Belle had received and accepted strict injunctions of secrecy on the next point she disclosed, but her feelings were not to be denied. And she was not prepared for the question that Kate, stung by the accusation, flung at her: "What do you mean?" "I mean he's lying near here bleeding to death this minute and Doctor Carpy in Medicine Bend." In tones broken with anger and excitement, Belle told the disconnected story as it had come to her in jerks and nods and oaths from McAlpin at the barn, and in the little she had pulled out of Laramie himself when she took food to him. Then came in terribly heated words the brunt of her anger at Kate. "You knew," she said, pointing her finger at Kate, standing stupefied. "You knew where Jim Laramie hid Hawk. Nobody else did know--not even Lefever or Sawdy knew--I didn't know till you told me. Now, after they've burned his cabin, they set a death watch there at the bridge on Laramie. How did they know there was such a place if you didn't tell 'em?" Stunned by the fire of Belle's wrath, Kate, breathless, tried to collect her senses. It was only her anger at the final implication that cleared them. But even as her words of indignant denial reached her lips, her utterance was paralyzed by the recollection that unwittingly she had told her father of the night she was thrown into Laramie's retreat. Yet even this did not check her resentment. "Who accuses me of telling them?" she demanded. "Who says I conspired to murder anyone--did Mr. Laramie say so?" She shot the question at Belle in a furious tone. Her eyes flashed in a way that confounded her accuser. "I'm asking you how they found out," retorted Belle, but in spite of herself on the defensive. Kate's face was set and her eyes were on fire. All the anger that a woman could feel centered in her words and manner. "Answer my question before you say another word." She confronted Belle without yielding. "Did Jim Laramie accuse me in any way of anything?" "Oh, you needn't be so high and mighty," flustered Belle. "I'll answer your question; no. Now you answer mine, will you?" "How can _I_ answer how they found out? I will not say another word until I see Mr. Laramie--where is he?" "You can't see him--nobody knows he is here--he won't talk to you." Kate paid no attention to her words: "He'll have to tell me that himself," she returned. "If he is near here--he must be at Kitchen's." Belle could say nothing to check or swerve her. Taking up her hat and ignoring all warnings, Kate walked straight over to the barn. She found McAlpin at the stable door: "I want you to take a message for me to Mr. Laramie," she said, speaking low and collectedly. "Ask him if he will see Kate Doubleday for just two minutes."