Helen May had been washing the breakfast dishes, and Starr heard the muffled sound of her high-heeled slippers clicking over the bare floor for a minute before she came into the front room and opened the door. She had a dish towel over her right arm, opening the door with her left. Starr knew that the dish towel was merely a covering for her six-shooter, and his heart hardened a little at that fresh reminder of her preparedness and her guile. "Why, good morning, desert man," she said brightly, after the first little start of surprise. "Come on in. The coffee's fine this morning; and I just had a hunch I'd better not throw it out for a while yet. There's a little waffle batter left, too." Starr had choked down a cup of coffee and a sandwich at the station lunch counter before he left San Bonito, and he was glad now that he was not hungry. He stepped inside, but he did not smile back at Helen May; nor could he have accepted her hospitality to save himself from starvation. He felt enough like Judas as it was. "Don't put down your gun yet," he said abruptly, standing beside the door with his hat in his hand, as though his visit would be very short. "You can shoot me if you want to, but that's about all the leeway I can give you. I rounded up the revolution leaders last night. They're likely at Fort Bliss by now, so you can take your choice between handing me a bullet, or going along with me to Fort Bliss. Because if I live, that's where I'll have to take you. And," he added as an afterthought, "I don't care much which it is." Helen May stood with her chin tilted down, and stared at him from under her eyebrows. She did not speak for a minute, and Starr leaned back against the closed door with his arms folded negligently and his hat dangling from one hand, waiting her decision. He stared back at her, somberly apathetic. He had spoken the simple truth when he said he did not care which she decided to do. He had come to the limit of suffering, it seemed to him. He could look into her tawny brown eyes now without any emotion whatever. "You don't smell drunk," said Helen May suddenly and very bluntly, "and you don't look crazy. What is the matter with you, Starr of the desert? Is this a joke, or what?"