"Good Lord!" gasped Vance, apparently just recalling. "He killed BlackJack! And what will Terry do when he finds out?"

She grew still purpler, hearing him name her own fear.

"They mustn't meet," she exclaimed desperately. "Vance, if you're half a manyou'll find some way of getting that pompous, windy idiot off the place."

"My dear! Do you want me to invite him to leave?"

"Something--I don't care what!"

"Neither do I. But I can't insult the fool. That type resents an insultwith gunplay. We must simply keep them apart. Keep the sheriff fromtalking."

"Keep rain from falling!" groaned Elizabeth. "Vance, if you won't doanything, I'll go and tell the sheriff that he must leave!"

"You don't mean it!"

"Do you think that I'm going to risk a murder?"

"I suppose you're right," nodded Vance, changing his tactics withMachiavellian smoothness. "If Terry saw the man whom killed his father,all his twenty-four years of training would go up in smoke and the bloodof his father would talk in him. There'd be a shooting!"

She caught a hand to her throat. "I'm not so sure of that, Vance. I thinkhe would come through this acid test. But I don't want to take chances."