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 risive allusions. He hoped Zora would not see him, feeling a bit sneaking at leaving without a word of gratitude to her, for he knew she had acted with a kind and generous impulse to get him out of his perilous situation last night. There had been nothing behind that deed but a generous desire to save the life of a foolish young man who had an old-fashioned notion about rights and dignities that seemed to be out of place in and around Pawnee Bend.

No doubt Moore was in the house that minute telling the cowboy messenger about the dead man rising up from Schubert's board and demanding to be told who had slandered him. The whole family would be there, laughing over this joke that would not lose its savor for many a day and year.

Yes, he believed even Zora would be there, passing biscuits to that turnip-faced cowboy who was go bow-legged he interfered. She would be as loud as any of them in her enjoyment of this rare piece of humor in which the granger who wore a gun was the chief comedian. All the respect he had won in her eyes by his quick draw and apparently effective shot had been lost in the ridiculous anticlimax. A man must kill when he pulled out and took a crack at another to be respected in that country, it appeared.

As he trudged along the road Dunham considered what his next move should be. He disliked to give up his romance, begun so far back, all built around the short-grass country; it was against his principles to retreat from anything begun because it turned out a bigger and harder job than he had estimated. But it