon. His
pallid face had the look of settled weariness that is characteristic
of keepers of such oases. Slavin had never, within the recollection of
the oldest frequenter of his establishment, betrayed the slightest
interest in anything. If there was a certain change in his expression
as he looked out between narrowed eyelids into the garish sunlight it
was one indicative of mild resentment at having been disturbed in his
methodic occupation behind the bar. He saw with neither interest nor
anticipation the three strangers, who ought to have had enough sense
to dismount and walk in if they wanted anything.

"Well," he began in a drawling and sarcastic tone, "what--"

It probably would have been a cautious and cov