"Pardon me, but you're contradicting your own statement. You just said it
was the whistle," he corrected her. "It's the whistle that gives me Check
Number Seven. You haven't the least bit of responsibility. The whistle
gets it all, just as you said."

This was too much. Confuting her with her own words! Quibbling with his
own danger in order to make her an accomplice of murder! She lost her
temper completely. That fact alone could account for the audacity of her
next remark.

"I wonder if you really know enough to come in out of the rain!"
she stormed.

"That's the blessing of living in Arizona," he returned. "It is such a
dry climate."

She caught herself laughing; and this only made her the more intense a
second later, on a different tack. Now she would plead.

"Please--please promise me that you will not go to Little Rivers
to-night. Promise that you will turn back over the pass!"

"You put me between the devil and the dragon. What you ask is impossible.
I'll tell you why," he went on, confidentially. "You know this is the
land of fossil dinosaurs."

"I had a brute on my hands," she thought; "now I have the Mad Hatter and
the March Hare in collaboration!"

"There is a big dinosaur come to life on the other side," he proceeded.