Belle appeared with a vegetable: "It won't keep you waiting an awful while if things go on the way they're going now," she put in grimly. "That was a good song," mused Laramie, "a good old song." But he heard a slight sound in the kitchen and his eyes were turned toward the archway. "Just the same that song won't keep you from getting killed," persisted Belle. "Even that would beat appendicitis clean to death, Belle," maintained Laramie, still listening. "You've got lots of time," he added, as Lefever looked at his watch. "I haven't," exclaimed his companion. "I've got to send a message. Come over to the train." "I've got to write a couple of letters." "Come over to the station and write your letters." Laramie shook his head: "I couldn't even get to the station by one o'clock. Every man in Main Street wants to talk about Tom Stone. You'd think I had a million friends among the cattlemen this morning." "I heard old Barb Doubleday is grinning like a hangman today." "If Belle's got some ink I'll write my letters right here." Kate's spirits, which had risen at the hope of being so luckily rid of one who might prove troublesome, fell at his refusal to leave. John urged, but Laramie only asked Belle again for the ink. Lefever tried to coax Belle to go to the train with him. Belle would do almost any fool thing--as John bluntly averred--but this time she must have had pity on Kate and would not leave her unprotected. Lefever went his way. From a shelf near where Kate, with clasped hands, sat in silence Belle took paper and ink in to Laramie and began to clear the table. At this unlucky moment the front door was opened swiftly and a boy from the butcher shop stuck his head inside. "Miss Shockley," he called, "the milkman is on the 'phone now, if you want him." Closing the door he ran back across the street. With a sense of her wrongs keen upon her, Belle, forgetting her charge in the kitchen, hurried after him. Even then, Kate hoped that by keeping deathly still she might escape an unpleasant meeting. She never breathed more carefully in her life, yet she was doomed. She heard Laramie's chair pushed back and heard his footsteps. She could not be sure which way he was walking, but she thought only of flight. As stealthily and rapidly as possible, she started for the back door. Without looking around she felt as if he had come to the archway and was looking at her. With courage and resolve, she grasped the knob to open the door. It was locked. She fumbled with the key. Behind her, silence. She locked and unlocked the door more than once, and with a fast-dying hope, for the wretched door would _not_ open. Flushed with annoyance, she turned around only to see Laramie standing precisely where she had imagined him.