All that was left to her was the hope that Lingle might soon clear her, and she felt in her despair that she could not return to the ranch until he had given her some reassurance. She checked her horse at the corner and looked each way for him, but he was nowhere visible. Then, while she hesitated she saw him emerge from a doorway where a steep stairway led to the office of the mayor on the second floor of Prouty's only two-story building. Kate received the swift impression that the deputy was agitated, and a closer view confirmed it. His face was pale, and the light that shone in his eyes was unmistakably due to anger. He walked to the edge of the sidewalk and stood there, too engrossed in thought to see Kate until she had ridden close to him. "Will you tell me what progress you're making? It's so hard, this waiting and not knowing." The deputy's eyes blazed anew when he recognized the girl, and under stress of feeling he blurted out harshly: "I'm called off, Miss Prentice!" "Called off!" she gasped. "You mean--" "Stopped!" fiercely. "I've been blocked at every turn by the authorities and others, and now it's come straight from 'Tinhorn' himself--the mayor." Speechless, Kate's trembling hand sought the saddle horn and gripped it. "But why?" finally. Ineffable scorn was in the deputy's answer: "It might hurt the town to have this murder stirred up and the story sent broadcast--make prospective settlers hesitate to invest in such a dangerous community--that's what was given me, along with my instructions to quit. But another reason is that the man implicated belongs to one of them secret orders." "I can't believe it!" she cried piteously. "I couldn't either, until I had to. But I've got sense enough to know that I'm done, with nobody to back up my hand. After all, I'm only a deputy," he said savagely. "I'm all broke up, I can tell you!" "But aside from the way in which it leaves me it seems such a--such an insult to Uncle Joe--as though nobody cared--as though--" she could not finish. "I know--I know," he nodded gravely. "I'm going up to see the mayor--to beg him to keep on--to tell him what it means to me!" she declared passionately. "I wouldn't, Miss Prentice," Lingle advised. "I must! It can't stop like this! He shall understand what it means to me--this suspicion--this disgrace that is nearly killing me!" He saw that she was determined, so he did not protest further, but his reluctant gaze followed her as she disappeared up the narrow dirty stairway. The mayor attended to the official business of Prouty at a flat-top desk in a large front room where he also wrote an occasional life insurance policy. As the insurance business was a rise from a disreputable saloon and gambling joint, so the saloon and gambling joint had been a step upward from his former means of livelihood as a dance-hall tout in a neighboring state.