"It was," he grinned. "When I left home I didn't want anybody to be runnin' into me an' recognizin' me, so I changed it to Sanderson. Deal Sanderson." The girl's expression changed to delight; she sat erect and clapped her hands. "Oh," she said, "I wish father was here to listen to this! He thought all along that you were going to turn out bad. If he only knew! Will, you don't mean to tell me that you are the Sanderson that we all know of here--that nearly everybody in the country has heard about; the man who is called 'Square Deal' Sanderson by all his friends--and even by his enemies--because of his determination to do right--and to make everyone else do right too!" Again Sanderson resorted to the handkerchief. "I don't reckon they've talked about me that strong," he said. "But they have! Oh, I'm so happy, Will. Why, when Dale hears about it he'll be positively venomous--and scared. I don't think he will bother the Double A again--after he hears of it!" But Sanderson merely smirked mirthlessly; he saw no reason for being joyful over the lie he had told. He was getting deeper and deeper into the mire of deceit and prevarication, and there seemed to be no escape. And now, when he had committed himself, he realized that he might have evaded it all, this last lie at least, by telling Mary that he had picked the note up on the desert, or anywhere, for that matter, and she would have been forced to believe him. He kept her away from him, fending off her caresses with a pretense of slight indisposition until suddenly panic-stricken over insistence, he told her he was going to bed, bolted into the room, locked the door behind him, and sat long in the darkness and the heat, filling the room with a profane appreciation of himself as a double-dyed fool who could not even lie intelligently. CHAPTER VII KISSES--A MAN REFUSES THEM There was a kerosene lamp in Sanderson's room, and when, after an hour of gloomy silence in the dark, he got up and lit the lamp, he felt decidedly better. He was undressing, preparing to get into bed, when he was assailed with a thought that brought the perspiration out on him again. This time it was a cold sweat, and it came with the realization that discovery was again imminent, for if, as Mary had said, she had kept Sanderson's letter to her father, there were in existence two letters--his own and Will Bransford's--inevitably in different handwriting, both of which he had claimed to have written. Sanderson groaned. The more he lied the deeper he became entangled. He pulled on his trousers, and stood shoeless, gazing desperately around the room. He simply must destroy that letter, or Mary, comparing it with the letter her brother had written would discover the deception. It was the first time in Sanderson's life that had ever attempted to deceive anybody, and he was in the grip of a cringing dread.