"All the same, you'd better go home with Throop," persisted the coroner. "You're needed at the hearing to-morrow, and Miss McLaren will want you all in one piece," he said.
Hanscom considered a moment. "All right. I'm in your hands till to-morrow. Good night."
"Good night," replied Carmody. "Take good care of him," he added to the sheriff as he rose.
"He won't get away," replied Throop. As he stepped into the street he perceived a small group of Kitsong's sympathizers still hanging about the door of the saloon. "What are you hanging around here for?" he demanded.
"Waiting for Abe. He's gone after a warrant and the city marshal," one of them explained.
"You're wasting time and so is Abe. You tell him that the coroner has put Hanscom in my custody and that I won't stand for any interference from anybody—not even the county judge—so you fellers better clear off home."
The back streets were silent, and as they walked along Throop said: "I'm going to lose you at the door of the hotel, but you'd better turn up at my office early to-morrow."
Hanscom said "Good night" and went to his bed with a sense of physical relaxation which should have brought slumber at once, but it didn't. On the contrary, he lay awake till long after midnight, reliving the exciting events of the day, and the hour upon which he spent most thought was that in Mrs. Throop's front room when he sat opposite Helen and discussed her future and his own.
When he awoke it was broad day, and as Kauffman, who occupied a bed in the same chamber, was still soundly slumbering, the ranger dressed as quietly as possible and went out into the street to take account of a dawn which was ushering in the most important morning of his life—a day in which his own fate as well as that of Helen McLaren must be decided.
The air was clear and stinging and the mountain wall, lit by the direct rays of the rising sun, appeared depressingly bald and prosaic, like his own past life. The foot-hills, in whose minute wrinkle the drama of which he was a vital part had taken place, resembled a crumpled carpet of dull gold and olive-green, and for the first time in his experience L. J. Hanscom, wilderness trailer, acknowledged a definite dissatisfaction with his splendid solitude.