“All right. We won’t say no more about it. He’s a low dog for telling about it. I don’t want to know no more—not even who the feller is who married you. But you can bank on me, Betty, every time! I’m your friend.” “I know you are, Joe,” she whispered, and the look she gave him paid Joe Hurley for a good deal. But he was by no means satisfied to consider that Betty Hunt’s marriage closed the door of paradise in his face. He was just as determined to get her as ever he had been. He had learned the great thing that he had desired to know. Betty loved him. He had seen it in her look! He could wait, and be patient, and let things take their course. She could be wedded to another man as hard and fast as all the laws could make it. But Joe Hurley felt a glory in his soul that expanded from the heaven-born belief that time would change all that! They started down into the town, the girls shod with rubber boots that Joe supplied. The people of Canyon Pass were running about like muddy ants seeking their flooded hills. Mother Tubbs and Sam were high and dry in the loft of the stamp mill. The old woman had made Sam lug up there her one good feather-bed—and it was dry. But as she said, she expected to find all her other possessions “as wet as a frog’s hind leg.” Bill Judson lounged in the doorway of the Three Star and hailed them with some cheerfulness. “There’s one sure thing, Parson Hunt,” he said. “What I got in cans ain’t water-soaked—much. And the cat and six kittens ain’t drowned. I expect I can keep shop with what I got left for a while. But Smithy’s lost all his clo’es that’s fit to wear, dad burn it! I can’t have him waitin’ on lady customers in a gunny-sack and a pair of ridin’ boots.” A little group surrounded Sheriff Blaney on the street as the quartette strolled along. Joe was interested. “Find him, Blaney?” he asked the officer. “Not any. And it beats my time. I don’t see where that Dick Beckworth could have holed up. He sure didn’t get out of town, for the Forks are both plumb impassable for man or beast.” The two girls exchanged glances again. What had happened to Dick Beckworth? Surely he must have got out of the closet—out of the hotel—— Suddenly Betty seized Nell’s arm with an hysterical grip. “Nell! Nell!” she whispered. “Don’t give way. Of course he’s all right—though he ought not to be!” “That closet door! It shut with a spring lock. It could not be opened from inside!” “Oh, he could smash down the door.” The two young men did not notice the girls’ perturbation. They were striding ahead. A crowd was running toward the fallen hotel. Something of moment was happening there. But before they reached the place Cholo Sam saw them, and started toward the parson and Joe. “Señor Hunt! Señor Joe! Keep the señoritas back. It is not for them to see.” “What’s the matter, Sam?” asked Hurley. “That Dick the Deevil! He ees found—my goodness, yes! They haf just pulled him out of the ruins of my Wild Rose—drowned like one rat!”