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 the hot blast of her wrath, although she gave it to him unsparingly and without a chance to defend himself until she had said a great deal more than her temperate disposition would have betrayed her into speaking if she had not reached the breaking point of strain. Waco heard her to the end of the raking-down, then calmly told her what he knew.

Tom had experienced trouble with the marshal on his last trip, the hang-over of a former row, to which Wallace could testify, and to which Wallace did add his confirming word. Tom had not known anything about this graver development which Wallace had come to report.

Ashamed of her outburst of unfounded charges, Mrs. Ellison attempted to say she was sorry, but Waco put up his large hand, which seemed to shut her off like a closed door, turned and hurried toward the barn, going as nimbly as if it was somebody else's leg the bullet had gone through a little less than two weeks ago.

Wallace, big-eyed and white around the end of his nose as if somebody lately had let go that member, was all in a froth to start to his friend's assistance. He told the two women how Tom had stood up for him when he needed help, and swore he'd wade through wildcats to pay off what he still felt to be owing on that debt. But how to do it was the question. Eudora suggested the sheriff, giving up the thought almost at once when the element of time was considered. Tom must have made twenty-five or thirty miles yesterday; he would reach town around noon, and it would be all over before the sheriff, or anybody else, could do him a bit of good.