Cahill had followed Ranson to the door, "You want to see me, Mame?" he asked.

"Yes," Miss Cahill cried; "and Mr. Ransom, too, if I may." She caught her father eagerly by the arm, but her eyes were turned joyfully upon Ranson. They were laughing with excitement. Her voice was trembling and eager.

"It is something I have discovered," she cried; "I found it out just now, and I think--oh, I hope!--it is most important. I believe it will clear Mr. Ranson!" she cried, happily. "At least it will show that last night someone went out to rob the coach and went dressed as he was."

Cahill gave a short laugh. "What's his name?" he asked, mockingly. "Have you seen him?"

"I didn't see him and I don't know his name, but--"

Cahill snorted, and picked up his sombrero from the table. "Then it's not so very important after all," he said. "Is that all that brought you here?"

"The main thing is that she is here," said Ranson; "for which the poor prisoner is grateful--grateful to her and to the man she hasn't seen, in the mask and poncho, whose name she doesn't know. Mr. Cahill, bad as it is, I insist on your finishing your whiskey. Miss Cahill, please sit down."

He moved a chair toward her and, as he did so, looked full into her face with such love and happiness that she turned her eyes away.

"Well?" asked Cahill.

"I must first explain to Lieutenant Ranson, father," said his daughter, "that to-day is the day we take account of stock."

"Speaking of stock," said Ranson, "don't forget that I owe you for a red kerchief and a rubber poncho. You can have them back, if you like. I won't need a rain coat where I am going."

"Don't," said Miss Cahill. "Please let me go on. After I brought you your breakfast here, I couldn't begin to work just at once. I was thinking about--something else. Everyone was talking of you--your arrest, and I couldn't settle down to take account of stock." She threw a look at Ranson which asked for his sympathy. "But when I did start I began with the ponchos and the red kerchiefs, and then I found out something." Cahill was regarding his daughter in strange distress, but Ranson appeared indifferent to her words, and intent only on the light and beauty in her face. But he asked, smiling, "And that was?"

"You see," continued Miss Cahill, eagerly, "I always keep a dozen of each article, and as each one is sold I check it off in my day-book.

Yesterday Mrs. Bolland bought a poncho for the colonel. That left eleven ponchos. Then a few minutes later I gave Lightfoot a red kerchief for his squaw. That left eleven kerchiefs."

"Stop!" cried Ranson. "Miss Cahill," he began, severely, "I hope you do not mean to throw suspicion on the wife of my respected colonel, or on Mrs. Lightfoot, 'the Prairie Flower.' Those ladies are my personal friends; I refuse to believe them guilty. And have you ever seen Mrs.

Bolland on horseback? You wrong her. It is impossible."

"Please," begged Miss Cahill, "please let me explain. When you went to hold up the stage you took a poncho and a kerchief. That should have left ten of each. But when I counted them this morning there were nine red kerchiefs and nine ponchos."

Ranson slapped his knee sharply. "Good!" he said. "That is interesting."

"What does it prove?" demanded Cahill.

"It proves nothing, or it proves everything," said Miss Cahill. "To my mind it proves without any doubt that someone overheard Mr. Ranson's plan, that he dressed like him to throw suspicion on him, and that this second person was the one who robbed the paymaster. Now, father, this is where you can help us. You were there then. Try to remember. It is so important. Who came into the store after the others had gone away?"

Cahill tossed his head like an angry bull.

"There are fifty places in this post," he protested, roughly, "where a man can get a poncho. Every trooper owns his slicker."

"But, father, we don't know that theirs are missing," cried Miss Cahill, "and we do know that those in our store are. Don't think I am foolish.

It seemed such an important fact to me, and I had hoped it would help."

"It does help--immensely!" cried Ranson.

"I think it's a splendid clue. But, unfortunately, I don't think we can prove anything by your father, for he's just been telling me that there was no one in the place but himself. No one came in, and he was quite alone--" Ranson had begun speaking eagerly, but either his own words or the intentness with which Cahill received them caused him to halt and hesitate--"absolutely--alone."

"You see," said Cahill, thickly, "as soon as they had gone I rode to the Indian village."

"Why, no, father," corrected Miss Cahill. "Don't you remember, you told me last night that when you reached Lightfoot's tent I had just gone.

That was quite two hours after the others left the store." In her earnestness Miss Cahill had placed her hand upon her father's arm and clutched it eagerly. "And you remember no one coming in before you left?" she asked. "No one?"

Cahill had not replaced the bandaged hand in his pocket, but had shoved it inside the opening of his coat. As Mary Cahill caught his arm her fingers sank into the palm of the hand and he gave a slight grimace of pain.

"Oh, father," Miss Cahill cried, "your hand! I am so sorry. Did I hurt it? Please--let me see."

Cahill drew back with sudden violence.

"No!" he cried. "Leave it alone! Come, we must be going." But Miss Cahill held the wounded hand in both her own. When she turned her eyes to Ranson they were filled with tender concern.

