“We-ell, in a political campaign men get excited. It doesn’t greatly matter what folks say—just part of the game, you know.” “Is it part of the game to tell lies about a good man?” she asked flatly. He threw up his hands gaily. “I surrender at discretion. Will a note to the _Enterprise_ correcting the error suit your Majesty?” “You’re not doing it for me,” she told him, her dark eyes shining. “You’re doing it because it’s the fair thing.” “Hang the fair thing,” he answered, laughing. “I’m doing it for Miss Victoria Lowell.” “I’d rather you didn’t.” She dimpled to a smile. “Because I’m against you and for Scot in this fight.” “Then I’ll give up the race,” he mocked. “I think you ought at least to be neutral.” Dodson played his hand under cover after that. He saw that McClintock was kept under a steady fire of newspaper attack and that none of it could be traced to him. No paper dared make any reference to the origin of the trouble between Colonel McClintock and the Dodsons, but hired assassins of reputation whispered evil stories in which the names of Mollie and Scot appeared. These became so numerous that at last Scot in a speech full of eloquence and fierce indignation referred to the traducers of his wife as snakes in the grass who dared not come into the open for fear of having the life trampled out of them. The bitterness grew, became acute. Robert Dodson, still full of venom and hatred, whispered in the ears of killers. The word was passed around quietly that McClintock might be shot down any time. Friends came to warn him. They carried the word to Hugh, who dropped his business at once and joined Scot at Austin. From this time the younger man, in spite of the Colonel’s good-humoured protest, travelled over the state with his brother as a lookout. At Carson the killers struck. Scot had addressed an enthusiastic meeting, at which he had been heckled by supporters of Dodson and had turned upon them with such witty scorn that they had slipped out of the hall discomfited. With Hugh beside him the speaker had returned to the Ormsby House. The younger brother was putting up at the house of a friend. He left Scot in his room ready to undress. But when the colonel felt in his waistcoat pocket for a cigar he found none. He stepped down to the barroom to get one. Baldy Green, the old stage driver, was sitting by the office stove. The two fell into talk and Scot sat down to smoke his cigar with the old-timer. A man whom Scot did not know lounged into the office and out again. In the darkness outside he whispered to two men. One of them was the ex-mule-skinner Hopkins, a dyed-in-the-wool bad man; the other was Sam Dutch. The hotel office had three doors. One opened from the street, a rear one led to the rooms, the third was a double swing door separating the office from the bar. Scot’s chair was so placed that he faced the entrance from the street and the bar. His back was half-turned to the rear one.