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 Never.

It was Mrs. Mallory who softened the blow for her.

"What he should have done was to kill that Indian," she said, bloodthirstily. "First he shot Tom's horse—and he set a lot of store by that horse—and then he shot Tom. Don't tell me different. I know."

Kay got permission to visit Tom in the jail. He looked sheepish and wretched, and he had little to say about the trouble.

"He had it coming to him," he told her grimly.

After that she sat around and waited. There was nothing in particular to wait for, except Tom. They seemed to be in a hopeless eddy, each still clinging to the other but both slowly drowning. But she did some thinking too, with that brain that she had inherited from old Lucius.

She knew nothing of money. The unfitness of the feminine mind to comprehend even the ABC's of finance had been one of her father's basic principles, a part of the tradition of his type. Never in all his married life had he as much as told Katherine the amount of his income or the extent of his holdings. It was not so much that he distrusted her intelligence; it was, as with most men of his type and training, an obstinate holding to the string of domestic power and sovereignty. By that and that only was he overlord, and this dominion of his was even carefully planned by will to extend beyond the grave.

To Kay, then, banks heretofore had been places where the silver and jewels were deposited on emergency, and where, as to money, one first put it in and then drew it out again. But by this time she learned that they had another function; they loaned money. Sometimes on a ranch, sometimes on cattle, even more rarely, on a man's character.

Tom was still in jail when she visited Mr. Tulloss. Mostly he rolled and smoked cigarettes. He had no regrets, except that he had not killed Little Dog, but he had a great deal of time to think. Most of his thinking was extremely bitter: thus, he could not support Kay. Then she'd better go back to her people. If it was a question between his pride and her comfort, better swallow his pride. Anyhow,