"I hurt him," she said, reproachfully. "He shot himself last night with one of those new cylinder revolvers."

Her father s.n.a.t.c.hed the hand from her. He tried to drown her voice by a sudden movement toward the door. "Come!" he called. "Do you hear me?"

But his daughter in her sympathy continued. "He was holding it so," she said, "and it went off, and the bullet pa.s.sed through here." She laid the tip of a slim white finger on the palm of her right hand.

"The bullet!" cried Ranson. He repeated, dully, "The bullet!"

There was a sudden, tense silence. Outside they could hear the crunch of the sentry's heel in the gravel, and from the baseball field back of the barracks the soft spring air was rent with the jubilant crack of the bat as it drove the ball. Afterward Ranson remembered that while one half of his brain was terribly acute to the moment, the other was wondering whether the runner had made his base. It seemed an interminable time before Ranson raised his eyes from Miss Cahill's palm to her father's face. What he read in them caused Cahill to drop his hand swiftly to his hip.

Ranson saw the gesture and threw out both his hands. He gave a hysterical laugh, strangely boyish and immature, and ran to place himself between Cahill and the door. "Drop it!" he whispered. "My G.o.d, man!" he entreated, "don't make a fool of yourself. Mr. Cahill," he cried aloud, "you can't go till you know. Can he, Mary? Yes, Mary." The tone in which he repeated the name was proprietary and commanding. He took her hand. "Mr. Cahill," he said, joyously, "we've got something to tell you. I want you to understand that in spite of all I'VE done--I say in spite of all I'VE done--I mean getting into this trouble and disgrace, and all that--I've dared to ask your daughter to marry me."

He turned and led Miss Cahill swiftly toward the veranda. "Oh, I knew he wouldn't like it," he cried. "You see. I told you so. You've got to let me talk to him alone. You go outside and wait. I can talk better when you are not here. I'll soon bring him around."

"Father," pleaded Miss Cahill, timidly. From behind her back Ranson shook his head at the post-trader in violent pantomime. "She'd better go outside and wait, hadn't she, Mr. Cahill?" he directed.

As he was bidden, the post-trader raised his head and nodded toward the door. The onslaught of sudden and new conditions overwhelmed and paralyzed him.

"Father!" said Miss Cahill, "it isn't just as you think. Mr. Ranson did ask me to marry him--in a way--At least, I knew what he meant. But I did not say--in a way--that I would marry him. I mean it was not settled, or I would have told you. You mustn't think I would have left you out of this--of my happiness, you who have done everything to make me happy."

She reproached her father with her eyes fastened on his face. His own were stern, fixed, and miserable. "You will let it be, won't you, father?" she begged. "It--it means so much. I--can't tell you--" She threw out her hand toward Ranson as though designating a superior being.

"Why, I can't tell HIM. But if you are harsh with him or with me it will break my heart. For as I love you, father, I love him--and it has got to be. It must be. For I love him so. I have always loved him. Father," she whispered, "I love him so."

Ranson, humbly, gratefully, took the girl's hand and led her gently to the veranda and closed the door upon her. Then he came down the room and regarded his prospective father-in-law with an expression of amused exasperation. He thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his riding-breeches and nodded his head. "Well," he exclaimed, "you've made a d.a.m.ned pretty mess of it, haven't you?"

Cahill had sunk heavily into a chair and was staring at Ranson with the stupid, wondering gaze of a dumb animal in pain. During the moments in which the two men eyed each other Ranson's smile disappeared. Cahill raised himself slowly as though with a great effort.

"I done it," said Cahill, "for her. I done it to make her happy."

"That's all right," said Ranson, briskly. "She's going to be happy.

We're all going to be happy."

"An' all I did," Cahill continued, as though unconscious of the interruption, "was to disgrace her." He rose suddenly to his feet.

His mental sufferings were so keen that his huge body trembled. He recognized how truly he had made "a mess of it." He saw that all he had hoped to do for his daughter by crime would have been done for her by this marriage with Ranson, which would have made her a "lady," made her rich, made her happy. Had it not been for his midnight raids she would have been honored, loved, and envied, even by the wife of the colonel herself. But through him disgrace had come upon her, sorrow and trouble.

She would not be known as the daughter of Senator Ranson, but of Cahill, an ex-member of the Whyo gang, a highway robber, as the daughter of a thief who was serving his time in State prison. At the thought Cahill stepped backward unsteadily as though he had been struck. He cried suddenly aloud. Then his hand whipped back to his revolver, but before he could use it Ranson had seized his wrist with both hands. The two struggled silently and fiercely. The fact of opposition brought back to Cahill all of his great strength.

"No, you don't!" Ranson muttered. "Think of your daughter, man. Drop it!"

"I shall do it," Cahill panted. "I am thinking of my daughter. It's the only way out. Take your hands off me--I shall!"