bout the old camp, and five
hundred dollars of it's mine. That's what I want. I don't care a damn
what they do with him so long as they don't send him to prison where we
can't nail him. That's what that bloody court will do though, an' I know
it."

"How d'ye know?" fiercely demanded the other; "'nless you've been in the
army--which you swear you haven't. Where'd you desert from? Come, own up
now," and, turning for an instant from his peephole, the speaker became
suddenly aware of the silent form of Lieutenant Blake.

"None of your dashed business," began the other, when a harsh "Shut up!"
brought him around in amaze and he, too, confronted the dark figure
standing like a sign post between them and the violet light beyond the
open doorway. Instinctively the hands of both men sought their
pistol-butts, but Blake made never a move. The woman, looking around for
the cause of the sudden silence, caught sight of the statuesque intruder
and, with a low cry, threw her shawl over her head and, bending almost
double, with outstretched, groping hands, scurried to where the
mission-made blanket hung at the doorway of the bedroom and darted
through the aperture like a rabbit to its form, the folds of the heavy
wool falling behind her.

And still the tall lieutenant neither spoke nor moved. His revolver hung
at his right hip, his hunting-knife slept in its sheath, but his hands
sat jauntily on his thighs. The stern, set look of his clear-cut face
had given place to something like a grin of amusement. First at one,
then at the other, of the two bewildered worthies he gazed, looking each
deliberately from head to foot as they hovered there, both irresolute
and disconcerted, one of them visibly trembling. There was a doorway
leading into the room in which was set the table for stage passengers of
the better class, officers and the few ladies who had ventured to follow
their lords into far-away Arizona, or the _gente fine_, which included
Amazons whose money could pay their way pretty much anywhere and was
made pretty much anyhow. But that room was empty and the one beyond it,
the bar, had only one or two occupants, too far away to see what was
going on. There was a doorway and a swinging screen of dirty canvas just
beyond the loophole lately occupied by "the wife of my brother," a
doorway that gave on the corral, and to each of these each silent
"tough" had given a quick, furtive glance, but not a step was taken. How
long the strain