"Keep away from me. They're watching us. You're bungling your part wretchedly. Can't you understand that I'm on the case, too?" She had planned her action, forestalling possibilities as well as she was able. She was determined to be bold, trusting to events as they developed. "You will kindly remember that I'm on this case along with you, and you can't make me jump through hoops!" Crowley, fresh from the city, narrow in his urban conceit, was seeing red because of a petty humiliation he had suffered in public. Another man was seeing red for a different reason. Latisan strode across the room, nabbed Crowley by the ear, and led him into the tavern office, where the aching ear was twisted until the city man subsided into a chair. The girl appraised at its full value the rancor that was developing in the Vose-Mern operative; his glaring eyes were accusing her. But the adoring eyes of Latisan promised really more complicated trouble for her. It was borne in on her that there were dangerous possibilities in the frank atmosphere of the north woods. Lida had the poignant feeling of being very much alone just then--and she was afraid! CHAPTER THIRTEEN Suppers were always over with early in Adonia. The red west was banded with half on hour's April daylight when the new waitress finished her work. She hurried up to her room; she locked her door with the panic-stricken air of one who desires to shut out danger. She was in no mood to question the worthiness of the impulse which had sent her into the north, but she was realizing in fuller measure the difficulties with which she must deal. In the dining room she had felt recklessly intrepid and the utter mystification of Buck Crowley had amused her. But she had had plenty of opportunity in her Vose-Mern work to know the nature of Crowley--he had the shell of an alligator and the scruples of a viper and would double-cross a twin brother if the project could help the fortunes of Buck himself. Once more she admitted that she was afraid. It was if she had touched levers and had started machinery which she could not stop; she had launched two men at each other and had observed the first ominous clinches--and Crowley had warned her that she was in the region of "he-men." But Crowley was not of a sort to use the manly weapons of the frank fighters of the north. With the sense of hiding away from impending trouble, sorry for her share in starting it, she sat by the window, put her forehead on her arms, wept weakly, and told herself that she was a very poor article of a heroine. However, the sunset soothed and invited her when she wiped her eyes. She beheld the honest outdoors of the forest country. She was hungry for those open places of earth. She knew that her resolution was ebbing the longer she hid herself in that hole of a room, like a terrified animal. She put on a hat and a wrap and started out. She was perfectly well aware of the gantlet she must run.