he says: "Just to be sociable I'm goin' to have a cup of coffee with you,
Sergeant Tom. How you Riders of the Plains get waited on hand and foot!"
Did some warning flash through Sergeant Tom's mind or body, some mental.
shock or some physical chill? For he distinctly shivered, though he was
not cold. He seemed suddenly oppressed with a sense of danger. But his
eyes fell on Jen, and the hesitation, for which he did not then try to
account, passed. Jen, clear-faced and true, invited him to sit and eat,
and he, starting half-abstractedly, responded to her "Draw nigh, Sergeant
Tom," and sat down. Commonplace as the words were, they thrilled him,
for he thought of a table of his own in a home of his own, and the same
words spoken everyday, but without the "Sergeant,"--simply "Tom."

He ate heartily and sipped his coffee slowly, talking meanwhile to Jen
and Galbraith. Pretty Pierre watched them all. Presently the gambler
said: "Let us go and have our game of euchre, Galbraith. Ma'm'selle can
well take care of Sergeant Tom."

Galbraith drank the rest of his coffee, rose, and passed with Pierre into
the bar-room. Then the halfbreed said to him, "You were careful--thirty
drops?"

"Yes, thirty drops." The latent cruelty of the old man's nature was
awake.

"That is right. It is sleep; not death. He will sleep so sound for half
a day, perhaps eighteen hours, and then!--Val will have a long start."

In the sitting-room Sergeant Tom was saying: "Where is your brother, Miss
Galbraith?" He had no idea that the order in his pocket was for the
arrest of that brother. He merely asked the question to start the talk.