The thought overwhelmed her as she lay there, and she sat up gasping for breath, but in a moment the eternal defense of the man, inherent in every woman who loves, came to the rescue, and she told 202 herself vehemently that Bud was honorable, if nothing else. Then the sentence concerning the United States officers wanting him on another charge recurred to her, and she found her defense punctured at the outset. If he were honorable, how could it be that the officers were after him?
In despair at the quandary, but still clinging to her faith, she fell back on the unanswerable fact of feminine intuition. Bud seemed good and true; it was in his eyes, in his voice, in his very manner. He looked at the world squarely, but with a kind of patient endurance that bespoke some deep trouble.
Then for the first time the thought came to Juliet that perhaps he was shielding someone else.
But who? And, if so, why did Caldwell write this letter?
Unable to answer these questions, but confronted by the thought that Bud’s love was the sweetest thing in the world to her, she at last fell asleep with a smile upon her lips.
CHAPTER XVII
A BATTLE IN THE DARK
“Everything ready?”