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As she did so, two men mounted. They examined the three rooms of the upper story hastily but carefully, paying scant attention to her, and departed swearing. In a few moments they returned for the stranger’s trunk. Nell followed them down the stairs as far as the doorway. There she heard and saw things, and fled in bitter dismay to the back of the house when Billy Knapp was overpowered.

At the window she knelt, clasping her hands and sinking her head between her arms. Women in the West, at least women like Nell, do not weep. But she came near it. Suddenly she raised her head. A voice next her ear had addressed her.

She looked here and there and around, but could discover nothing.

“Here, outside,” came the low, guarded voice, “in the tree.”

Then she saw that the little stranger had not stirred from his first alighting-place.

“Beg yore pardon, ma’am, fer startling you or fer addressing you at all, which I shouldn’t, but—-“

“Oh, never mind that,” said the girl, impatiently, shaking back her hair. So deprecating and timid were the tones, that almost without an effort of the imagination she could picture the little man’s blushes and his half-sidling method of delivery. At this supreme moment his littleness and lack of self-assertion jarred on her mood. “What’re you doin’ there? Thought you’d vamoosed.”

“It was safer here,” explained the stranger, “I left no trail.”

She nodded comprehension of the common-sense of this.

“But, ma’am, I took the liberty of speakin’ to you because you seems to be in trouble. Of course, I ain’t got no right to ask, an’ if you don’t care to tell me—-“

“They’re goin’ to kill Billy,” broke in Nell, with a sob.

“What for?”

“I don’t jest rightly make out. They’s after someone, and they thinks Billy’s cacheing him. I reckon it’s you. Billy ain’t cacheing nothin’, but they thinks he is.”

“It’s me they’s after, all right. Now, you know where I am, why don’t you tell them and save Billy?”

The girl started, but her keen Western mind saw the difficulty at once.

“They thinks Billy pertects you jest th’ same.”

“Do you love him?” asked the stranger.

“God knows I’m purty tough,” confessed Nell, sobbing, “but I jest do that!” and she dropped her head again.

The invisible stranger in the gloom fell silent, considering.

“I’m a pretty rank proposition, myself,” said he at last, as if to himself, “and I’ve got a job on hand which same I oughta put through without givin’ attention to anything else. As a usual thing folks don’t care fer me, and I don’t care much fer folks. Women especial. They drives me plumb tired. I reckon I don’t stack up very high in th’ blue chips when it comes to cashin’ in with the gentle sex, anyhow; but in general they gives me as much notice as they lavishes on a doodle-bug. I ain’t kickin’, you understand, nary bit; but onct in a dog’s age I kind of hankers fer a decent look from one of ’em. I ain’t never had no women-folks of my own, never. Sometimes I thinks it would be some scrumptious to know a little gal waitin’ fer me somewhere. They ain’t none. They never will be. I ain’t built that way. You treated me white to-night. You’re th’ first woman that ever kissed me of her own accord.”

The girl heard a faint scramble, then the soft pat of someone landing on his feet. Peering from the window she made out a faint, shadowy form stealing around the corner of the hotel. She put her hand to her heart and listened. Her understanding of the stranger’s motives was vague at best, but she had caught his confession that her kiss had meant much to him, and even in her anxiety she felt an inclination to laugh. She had bestowed that caress as she would have kissed the cold end of a dog’s nose.

The men below stairs had, after some discussion, decided on bullet. This was out of consideration for Billy’s standing as a frontiersman. Besides, he had stolen no horses. In order not to delay matters, the execution was fixed for the present time and place. Billy stood with his back to the logs of his own hotel, his hands and feet bound, but his eyes uncovered. He had never lost his nerve. In the short respite which preparation demanded, he told his opponents what he thought of them.