“General malignancy that set in right after birth and just now came to a head,” Carver diagnosed. “He was prospecting for your cache when I arrived.” “He’d already located it,” Bart stated. “It was gone when I came up. Likely he came back to hunt for more as I went down, and your trails converged, sort of. Wellman said you’d just turned up the stairs, so I came on back.” He crossed over to inspect the sprawled figure in the hallway. “I’d say he was totally defunct,” he reported; but as if to refute this assertion Noll stirred an arm and grunted. “Unfortunately resuscitation is already setting in,” Bart revised his statement. “Let’s be off before he opens one eye and tries to borrow ten.” An hour later the proceeds derived from the sale of the saddle had faded in the face of the bank’s per cent and their finances were totally exhausted except for a few small coins in Carver’s pocket. Lassiter leaned rather heavily against the bar in the Silver Dollar and straightened himself with an effort. “It’s time for me to dangle,” he announced. “Hate to break up the party and all that sort of thing, but I’m overdue right now. Meet you here in an hour.” He proceeded toward the door which opened into the adjoining restaurant but Carver overhauled him while he was yet some ten feet from his goal. “Now don’t you go trickling out on me,” he reproved. “I’ll be gone in an hour--riding off for three weeks. Stay with me till then and we’ll both move out together.” Lassiter turned uncertainly and Carver, looking past him, discovered that the swinging door into the restaurant stood half-open. The young girl framed in the doorway was gazing straight into his eyes. Oddly enough his first thought took the form of an intense desire to expend large sums of money in buying things for her, this impulse coupled with a swift regret that such amounts as he wished to squander were not for the moment available. The eyes that looked back into his were gray eyes, bordering on blue; and he gathered that they regarded him with a mixture of doubt and pity. He straightened resentfully, never having been doubted and refusing to be pitied, flooded with a sense of having been detected in some bit of wickedness. For the first time in his life his own eyes dropped before the direct gaze of another’s yet in his whole past career there was not one deed for which he felt any particular regret or shame. He lifted his eyes again with a hint of defiance, but found himself staring at the blank swinging door; in that split-second of averted glance the vision had disappeared, leaving him with a vague impression of its unreality,--and with a pronounced disinclination for continuing the party. Lassiter had not seen, and Carver dispelled the blond youth’s hesitation. “Maybe we’d better call it a day,” he said. “See you when I get back from the Strip.”