"I'll tell you, Kate," he added. "You can easy enough hire a fellow to kill a man. But you can't really hire one to hate a man. And if he doesn't really hate him, he won't be as keen on your job as you'd be yourself. These hired men will booze once in awhile--or go to sleep, maybe. It's work for a clear head and takes patience to hide in the rocks day after day and wait for one certain man to ride by so you can shoot him. If you doze off, your man may pass while you snore. And the kind of man you can hire isn't as keen on getting a man as the man himself is on not getting 'got'--that's where the chance is, sometimes, to pull out better than even." Because his aim was to reassure, to relieve her anxiety, he did not tell her that all the unfavorable conditions he had named, while never before arrayed against him at one time, were now pretty much all present together. Kate herself, he knew, stood more than ever between him and Van Horn. Stone had been twice publicly disgraced by Laramie at Tenison's--he would never forgive that. He had the patience of the assassin and when hatred swayed him he did not sleep--these were still, Laramie knew in his heart, bridges to be crossed. But why spoil an hour's happiness with the thought of them now? Laramie drew his hand across his heated forehead as if to clear his eyes and look again down into the face close to his and assure himself he was not really dreaming. "What do I care about them all, Kate," he would say, "now that I've got you? No, now that you've given yourself to me--that's what I'll say--what do I care what they do?" But she would look up, sudden with apprehension: "But don't you think _I_ care? Jim, let's leave this country soon, soon." Laramie laughed indulgently: "Somebody'll have to leave it pretty soon--that's certain." A rude knock at the door broke into his words. Kate threw her hands against his breast. She stared at him thunderstruck, and sprang from the sofa like a deer, looking still at him with wide-open eyes and then glancing apprehensively toward the door. Laramie sat laughing silently at her get-away as he called it, yet he was not undisturbed. Nothing, in the circumstances, could have been less welcome than any sort of an intrusion. But a knock at the door, almost violent, and coming three times, stirred even Laramie's temper. The door was not locked. Laramie rose, his fingers resting on the butt of his revolver, and stepping lightly into the dining-room, turned down the lamp. He stood in the shadow and beckoned Kate to him. His face indicated no alarm. "This may be something, or it may be nothing. You step into the kitchen. I'll go to the door." She clung to him, really terror-stricken, begging him not to go. As he tried to quiet her fears the heavy knock shook the flimsy door the second time. Kate, declaring she would go, would not be denied. Laramie told her exactly what to do.