colourful like the sunset over the desert. Do you
understand?"

Her eyes went down to consider.

"I s'pose I do."

"With a touch of awe in it, because the silence and the night are
coming, and the stars walk down, one by one--one by one. And the wind is
low, soft, musical, whispering, as you do now--What if this were not a
game of suppose, Sally?"

She wrenched herself suddenly away, rising.

"I'm tired of supposing!" she cried.

"Then we'll call it all real. What of that?"

That colour was unmistakably high now; it ran down from her cheeks and
even stained the pure white of the throat where the flap of the shirt
was open. He was excited as a hunter who has tracked some new and
dangerous animal and at last driven it to bay, holding his gun poised,
and not knowing whether or not it will prove vulnerable.

He stepped close, eager, prepared for any wild burst of temper; but she
let him take her hands, let him draw her close, bend back her head; hold
her closer still, till the warmth and softness of her body reached him,
but when his lips came close she said quietly: "Are you a rotter,
Bard?"

He stiffened and the smile went out on his lips. He stepped back.

She repeated: "Are you a rotter?"

He raised the one hand which he still retained and touched it to his
lips.

"I am very sorry," said Anthony, "will you forgive me?"

And with her eyes large and grave upon him she answered: "I wonder if I
can!"

Butch Conklin looked up, raising his bandaged head slowly, like a white
flag of truce, with a stain of red growing through the cloth. He stared
at the two, raised a hand to his head as though to rub away the dream,
found a pain too real for a dream, and then, like a crab which has grown
almost too old to walk, waddled on hands and knees, slowly, from the
room and melted silently into the dark beyond.

CHAPTER XVIII

FOOLISH HABITS

A sharp noise of running feet leaped from the dust of the street and
clattered through the doorway; the two turned. A swarthy man, broad of
shoulder, was the first, and afterward appeared Nash.

"Conklin?" called Deputy Glendin, and swept the room with his startled
glance. "Where's Conklin?"

He was not there; only a red stain remained on the floor to show where
he had lain.

"Where's Conklin?" called Nash.

"I'm afraid," whispered Bard quickly to the girl, "that it was more than
a game of suppose."

He said easily to the other two: "He had enough. His share of