thout ever
learning what we really are cut here. Miss Hammond, Gene Stewart is a
fiend when he's drunk. All the same I know, whatever he did, he meant no
shame to you. Come now, don't think about it again to-night." She took
up the lamp and led Madeline into a little room. "This is out West,"
she went on, smiling, as she indicated the few furnishings; "but you can
rest. You're perfectly safe. Won't you let me help you undress--can't I
do anything for you?"

"You are very kind, thank you, but I can manage," replied Madeline.

"Well, then, good night. The sooner I go the sooner you'll rest. Just
forget what happened and think how fine a surprise you're to give your
brother to-morrow."

With that she slipped out and softly shut the door.

As Madeline laid her watch on the bureau she noticed that the time was
past two o'clock. It seemed long since she had gotten off the train.
When she had turned out the lamp and crept wearily into bed she knew
what it was to be utterly spent. She was too tired to move a finger. But
her brain whirled.

She had at first no control over it, and a thousand thronging sensations
came and went and recurred with little logical relation. There were
the roar of the train; the feeling of being lost; the sound of pounding
hoofs; a picture of her brother's face as she had last seen it five
years before; a long, dim line of lights; the jingle of silver spurs;
night, wind, darkness, stars. Then the gloomy station, the shadowy
blanketed Mexican, the empty room, the dim lights across the square, the
tramp of the dancers and vacant laughs and discordant music, the door
flung wide and the entrance of the cowboy. She did not recall how he
had looked or what he had done. And the next instant she saw him cool,
smiling, devilish--saw him in violence; the next his bigness, his
apparel, his physical being were vague as outlines in a dream. The white
face of the padre flashed along in the train of thought, and it brought
the same dull, half-blind, indefinable state of mind subsequent to that
last nerve-breaking pistol-shot. That passed, and then clear and vivid
rose memories of the rest that had happened--strange voices betraying
fury of men, a deadened report, a moan of mortal pain, a woman's
poignant cry. And Madeline saw the girl's great tragic eyes and the
wild flight of the big horse into the blackness, and the dark, stalking
figure of the silent cowboy, and the white stars that seemed to look
down remor