to stop and take her into his confidence; ask her what Betty Neal had been
doing all these months. Instead, he touched Grey Molly with the spurs, and
she answered like a watch-spring uncurling beneath him. The rush of wind
against his face raised his spirits to a singing pitch, and when he flung
from the saddle before the school he shouted: "Oh, Betty!"

Up the sharply angling steps in a bound, and at the door: "Oh, Betty!"

His voice filled the room with a thick, dull echo, and there was Betty
behind her desk looking up at him agape; and beside her stood Blondy
Hansen, big, good looking, and equally startled. Fear made the glance of
Vic Gregg swerve--to where little Tommy Aiken scribbled an arithmetic
problem on the blackboard--afterschool work for whispering in class, or
some equally heinous crime. The tingling voices of the other children on
their way home, floated in to Tommy, and the corners of his mouth drooped.

To regain his poise, Vic tugged at his belt and felt the weight of the holster
slipping into a more convenient place, then he sauntered up the aisle,
sweeping off his sombrero. Every feeling in his body, every nerve, disappeared
in a crystalline hardness, for it seemed to him that the air was surcharged by
a secret something between Betty and young Hansen. Betty was out from behind
her desk and she ran to meet him and took his hand in both of hers. The
rush of her coming took his breath, and at her touch something melted in
her.

"Oh, Vic, are you all through?"

Gregg stiffened for the benefit of Hansen and Tommy Aiken.

"Pretty near through," he said carelessly. "Thought I'd drop down to Alder