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 Texas went on to the hotel after his visit to the undertaker, not having been able to find the town marshal. A number of cattlemen were at dinner there, singularly silent for men of such boisterous manner. Like some other people in the world that day, Texas reflected, they had enough to think about to make them serious.

He did not give more than a passing thought to the threats which Uncle Boley had heard they were making against him, for he knew that it was inevitable that such murmuring should attend the killing of a man. It was no more to him than the blowing of the wind, sore as he was in heart that hour.

He went to his room, where he sat in the gloom of dejection, the past a seeming waste behind him, the future a blank curtain which he had no desire left in him to move aside and pass. There was no regret for the slaying of Dee Winch. That seemed to him such a small incident in the turmoil of the past few hours that it might have been the deed of any other man than himself. It had no personal connection; it seemed but an isolated and inconsequential happening in which he was only technically concerned.

The big thing that filled the day was the sacrifice that Fannie had made of her life. Nobly conceived, generously carried out, but so pathetic-