Page:Frederick Faust--Free Range Lanning.djvu/306

302 "She broke off her engagement. She came to me because she knew I was running the man hunt. She begged me to let you have a chance. She tried to buy me. She told me everything that had gone between you. Andy, she put her head on my desk and cried while she was begging for you!"

"Stop!" whispered Andrew.

"But I wouldn't lay off your trail, Andy. Why? Because I'm as proud as a devil. I'd started to get you and I'd lost Gray Peter trying. And even after you saved me from Allister's men I was still figuring how I could get you. And then, little by little, I saw that the girl had seen the truth. You weren't really a crook. You weren't really a man-killer. You were simply a kid that turned into a man in a day—and turned into a free man! You were too strong for the law.

"Now, Andrew, here's my point: As long as you stay here in the mountain desert you've no chance. You'll be among men who know you. Even if the governor pardons you—as he might do if a certain deputy marshal were to start pulling strings—you'd run some day into a man who had an old grudge against you, and there'd be another explosion. Because there's nitroglycerin inside you, son!

"Well, the thing for you to do is to get where men don't wear guns. The thing for you to do is to find a girl you love a lot more than you do your freedom, even. If that's possible"

"Where is she?" broke in 'Andy. "Hal, for pity's sake, tell me where she is!"

"I've got her address all written out. She forgot nothing. She left it with me, she said, so she could keep in touch with me."

"It's no good," said Andy suddenly. "I could never