uite plain that Talpers had been drinking.

"Maybe I did, and maybe not, Bill," answered Lowell disgustedly.
"Anyway, what about it?"

"Jest this," observed Bill, talking to Lowell, but keeping his gaze upon
Helen. "Sometimes you can find letters where you don't expect the guilty
parties to leave 'em. Mebbe you ain't lookin' in the right place for
evidence. How-de-do, Miss Ervin? I'm goin' to drop in at the ranch and
see you and your stepfather some day. I ain't been very neighborly so
far, but it's because business has prevented."

Lowell started the car, and as they darted away he looked in
astonishment at the girl. Her pallor showed that once more she was under
great mental strain. It came to Lowell in a flash that Bill's arrogance
sprang from something deeper than mere conceit or drunkenness.
Undoubtedly he had set out deliberately to terrorize the girl, and had
succeeded. Lowell waited for some remark from Helen, but none came. He
kept back the questions that were on the tip of his tongue. Aside from a
few banalities, they exchanged no words until Lowell helped her from the
car at the ranch.

"I want to tell you," said Lowell, "that I appreciate such confidence as
you have reposed in me. I won't urge you to tell more but I'm going to
be around in the offing, and, if things don't go right, and especially
if Bill Talpers--"

There was so much terror in the girl's eyes that Lowell's assurances
came to a lame ending. She turned and ran into the house, after a
fluttering word of thanks for the ride, and Lowell, more puzzled than
ever, drove thoughtfully away.

CHAPTER VI

White Lodge was a town founded on excitement. Counting its numerous
shootings and consequent lynchings, and proportioning them to its
population, White Lodge had experienced more thrills than the largest of
Eastern cities. Some ribald verse-writer, seizing upon White Lodge's
weakness as a theme, had once written:

We can put the card deck by us,
We can give up whiskey straight;
Though we ain't exactly pious,
We can fill the parson's plate;
We can close the gamblin' places,
We can save our hard-earned coin,
BUT we want a man for breakfast
In the mor-r-rnin'.

But of course such lines were written in early days, and for newspaper
consumption in a rival town. White Lodge had grown distinctly away from
its wildness. It had formed a Chamber of Commerce which entered bravely
upon its missio