“We have an appointment with Miss Messiter and Nora for to-morrow morning. We’ll have to leave word we can’t keep it.” “Sure. Denver and Missou are playing the wheel down at the Silver Dollar. I reckon we better make those boys jump and run errands for us while we lie low. I’ll drop in casual and give them the word. Meet y’u here in ten minutes. Whatever y’u do, keep that mask on your face.” “Better meet farther from the scene of trouble. Suppose we say the north gate of the grand stand?” “Good enough. So-long.” The first faint streaks of day were beginning to show on the horizon when Bannister reached the grand stand. He knew that inside of another half-hour the little frontier town would be blinking in the early morning sunlight that falls so brilliantly through the limpid atmosphere. If they were going to leave without fighting their way out there was no time to lose. Ten minutes slowly ticked away. He glanced at his watch. “Five minutes after four. I wish I had gone with Mac. He may have been recognized.” But even as the thought flitted through his mind, the semi-darkness opened to let a figure out of it. “All quiet along the Potomac, seh?” asked the foreman’s blithe voice. “Good. I found the boys and got them started.” He flung down a Mexican vaquero’s gaily trimmed costume. “Get into these, seh. Denver shucked them for me. That coyote must have noticed what we wore before he slid out. Y’u can bet the orders are to watch for us as we were dressed then.” “What are y u going to do?” “Me? I’m scheduled to be Aaron Burr, seh. Missou swaps with me when he gets back here. They’re going to rustle us some white men’s clothes, too, but we cayn’t wear them till we get out of town on account of showing our handsome faces.” “What about horses?” “Denver is rustling some for us. Y’u better be scribbling your billy-doo to the girl y’u leave behind y’u, seh.” “Haven’t y’u got one to scribble?” Bannister retorted. “Seems to me y’u better get busy, too.” So it happened that when Missou arrived a few minutes later he found this pair of gentlemen, who were about to flee for their lives, busily inditing what McWilliams had termed facetiously _billets-doux_. Each of them was trying to make his letter a little warmer than friendship allowed without committing himself to any chance of a rebuff. Mac got as far as Nora Darling, absentmindedly inserted a comma between the words, and there stuck hopelessly. He looked enviously across at Bannister, whose pencil was traveling rapidly down his note-book. “My, what a swift trail your pencil leaves on that paper. That’s going some. Mine’s bogged down before it got started. I wisht y’u would start me off.” “Well, if you ain’t up and started a business college already. I had ought to have brought a typewriter along with me,” murmured Missou ironically. “How are things stacking? Our friends the enemy getting busy yet?” asked Bannister, folding and addressing his note.