"I'll take you up to the room," said Limber. She nodded silently.
On the second floor the cowboy paused at the door and knocked.
Limber smiled reassuringly to Katherine; then he turned and left her. She stood biting her lips, trying to control her emotion, and holding the doorknob in a nerveless hand that was trembling with exhaustion.
"What the blazes is the matter? Come in, I say!"
The door was jerked open violently and Glendon stood staring at his wife. An oath rose to his lips.
"What brought you here?" he demanded roughly.
She passed into the room, turned and held out her hands to him, saying simply, "Where else should I be, Jim, when you are in trouble? I thought you wanted me to come."
"Well, I didn't. I might have known you'd not be able to resist an opportunity to twit and remind me how you've begged me to stay away from town, and all that rot! I only asked Limber to go and tell you what had happened, and as usual, you go to extremes and come hiking in here in the middle of the night. You're making a mountain out of a mole hill. I'd been home by this evening. There was not the least excuse for your coming here."
Obeying an impulse, she moved near and laid her hand on his shoulder. He shook it off roughly and started from the chair into which he had slumped.
"For God's sake, Katherine, cut out that rot! I'm sick of your saintly pose, and I don't want any preaching or praying. I had to shoot Lafferty or be shot myself."
He noted the undercurrent of doubt and ripped out an oath.
"I told you once, and I'm not going to keep jabbering about it the rest of the night. You go to the inquest and hear Alpaugh's testimony, as long as you don't believe me."
He strode across the room to the table and poured out a generous glass of raw whiskey, which he followed by a second, then a third, and at last threw himself on the bed. In a few minutes the room was heavy with the fumes of liquor and noisy with snores of the drunken sleeper.
Softly Katherine lifted the little window, and let the clean pure air blow across her face. Somewhere a clock struck three. The woman, sitting in the darkness, stared with dry aching eyes, thinking of the past, wondering what the future held. It was like looking into a chasm.