The hush that followed the brain storm in the kitchen put Belle, quite unsuspecting, to sleep. Laramie, with a tread creditable to a cat--and a stealth natural to most carnivorous animals--closed the door without breaking her heavy breathing. The shades, always drawn at nightfall, called for no attention. In the living-room, there was preliminary tiptoeing, and there were futile efforts on Kate's part to cool her rebellious cheeks by applying her open hands to them--when she could get possession of either one to do so. The small couch which served as sofa was drawn out of range of even the protected windows, and the floodgates were opened to the first unrestrained confidences together. When they could talk of more serious things, Kate could not possibly see how she could marry him; but this, in the circumstances, seemed to cause Laramie no alarm. She admitted she had tried not to like him and confessed how she had failed. "Every time I met you," she murmured, "you seemed to understand me so well--you knew how a woman would like to be treated--that's what I kept thinking about." "You used to talk and laugh with Van Horn," he complained, jealously. "When I came around, I couldn't drag a smile out of you with a lariat." "You're getting a smile now that he isn't getting, aren't you?" "Somehow you never acted natural with me." "Jim!" It was the word he most wanted to hear, even if the reproach implied the quintessence of stupidity. "Don't you understand, I wasn't afraid of him, and I was of you!" "And I only trying to get a chance to eat out of your hand!" "How could I tell--after all I used to hear--but that you'd begin by eating out of my hand and finish by eating me?" He had to be told every word of her troubles at home, but her uneasiness turned to the dangers threatening him. These, she protested, he belittled too much. Ever since he had come in wounded she had been the prey of fears for him. "It's a mystery how you escaped." He had to tell every detail of his flight down the canyon. "By rights," he said in conclusion, "they ought to have got me. No man should have got out of that scrape as well as I did. Van Horn didn't get into action quick enough. And it seemed to me as if Stone himself was a little slow." The way he spoke the things strengthened her confidence. And his arm held her so close!