Page:Morley roberts--Painted Rock.djvu/113

. Now Tom was Jack, and had been warned.

But there was no one to warn Briggs.

I stayed four days in the Rock, and saw my two friends every now and again. Tom would not allow me to come and see him too often.

"I don't want you to be in this trouble," he said. He was so hard and firm about it, and so able to take care of himself, that I did just as he wanted. I should have done so with Jack when he and I were in Texas together.

And yet, after all, I didn't miss the tragedy, though I came in time for it by accident.

It was just about noon on the fourth day since I landed in the town that the affair came off. As I had not seen either Northrop or Thompson for twenty-four hours (I had been out of town with some old friends) I walked down for a bit of a palaver, and found both of them standing under the verandah over the rotten side-walk of their old shack.

"You get," said Tom coolly, when I