Stunned as she might well have been at the outburst, Kate stood her ground: "Did Doctor Carpy give you permission to come here tonight?" She shot the words at Laramie without giving him time to breathe. Laramie checked the flood of anger he had loosed: "I don't need permission from Doctor Carpy to come here night or day. Ask him if you want to," he said with scornful disgust. He sank down on the chair at his side in complete resentment of the whole situation and, leaning forward with a hand spread over one knee and one fist clenched on the other, he stared not at Kate's eyes, but at the floor, with only her trim boots in his field of vision. "What's the use?" he exclaimed, drawing the words up seemingly all the way from his own disorderly and alkali-stained foot coverings. "What's the use?" he repeated, in stronger and more savage tones. "I've treated her from the first instant I saw her, and every instant since, as I thought a woman ought to be treated--would like to be treated. Now I get my reward. She calls me a thief--and, my God! I take it. I don't ride out and kill her father who taught her to do it, quick as I can reach him; I just take it!" he exclaimed. He hesitated a moment. Then he flung a question at her like a thunderbolt: "What do you want here?" She was frightened. His rage was plain enough; who could tell the lengths to which it might carry him? She kept her dignity but she answered and without quibbling: "I want some gauze and some cotton and some medicines." He strode to the cabinet and, concealing the movement as he unlocked it with Carpy's key, he threw open the glass door: "You'd be all night finding the stuff," he said curtly, taking the supplies from various cluttered piles on different shelves. "You say he wants this tonight," he added, when her packet was complete: "How are you going to get it to him?" "Carry it to him." "At Pettigrew's? What do you mean? It would take an experienced horseman all night to ride around by Black Creek." "I'm going over the pass." He could not conceal his anger: "Does your father know that?" "He said I might try it." Laramie flamed again: "A fine father to send a tenderfoot girl on a night ride into a country like that!" She was defiant: "I can ride anywhere a man can." "Let me tell you," he faced her and his eyes flashed, "if you try riding 'anywhere' too often, some night your father's daughter will fail to get home!" Ignoring the door, he stepped to the open window by which he had entered and, springing through it, was gone. CHAPTER XXI THE HIDING PLACE Disdaining any further attempt at concealment, Laramie rode angrily over to Kitchen's barn; anyone that wanted a dispute with him just then could have it, and promptly. Kitchen got up his horse and, cutting short the liveryman's attempt to talk, Laramie headed for home.