"Good mawnin', sheriff," her tortured brain heard him say. Old Jess Mason eyed him over high cheek bones and hawk-like nose for the fraction of a second before taking his hand from beneath his coat. Then it came slowly out, empty. "Good mawnin', yohse'f!" The sheriff was fairly bristling with anger. "Look-ee-heah," he savagely demanded, "what's this funny business about, anyhow? Do you-all reckon you're goin' to poke fun at me an' the law, an' git away with it? Or what?" "I don't reckon there's been such an awful lot of fun poked around heah, Jess," Dale sullenly answered. "You don't! Well, there'd better not be, that's all I got to say!" He wiped his forehead and glared. "Then s'pose you explain somethin'! I'm ridin' through town a while back, when the telephone gal sticks her head outen the winder an' squeals: 'Git to the Cunnel's a-flyin', Jess--they say Dale Dawson's done kilt Tusk Potter!'" "That's all right," Dale said. "Keep yoh 'pinions to yohse'f till I ask for 'em! I put my hawse's belly to the ground an' we've gone 'bout two mile, when young McElroy comes chargin' up behind a-yellin' for me to stop." 'What's the matter?' I asks, pullin' 'round an' facin' 'im. 'You've got a blame good hawse, Jess,' he grins, 'I thought I couldn't ketch you!!' Then he comes up clost an' says: "That message come wrong!' 'How d'you know?' I asks. 'I heerd it,' he says, 'an' Dale ain't never kilt Tusk!' 'Then who did?' I asks agin. 'Me,' he says." Jane's nails bit into the palms of her hands as she sprang up, breathlessly listening. The sheriff went on: "I looks at 'im an' seen he was cold sober, but I knowed the other message come straight, too. So I says: 'Then you're under 'rrest; go back an' set on the cou'thouse steps till I come from the Cunnel's,' I says. 'If you go out thar I won't stay,' he says. 'You will if I asks you, Brent,' I says, 'No, Jess, I'll be damned if I do,' he says. Wall, we argyed, an' he was so pig-headed I thought I'd have to shoot 'im right thar; but arter 'while he says he'll go back an' set, an' then I come on. Now I want to know what kind of fun you fellers is tryin' to git outen me!" Little did the sheriff, Dale or Jane know that Brent rode back to town like mad, threw himself from his horse and dashed up the stair leading to the telephone office above the drug-store. He fairly bounded in upon Miss Gregget, crying: "Quick! Give me the Colonel's!" While she was inserting a plug and turning a crank--for Buckville's central switchboard was many years behind the times--he unceremoniously lifted the operator's head-set from her coiled hair and fitted it upon his own head. Several times she spun the little crank, breathlessly repealing: "I've just been trying them, but they must have left the receiver off!" "Wait!" he whispered.