For a long time Roper stared at the floor, with the unlighted cigaret between his lips. He was trying to solve a problem which has never been answered; nor will it ever be, “Why does this woman love this man?”
Roper studied the face of the sick man. Kirk was a very ordinary-looking man. He was not big. Roper shook his head. It was a problem far beyond his ken.
He sifted the tobacco out of his cigaret paper and humped over with his chin in his hands. He had come there to take that woman away from her undeserving husband; and here he was, acting as nurse to that very husband.
For the better part of an hour he sat there like a statue, thinking of things that had never entered his head before. He did not want that woman now, and he wondered why he had ever wanted her. Where did he ever get the idea of taking her away from her husband?
Suddenly he heard the thudding of horses’ hoofs as a body of horsemen drew rein at the doorway. A man’s voice cursed openly—
“Git out of this, you —— sheep-herders!”
The voice aroused Mrs. Kirk, and she sat up, staring around. Somebody stumbled over the step and grasped the door. Roper Bates knew what it meant. The cattlemen had come to clean up the sheep-camps.
Suddenly the door was flung open, and three men filled the doorway. Quick as a flash Roper Bates threw up his six-shooter and fired at the lead man, who had a Winchester rifle leveled from his shoulder.
The man seemed to spin on his heel, and the rifle discharged into the ceiling, while the other men shot back with him as they jerked him out of the doorway. The door swung shut behind them, and Roper Bates’ last shot splintered the edge of it as it closed.
The room was full of powder-smoke. Mrs. Kirk had darted to the bunk as if to try to protect her husband, while Roper Bates was half-kneeling in the middle of the room, stuffing cartridges into his six-shooter.