u fair.
I could have betrayed you, and I didn't. Aren't you going to play square
with me?"

He nodded. "All right. Show him in. He won't know me except as Lieutenant
O'Connor. It was too dark last night to see my face."

Bellamy came into the room.

"How's Jack?" Melissy asked quickly as she caught his hand.

"Good as new. And you?"

"All right."

The outlaw stirred uneasily in his seat. His vanity objected to another
man holding the limelight while he was present.

Melissy turned. "I think you have never met Lieutenant O'Connor, Mr.
Bellamy. Lieutenant--Mr. Bellamy."

They shook hands. MacQueen smiled. He was enjoying himself.

"Glad to meet you, Mr. Bellamy. You and Flatray have won the honors
surely. You beat us all to it, sir. As I rode in this mornin', everybody
was telling how you rounded up the outlaws. Have you caught MacQueen
himself?"

"Not yet. We have reason to believe that he rode within ten miles of town
this morning before he cut across to the railroad. The chances are that
he will try to board a train at some water tank in the dark. We're having
them all watched. I came in to telephone all stations to look out for
him."

"Where's Jack?" Melissy asked.

"He'll be here presently. His arm was troubling him some, so he stopped to
see the doctor. Then he has to talk with his deputy."

"You're sure he isn't badly hurt?"

"No, only a scratch, he calls it."

"Did you happen on Dead Man's Cache by accident?" asked MacQueen with
well-assumed carelessness.

Bellamy had no intention of giving Rosario away to anybody. "You might
call it that," he said evenly. "You know, I had been near there once when
I was out hunting."

"Do you expect to catch MacQueen?" the outlaw asked, a faint hint of irony
in his amused voice.

"I can't tell. That's what I'm hoping, lieutenant."

"We hope for a heap of things we never get," returned the outlaw, in a
gentle voice, his eyes half shuttered behind drooping lids.

Melissy cut into the conversation hurriedly. "Lieutenant O'Connor is going
on the seven-five this evening, Mr. Bellamy. He has business that will
take him away for a while. It is time we were going. Won't you walk down
to the train with us?"

MacQueen swore softly under his breath, but there was nothing he could say
in protest. He knew he could not take the girl with him. Now he had been
cheated out of his good-byes by her woman's wit in dragging Bellamy to the
depot with them. He could not but