The girl ran into the house and lit a lamp. The color washed out of her face as she read the note.
Come up to the hotel and arrest me, Captain. I held up Yorky, took his keys, and freed Dinsmore.
Jack Roberts
Then, in jubilant waves, the blood beat back into her arteries. That was why he had resigned, to pay the debt he owed Homer Dinsmore on her account. He had put himself within reach of the law for her sake. Her heart went out to him in a rush. She must see him. She must see him at once.
From the parlor she called to Captain Ellison. "You'd better come in and read the note yourself, Uncle Jim. It's important."
It was so important to her that before the Captain of Rangers was inside the house, she was out the back door running toward the hotel as fast as her lithe limbs could carry her. She wanted to see Jack before his chief did, to ask his forgiveness for having failed him at the first call that came upon her faith.
She caught up with the colored boy as he went whistling up the road. The little fellow took a message for her into the hotel while she waited in the darkness beside the post-office. To her there presently came Roberts. He hesitated a moment in front of the store and peered into the shadows. She had not sent her name, and it was possible that enemies had decoyed him there.
"Jack," she called in a voice that was almost a whisper.
In half a dozen long strides he was beside her. She wasted no time in preliminaries.
"We were wrong, Dad and I. I told Uncle Jim to tell you to come to me ... and then your note to him came. Jack, do you ... still like me?"