She sat down in despair. How could Whispering Smith have allowed any one he had a care for to be exposed in this dreadful way? Trying to think what to do, Dicksie hurried back into the living-room, walked to the piano, took the pile of sheet-music from the top, and sat down to thumb it over. She threw song after song on the chair beside her. They were sheets of gaudy coon songs and ragtime with flaring covers, and they seemed to give off odors of cheap perfume. Dicksie hardly saw the titles as she passed them over, but of a sudden she stopped. Between two sheets of the music lay a small handkerchief. It was mussed, and in the corner of it "Nellie" was written conspicuously in a laundry mark. The odor of musk became in an instant sickening. Dicksie threw the music disdainfully aside, and sprang up with a flushed face to leave the room. Sinclair's remark about the first woman to cross his threshold came back to her. From that moment Dicksie hated him. But no sooner had she seated herself on the porch than she remembered she had left her hat in the house, and rose to go in after it. She was resolved not to leave it under the roof another moment, and she had resolved to go over and wait where her horse was tied. As she reentered the doorway she stopped. In the room she had just left a cowboy sat at the table, taking apart a revolver to clean it. The revolver was spread in its parts before him, but across the table lay a rifle. The man had not been in the room when she left it a moment before. Dicksie passed behind him. He paid no attention to her; he had not looked up when she entered the room. Passing behind him once more to go out, Dicksie looked through the open window before which he sat. Sinclair and Marion sitting under the cottonwood tree were in plain sight, and the muzzle of the rifle where it lay covered them. Dicksie thrilled, but the man was busy with his work. Breathing deeply, she walked out on the porch again. Sinclair, she thought, was looking straight at her, and in her anxiety to appear unconscious she turned, walked to the end of the house, and at the corner almost ran into a man sitting out of doors in the shade mending a saddle. He had removed his belt to work, and his revolver lay in the holster on the bench, its grip just within reach of his hand. Dicksie walked in front of him, but he did not look up. She turned as if changing her mind, and with a little flirt of her riding-skirt sat down in the porch chair, feeling a faint moisture upon her forehead. * * * * *