we want to think different from them?"

"We do. They think he is guilty. We know he isn't."

"What does Sheriff Bolt think?"

Curly waved the sheriff aside. "It don't matter what he thinks, Miss Kate.
He _says_ he thinks Luck was mixed up in the hold-up. Maybe that's what he
thinks, but we don't want to forget that Cass Fendrick made him sheriff
and your father fought him to a fare-you-well."

"Then we can't expect any help from him."

"Not much. He ain't a bad fellow, Bolt ain't. He'll be square, but his
notions are liable to be warped."

"I'd like to talk with him," the young woman announced.

"All right," Mackenzie assented. "To-morrow mo'ning----"

"No, to-night, Uncle Mac."

The cattleman looked at her in surprise. Her voice rang with decision. Her
slight figure seemed compact of energy and resolution. Was this the girl
who had been in helpless tears not ten minutes before?

"I'll see if he's at his office. Maybe he'll come up," Curly said.

"No. I'll go down to the courthouse if he's there."

Flandrau got Bolt on the telephone at his room. After a little grumbling
he consented to meet Miss Cullison at his office.

"Bob, you must go to bed. You're tired out," his cousin told him.

"I ain't, either," he denied indignantly. "Tired nothing. I'm going with
you."

Curly caught Kate's glance, and she left the boy to him.

"Look here, Bob. We're at the beginning of a big job. Some of us have to
keep fresh all the time. We'll work in relays. To-night you sleep so as to
be ready to-morrow."

This way of putting it satisfied the boy. He reluctantly consented to go
to bed, and was sound asleep almost as soon as his head struck the
pillow.

At the office of the sheriff, Kate cut to essentials as soon as
introductions were over.

"Do you think my father robbed the W. & S. Express Company, Mr. Bolt?" she
asked.

Her plainness embarrassed the officer.

"Let's took at the facts, Miss Cullison," he began amiably. "Then you tell
me what you would think in my place. Your father needed money mighty bad.
There's no doubt at all about that. Here's an envelope on which he had
written a list of his debts. You'll notice they run to just a little more
than twenty thousand. I found this in his bedroom the day he
disappeared."

She took the paper, glanced at it mechanically, and looked at the sheriff
again. "Well? Everybody wants money. Do they all steal it?"

"Turn that envelope over, Miss Cullison. Notice how h