They found no difficulty in reaching a bargain in regard to Bill, the bargain being that Bill was to board home and sleep there also; and the consideration was to be one dollar per day, and by the time this was completed, Agnes called them to supper.

"This is an unexpected pleasure, even though it be an intrusion," said Baptiste as he was gently urged into a seat.

"Ah-ha, and I see you have a sense of humor," whereupon Jack Stewart's eyes glistened humorously behind the old style glasses he wore. Baptiste colored unseen, while Agnes regarded him smilingly.

"We haven't much, but what is here you are welcome to," she said.

"It's a feast," said he.

"About as good as baching, anyhow," joined Stewart.

"Hush!"

"How do you like it?"

"Didn't I say hush? That should be sufficient!" Agnes took a seat and surveyed the table carefully to see that all was there. Her father was pious. He blessed the table, and when this was over, fell to eating with his knife.

"By the way," cried Baptiste near the end of the meal. "Did you hear the news?"

"What news," they asked in chorus.

"The man dead in the well."

"Is that so!" they exclaimed, shocked.

He then told them in detail all about the finding of the body, and the opinion that it was a suicide. They listened with the usual awe and curiosity. But Jean Baptiste did not voice his suspicions, or tell them anything he knew. At a later hour he took his leave.

And neither of the three realized then that the self-same tragedy linked strangely an after event in their lives. But when Jean Baptiste went over the hill to his sod house that stood on the claim, Jack Stewart went outside and walked around for almost an hour. He was thinking. Thinking of something he knew and had never told.

CHAPTER XIII

Table of Contents

THE COMING OF THE RAILROAD

IT IS NOT likely that the people in the neighborhood of Dallas would have ever known any more than they did regarding A.M. Barr, had it not been for two accounts. When proof had been offered by him on his homestead and a loan sought, to keep from invalidating the title to his land, he was compelled to admit that he was married; but, fortunately for him, it was not necessary to state when or how long he had been married, and this he obligingly did not state. But the surprise came when upon admittance, he then confessed to the promoters that he had married Christine.... Of course everybody was positive then that he had been married to Christine when he came to the country, and that he was married to her at the time she was holding the claim. Perjury was a penitentiary offense. He had sold her claim on pretense that she must go to England. Christine, as Baptiste had come to know by the papers he found, had not, of course, gone to England; but merely to Lincoln, Nebraska, where she was safe to keep silent about what she knew in regard to the subtle transactions of Augustus M. Barr.