From out of the darkness Ramona made her contribution in a voice not quite steady.
"We're wrong, Dad. We've been wrong all the time. I didn't see it just at first, and then I didn't want to admit it even to myself. But I'm glad now we are." She turned to Captain Ellison a little tremulously. "Will you tell him, Uncle Jim, that I want to see him?"
"You're a little gentleman, 'Mona. I always said you were." The Captain reached out and pressed her hand. "I'll tell him when I see him. No tellin' when that'll be. Jack resigned to-day. He's got some fool notion in his head. I'm kinda worried about him."
The girl's heart fluttered. "Worried? What ... what do you think he's going to do?"
The Captain shook his head. "Cayn't tell you, because I don't know. But he's up to somethin'. He acted kinda hard an' bitter."
A barefooted negro boy called in from the gate. "Cap'n Ellison there, sah?"
He brought a note in and handed it to the officer of Rangers. The Captain ripped open the envelope and handed the sheet inside to Ramona.
"Run along in an' read it for me, honey. It's too dark to see here."
The girl ran into the house and lit a lamp. The color washed out of her face as she read the note.
Come up to the hotel and arrest me, Captain. I held up Yorky, took his keys, and freed Dinsmore. JACK ROBERTS Then, in jubilant waves, the blood beat back into her arteries. That was why he had resigned, to pay the debt he owed Homer Dinsmore on her account. He had put himself within reach of the law for her sake. Her heart went out to him in a rush. She must see him. She must see him at once.
From the parlor she called to Captain Ellison. "You'd better come in and read the note yourself, Uncle Jim. It's important."
It was so important to her that before the Captain of Rangers was inside the house, she was out the back door running toward the hotel as fast as her lithe limbs could carry her. She wanted to see Jack before his chief did, to ask his forgiveness for having failed him at the first call that came upon her faith.
She caught up with the colored boy as he went whistling up the road. The little fellow took a message for her into the hotel while she waited in the darkness beside the post-office. To her there presently came Roberts. He hesitated a moment in front of the store and peered into the shadows. She had not sent her name, and it was possible that enemies had decoyed him there.