"I've got a notion to send her away," muttered Pollard sullenly. "It was a fool idea to drag a woman into this."
"Send her away … now?" cried Broderick sharply. "You're the fool, Pollard. She's the best bit of evidence we've got. Keep her here, but for God's sake, man, keep her close! And let's jam this thing through to a quick finish."
"You're right, I suppose, Broderick." Pollard ran his hand across a wet forehead. "We've got to put the whole thing across in a hurry. Ten days, and we'll wind it up…. What's Cole Dalton doing?"
"He's getting mighty hot under the collar," said Broderick grimly. "He's got to get somebody in his little old jail damn' soon, or he'll have a bunch of wild men in his hair. And he knows it. Now we can get our crop planted and things will be ripe for him to gather in in eleven days."
"Let's go inside." Pollard turned toward the front door. "I want to see Winifred. I want to see how she looks before she gets through thinking about Thornton."
And Winifred Waverly, who, after her stunned hesitation when she had seen Thornton and Broderick standing side by side in the doorway, and who had hurried out through the back door, hoping to find Thornton before he had gone, got to her feet in the black shadow where she had crouched by the school house wall, her face dead white, her eyes wide and staring, her heart pounding wildly.
CHAPTER XXI
THE GIRL AND THE GAME
She did not fully understand, she could not grasp everything yet, she was filled with doubts and suspicions and a growing terror. What had her uncle said to Thornton, what had the cowboy "swallowed whole"? What was the whole scheme which connected the two men, which envolved Thornton and the sheriff, which seemed clear in one moment only to be a tangle in the next?
One thing only was perfectly clear now to the girl. And seeing it, she gathered up her skirts in her two hands and ran, ran back along the wall, keeping in the shadows, drawing close about her the dark cloak she had thrown about her white dress. She must get into the house before they came in, she must let her face show nothing, she must have time to think before she spoke with them. So she came to the back door, paused a brief moment, commanding her nerves to be steady, then slipped in, letting the cloak fall from her shoulders. She saw Bud King standing with his back to the wall watching the dancers, and going swiftly to him, putting her hand lightly upon his arm, she summoned a smile into her eyes as she cried breathlessly: