"Now what is she doing out this way?" he asked himself aloud. "And where is she going?"

Though the soil was cut and beaten with the sharp hoofs of the many cattle that had drunk here earlier in the day, it was not so rough that it hid the thing which the quick eyes of the cattle man found and understood. There, close to the water's edge and almost under his own horse's body, were the tracks a shod horse had left not very long ago. The spring water was still trickling into one of them. There, too, a little to the side was the imprint of the foot of the rider who had gotten down to drink from the same stream, the mark of a tiny, high heeled boot.

"It might be some other girl," he told himself by way of answer to his own question. "And it might be a Mex with a proud, blue-blooded foot. But," and he leaned further forward studying the foot print, "it's a mighty good bet I could tell what she looks like from the shape of her head to the colour of her eyes! Now, what do you suppose she's tackling? Something that Mr. Templeton says is plumb foolish and full of danger?"

He slipped the bit back into his horse's mouth and swung up into the saddle.

"She didn't come out the way I came," he reflected as for a moment he sat still, looking down at the medley of tracks. "I'd have seen her horse's tracks. She must have made a big curve somewhere. I wonder what for?"

Then slowly the gravity left his eyes and a slow smile came into them. He surprised his horse with a touch of the spurs.

"Get into it, you long-legged wooden horse, you!" he chuckled. "We've got something to ride for now! We're going to see Miss Grey Eyes again. There's something besides stick-up men worth a man's thinking about, little horse!"

He reined back into the trail, rode through the little valley, climbed the ridge beyond and so pushed on deeper and ever deeper into the long sweep of flat country upon the other side. Often his eyes ran far ahead, seeking swiftly for the slender figure he constantly expected to see riding eastward before him; often they dropped to the trail underfoot to see that her horse's tracks had not turned to right or left should she leave this main horseman's highway for some one of the countless cross trails.

The afternoon wore on, the miles dropped away behind him; and he came to the end of the flat country and again was in low rolling hills. Her horse's tracks were there always before him, and yet he had had no sight of any rider that day since leaving the county road. Again much gravity came back into his eyes.

"Where's she going?" he asked himself again. "It looks like she was headed for Harte's Camp too. And then on to Hill's Corners? All alone? It's funny."

Twenty miles he had come from Dry Town. He was again riding slowly, remembering that his horse had carried the great weight of him many long miles yesterday and today. Now the hills grew steep and shot up high and rugged against the sky. The trail was harder, steeper, narrower where it wound along the edges of the many ravines. Again and again the ground was so flinty that it held no sign to show whether shod horse had passed over it or not. But he told himself that there was scant likelihood of her having turned out here; there was but the one trail now. And then, suddenly when he came down into another little valley through which a small drying stream wandered, he came upon the tracks he had been so long following. And he noted, with a little lift to the eyebrows, that here were the fresh hoof marks of two horses leading on toward the Camp.

"Somebody else has cut in from the side," he pondered. "Lordy, but this cattle country is sure getting shot all to pieces with folks. Who'd you suppose this new pilgrim is?"

Once or twice he drew rein, studying the signs of the trail. The tracks he had picked up at the stream with the print of the tiny boot were the small marks of a pony. This second horse for which he was seeking to account was certainly a larger animal, leaving bigger tracks, deeper sunk. There was little difficulty in distinguishing one from the other. And there was as little trouble in reading that the larger horse had followed the pony, for again and again the big, deep track lay over the other, now and then blotting it out.

A man, with a long solitary ride ahead of him, has much time for conjecture, idle and otherwise. Here lay the hint of a story; who was the second rider, what was his business? Whence had he come and whither was he riding? And did his following the girl mean anything?

Thornton came at last, in the late afternoon, to the last stream he would ford before reaching Harte's Camp. Another half mile, the passing over a slight rise, and he would be in sight of the end of his day's ride. He crossed the stream, and then, looking for the tracks he had been following, he saw that again the pony was pushing on ahead of him, that the horseman had turned aside. He jerked his horse back seeking for the lost tracks. And presently he found them, turning to the south and leading off into the mountains.

With thoughtful eyes he returned to his trail. He rode over the little ridge and so came into sight of the three log cabins under the oaks of Harte's place. Beyond was the barn. He would go there, find her horse at the manger. Then he would go up to the cabin in which the Hartes' lived and there find her.

Twenty minutes later, his face and hands washed at the well, his short cropped hair brushed back with the palm of his hand, he went to the main cabin. The door was shut but the smoke from the rough stone chimney spoke eloquently of supper being cooked within. But he was not thinking a great deal of the supper. He had found the pony in the barn, had even seen a quirt which he remembered, knew that he had not been mistaken in the matter of ownership of the trim boots that had left their marks at the spring, and realized that he was rather gladder of the circumstance than the mere facts of the case would seem to warrant. And then, with brows lifted and mouth puckered into a silent whistle, he read the words on a bit of paper tacked to the cabin door:

"We've gone over to Dave Wendells. The old woman is took sick. Back in the morning most likely make yourself to home. W. HARTE."

He paused a moment, frowning, his hat in his hand. It seemed to be in his thought to go back to his horse. While he hesitated the door was flung open and a pair of troubled grey eyes looked out at him searchingly; a pair of red lips tremulously trying to be firm smiled at him, and a very low voice faltered, albeit with a brave attempt to be steady:

"Won't you come in... Mr. Thornton? And ... and make yourself at home, too? I've done it. I suppose it's all right...."

And then when still he hesitated, and his embarrassment began to grow and hers seemed to melt away, she added brightly and quite coolly:

"Supper is ready ... and waiting. And I'm simply starved. Aren't you?"

Thornton laughed.

"Come to think of it," he admitted, "I believe I am."



CHAPTER VIII

IN HARTE'S CABIN

There was a rough board table, oilcloth-covered, in front of the fireplace. There were coffee, bread and butter, crisp slices of bacon, a dish of steaming tinned corn. There were two plates with knife and fork at the side, two cups, two chairs drawn up to the table.

"You see," she said, gaily and lightly enough, "you have kept me waiting."

He glanced swiftly at her as she stood by the fireplace, and away. For though twilight in the wooded country had crept out upon them he could see the look in her eyes, the set of the red lipped mouth. And he knew downright fear when he saw it, though it be fear bravely masked.

"Let's eat," he answered, having many things in his mind, but no other single thing to say to her just yet.

She flashed him a quick look and sat down. Thornton dragged back the other chair, flung his hat to the bunk in the corner of the room, and disposed his long legs uncomfortably under the small table. Inwardly he was devoutly cursing Dave Wendell for allowing anybody at his place to choose this particular time to get sick and the Hartes for going to the assistance of a ten-mile distant neighbour.

He watched the girl's quick fingers busy with the blackened coffee pot, realized at one and the same time that she had no ring upon a particular finger and that it was idiotic for him to so much as look for it, never allowed his glance to wander higher than her hands and attacked his bread and butter as though its immediate consumption were the most important thing in all the world. And she, when she felt that he was not watching her, when his silence was almost a tangible thing, looked at him with quick furtiveness. The something in her expression which had spoken of terror began to give place to the look of amusement which twitched at her lips and flickered up in the soft grey of her eyes. And since still he gave no sign of breaking the silence which had fallen over them, she said at last:

"Didn't you know all the time who I was?"

Then he looked up at her inquiringly. And when he saw that she was smiling, a little of his sudden restraint fled from him and his eyes smiled back gently a little and reassuringly into hers.

"All the time?" he asked. "Meaning when?"

"Back there. On the trail," she told him.

"Well," he admitted slowly, "I guess I was pretty sure. Of course I couldn't be dead certain. It might have been anybody's tracks ... that is," he corrected with a quick broadening of the smile, "anybody with a foot the right size to fit into a boot like that."

"Like what?" she asked in turn.

"Like the one that made the tracks by the creek where you came into the main trail, where you stopped to drink."

"You saw that?"

"If I hadn't seen it how was I to guess that it was you ahead of me?" he demanded. And when she frowned a little and did not answer for a moment he gave his attention to the black coffee which she had poured for him. "You sure know how to make coffee right," he complimented her with a vast show of sincerity. "This is the best I ever tasted."

"I'm glad you like it," she retorted as the frown fled before a hint of laughter. "I found it already made in the pot and just warmed it over!"

"Oh," said Thornton. And then with much gravity of tone but with twinkling eyes, "Come to think of it it isn't the taste of it that a man notices; it's the being just hot enough. I never had any coffee better warmed-up than this."

"Thank you." She stirred the sugar in her own cup of muddy looking beverage and without glancing up at him this time, went on, "You mean that you didn't know who I was when you saw me?"

"At the bank in Dry Town?"

"Of course not. Back there on the trail."

"I didn't see you," he told her.

Now she flashed another quick upward glance at him as though seeking for a reason lying back of his words.

"I saw you" she said steadily. "Twice. First from the top of a hill half a dozen miles back when you got down to look at your horse's foot. Did he pick up a stone?"

His eyes opened in surprise.

"I didn't get off to look at my horse's foot. And he didn't pick up anything."

"The second time," she continued, "was just when you had come to the last stream. I thought that you were going to turn off into the canon. I saw that your horse was limping."

He shook his head. She must have seen that other fellow whose tracks Thornton had for so long seen following the tracks of her pony.

"What made you think you recognized me?" he asked.

"I didn't think. I knew."

"Then ... how did you know?"

The surprise showing in her frankly lifted brows was very plain now.

"You were hardly five hundred yards away," she retorted. "And," with a quick, sweeping survey of him, "you are not a man to be readily mistaken even at that distance, you know."

"Meaning the inches of me? The up-and-down six feet four of me?" He shook his head. "I'm the only man in this neck of the woods built on the bean pole style."

"Meaning," she returned steadily, "your size and form; meaning the unusually wide hat you wear; meaning your blue shirt and grey neck-handkerchief ... grey handkerchiefs aren't so common, are they?... meaning your tall sorrel horse that limped, and your bridle with the red tassel swinging from the headstall! Now," a little sharply, a little anxiously, he thought, "you are not going to tell me that I was mistaken, are you?"

She saw that his surprise, growing into sheer amazement as she ran on, was a wonderfully simulated thing if it were not real.

"You made a mistake," he said coolly. "I saw in the trail that there was another man following you. If I had known his get-up was so close to mine, I'd have done a little fast riding to take a peep at him. He turned off at the last creek, as you thought."

"You saw him?" she asked quickly.

"I saw his tracks. And," he added with deep thoughtfulness as he stared past her into the smouldering fire in the fireplace, "I'd sure like to know who he is."

Again, as she watched him, an expression of uneasiness crept into her eyes; then as he turned back to her she looked down quickly.

"Is it far to the Wendell place?" she asked abruptly. "Where the sick woman is?"

"Ten miles. Off to the north."

"Not on our trail?" anxiously.

"You're going on, further?"

"Yes. To ..." she hesitated, and then concluded hurriedly, "To Hill's Corners."

He sat silent for a moment, his strong brown fingers playing with his knife and fork. And his eyes were merely stern when he spoke quietly.

"So you're going to Dead Man's Alley, are you?"

"I said that I was going to Hill's Corners!"

"And folks who know that quiet little city," he informed her, "have got into the habit of calling it by the name of its principal street.... I wonder if you've ever been there?"

"No. Why?"

"I wonder if you know anything about the place?"

"What I've heard. What Mr. Templeton tried to tell me."

"Well," he said thoughtfully, "I don't know that I blame him for trying to turn you into another trail. He must have told you," and he was watching her very keenly, "that the stage runs there from Dry Town?"

"Yes. But I chose to ride on horseback. Is there anything strange in that?"

"Oh, no!" he said briefly. "Just a nice little ride!"

"I have ridden long trails before."

Again for a little while she watched him with intent, eager eyes; he was silent, frowning into his own cup of coffee.

"Dead Man's Alley," he volunteered abruptly, "is the worst little bad town I ever saw. And I've camped in two or three that a man wouldn't call just exactly healthy on the dark of the moon. I guess Mr. Templeton must have told you, but unless it's happened in the last month, there isn't a man in that town who has his wife or daughters there. If I were you," and he lifted his cup to his lips as a sign that he had said his say, "I'd rope my cow pony and hit the home trail for Dry Town!"

"Thank you," she said as quietly as he had spoken. "But really Mr. Templeton gave me enough advice to last me a year, I think. I have made up my mind to go on to ... to Dead Man's Alley, as you call it."

"Well," he grinned back at her as though the discussion had been of no moment and now was quite satisfactorily ended, "I ought to be glad, oughtn't I? Since my trail runs that way, and since the Poison Hole ranch is only twenty miles out from the Corners. Maybe you'll let me ride over and see you?"

"Of course. I'll be glad to have you. That is," and her smile came back, a very teasing smile, too, "if you'll care to call at the house where I'm going to stop? I'm going to stay with my uncle."

"The chances are that I don't know him. I don't know half a dozen folks in the town. What's his name?"

"His name," she told him demurely, "is Henry Pollard. I think you know him."

He flushed a little as she had hoped that he would. He remembered. He knew that he had spoken this morning at the bank of Henry Pollard from whom he was buying his outfit, knew that he must have called him, as he always did when he spoke of him, "Rattlesnake" Pollard. And Henry Pollard was her uncle!

"I didn't know," he said slowly and a little lamely, "that he was your uncle. But," he added cheerfully, his assurance coming back to him, "you can't help that, you know. I don't blame you for it. Yes, I'll ride over from the ranch. It's good of you to let me."

They finished the meal in a rather thoughtful silence. Thornton made a cigarette and went to the door to look for the upclimbing moon; the girl carried her chair to the fireplace and sat down, her hands in her lap, her eyes staring into the coals.

The man was asking himself stubbornly why this girl, this type of girl, dainty, frank-eyed, clean-hearted as he felt instinctively that she was, was making this trip to that dirty town which straddled the state border line like an evil, venomous toad and sneered in its ugly defiant fashion at the peace officers of two states. He was trying to see what the reason could be that carried her through this little-travelled country to the house of such a man as not only Buck Thornton but every one in this end of the cattle country knew Henry Pollard to be; trying above all to seek the reason for her making the trip on horse back, alone, over a wild trail, when the stage for Hill's Corners had left Dry Town so little after her and must reach its journey's end well ahead of her.

And she, over and over, was asking herself why this man whom she was so certain she had seen twice that day upon the trail behind her, denied that he had been the man who got down to look at his horse's foot, who later had ridden a limping mount aside into the canon. For she felt very sure that she had not been mistaken and, therefore, that he was lying to her. She frowned and glanced over her shoulder. She was a little afraid of a man who could look at her out of clear eyes as he had looked, and lie to her as she was so confident he had lied. She knew nothing of him save that this morning he had come to her assistance at a moment of great peril and that he was suspected by some of a certain robbery and assault....

"Are you very tired?"

She started. He had turned at last and came back to where she sat.

"No, I am not tired. Why do you ask?"

"There'll be a moon soon. We can let the horses rest a bit.... I have ridden mine pretty hard the last few days ... and then after moon-up we can ride on. There's another shack where a man and his wife live just a little off the trail and about seven miles further on. It'll be better than trying to make Wendell's place."



CHAPTER IX

THE DOUBLE THEFT

After that there were no more uncomfortable silences in the Harte cabin. Thornton found a lamp, lighted it and placed it on the table. And with the act he seemed to take upon himself the part of host, playing it with a quiet courtesy and gentleness fitting well with the unconscious grace of his lithe body and with the kindliness softening his dark eyes. He told her of his ranch, of the cowboys working for him, of the cattle they were running, of little incidents of everyday life on the range, seeking to make her forget that in reality they were strangers very unconventionally placed. And he did not once ask her a direct question about herself or concerning her business. That she was quick to notice.

For an hour they chatted pleasantly. Now, when Thornton got to his feet again, and went to the door to see what promise the night gave of being cloudless and to note the moon already pushing up above the jagged skyline where the trees stood upon the hill tops, she watched him with an interest that was not tinged with the vague suspicion of an hour ago. She saw that as he stood lounging in the doorway, his hands upon his hips, one shoulder against the rude door jamb, he had to stoop his head a little, and knew that he was a taller, bigger man than she had realized until now.

"If I were as big as you are," she laughed at him, "I'd be in constant fear of bumping my head in the dark."

He laughed with her, told her that he was getting used to it, and came back for his hat.

"If you'll be getting ready," he told her, "I'll go out and bring in the horses. If you're rested up?"

She assured him that she was, noted again how he stooped for the doorway, and watched him move swiftly away through the shadows cast by the trees about the cabin. She put on her hat, buckled on the spurs she had dropped on the table, and was ready. Then, before he could have gone half way to the barn, she heard swift steps coming back.

He had forgotten something; but what? She looked about her expecting to see his tobacco sack or some such article, a block of matches, maybe, which he had left behind. But there was nothing. She lifted the lamp in her hand so that the weak rays searched out the four corners of the cabin. Then she turned again toward the door.

Out yonder through the clear night came on the tall figure with the long free stride of the man of the outdoors. In a patch of bright moonlight his head was down as though his mood were one of thoughtfulness, and the shadow of his wide hat hid his face and eyes from her. In the black shade under the live oak before Harte's door he lifted his head quickly; here he came for an instant to a dead halt, half turning. It struck her abruptly that he was tense, that the atmosphere was suddenly charged with uneasiness, that he was listening as a man listens who more than half expects trouble.

"What is it?" she called. She could not make out more than the vague outline of his figure now as he stood still, his body seeming to merge into the great trunk of the tree. He did not answer. Again, head down and hurriedly, he came on. On through the thinning fringe of shadow and into the full bright moonlight.

A sudden formless fear which in no way could she explain was upon her. His actions were so strange; they hinted at furtiveness. He had been so outright and hearty and wholesome a moment ago and now struck her as anything but the big free and easy man who had supped with her. She drew back a little, her underlip caught between her teeth as was her habit when undue stress was laid upon her nerves, her breath coming a trifle irregularly. After all she was just a girl and he was a man, big, strong and perhaps brutal, of whom she knew virtually nothing. And they were very far from any other human beings....

He came straight on to the open door; as the lamp light fell upon him her formless fear of a moment ago was swept up and engulfed in an access of terror which made her sick and dizzy. All of the time until now, even when appearances hinted at an inexplicable duplicity, she had felt safe with him, trusting to what her natural instinct read of him in his eyes and carriage and voice. And now she clutched at the mantel with one hand while in the other the lamp swayed precariously.

The reason for her agitation was plain enough; had it been his sole purpose to strike terror into her heart he could hardly have selected a more efficient method. Across the face, hiding it entirely, leaving only the eyes to glint through two rude slits at her, was a wide bandana handkerchief. The big black hat was drawn low, now; the handkerchief, bound about the brow, fell to a point well below the base of his throat.

"Easy there," he said in a voice which upon her ears was only a tense, evil whisper. "Easy. You know what I want.... Look out for that lamp! Making it dark in here, even setting the shack on fire, isn't going to help much. Easy, girlie."

"You ... you ..." she panted, and found no word to go on.

He came in and strode across the room, taking the lamp from her and setting it on the mantel. She had come near dropping it when his hand brushed hers. Again she drew back from him hastily, her eyes running to the door. But he forestalled her, closed the door and stood in her way, towering above her, his air charged with menace.

"You pretty thing!" he muttered, his tone frankly sincere though his voice was still hardly more than a harsh whisper. "If I just had time to play with you ... I said you'd know what I want. And don't get funny with the little toy pistol you'd be sure to have in your dress. It won't do you any good; you know that, don't you?"

She did know. Her hand had already gone into her bosom where the "little toy pistol" lay against that which she had vainly thought it could guard, a thick envelope. The man came quite close to her, so close that she felt his breath stir her hair, so close that his slightly uplifted hand could come down upon her before she could stir an inch.

"You can tell Henry Pollard for me," he jeered from the secure anticipation of his present triumph, "that the unknown stranger names him seven kinds of fool. To think he could get across this way and sneak that little wad by me! And by the by, it's getting late and if you don't mind I'll take what's coming to me and move on."

Then she found her tongue, the fires blazed up in her eyes and a hot flush came into her pale cheeks.

"Big brute and cur and coward!" she flung at him. "Woman-fighter!"

"All of that," he laughed insolently. "And then some. And you? Grey eyed, pink beauty! By God, girl, you'd make an armful for a man! Soon to be queen of Dead Man's Alley, eh? I'll see you there; I'll come and pay my respects! Oh, but I will, coward that I am! But now...."

"There! Take it! Take it! Oh...."

She shuddered away from him, her face went white again, she grew cold with the fear upon her. Just then she cared infinitely little for the sheaf of banknotes in the yellow envelope which the banker had given to her. She jerked the parcel out from her dress and tossed it to him, her fingers fumbling with the button of the thin garment under which her heart was beating wildly. And the little "toy pistol" she could have hurled from her, too. Against this physical bigness, against this insolent bravado and this swift sureness of eye and muscle, she knew the small weapon to be a ridiculous and utterly insufficient plaything.

He caught the envelope and thumbed it, tore off an end and glanced swiftly at the contents and then stowed it away inside his grey flannel shirt. Again his eyes came back to her.

"I'm in a hurry," he said swiftly. "But there's always time for a girl like you!"

She had foreseen how it would be. Now that she struggled to draw her tiny revolver and fire he was upon her, his long arms about her, his muscular strength making her own as nothing. And though he was breathing more quickly still he had his quiet insolent laugh for still further insult. Though she sought to strike at him he held her in utter helplessness. Slowly he lifted her face, a big hand under her chin. The lamp was close by; he blew down the chimney and save for the moonlight across the threshold it was dark in the cabin. With his other hand he lifted his crude mask from the lower part of his face. She sought again to strike, to batter his lips. But her heart sank as the relentless rigidity of his embrace baffled her attempt. He brought his face closer to hers, slowly closer until at last she knew the outrage of a violent kiss....

From outside came a little sound, not to be catalogued. It might have been only a dead twig snapping under the talons of a night bird alighting in the big oak tree. But suddenly the arms about her relaxed, the man whirled and sprang back, whipped open the door and silently was gone into the outer night.

Moaning, swaying, dizzy and sick, she crouched in a far corner. Then she ran to the door and looked out. There was nothing moving to be seen anywhere. Just the white moonlight here, the black patches of shadow there, the sombre wall of the forest land a few yards away. Her nausea of dread, her uncertainty, had passed. With never a glance behind her she ran down toward the barn. She knew that she would be afraid to go into the black maw of the silent building for her horse and yet she knew that she must, that she must mount and ride.... She had never until now known the terror of being alone, utterly alone in the night and the wilderness.

Suddenly she stopped to stare incredulously. About a corner of the barn, coming out into the bright moonlight, leading his own horse and her own, was Buck Thornton. She was so certain that he had gone! For the instant she could not move but stood powerless to lift a hand, rooted to the spot. She noted that his face was unhidden now, his black hat pushed far back on his head, while from his hip pocket trailed the end of a handkerchief which may and may not have had slits let in it for his eyes to peer through.

"You ... here? Yet?" she found herself stammering at him.

"Yes," he answered heavily. "I have been all this time looking for the horses. The corral was broken; they had gotten out into the pasture."

"A likely tale!" she cried with a sudden heat of passionate fury at the man and his cold manner and his mad thought that she was fool enough to be beguiled from her knowledge of what he was. And then a fresh fear made her draw back and widened her eyes. She had not thought of madness but ... if the man were mad....

But he was not mad and she knew it. His were the clear eyes of perfect sanity. He was simply ... an unthinkable brute.

"Look," she said as his horse moved nervously. "Your horse does limp!"

His answer came quickly. And there was a queer note in his voice, harsh and ugly, which sent a shiver through her shaken nerves:

"A man did that while we were in the cabin. With a knife." The moon shone full in his face; she had never seen such a transformation, such a semblance of quiet, cold rage. If the man were just acting....

"I've just got the hunch," he said bluntly, "that I know who he is, too. And, for the last time, Winifred Waverly, I am interfering in your business and advising you the best way I know how to turn back right here and right now and forget that you've got an uncle named Pollard!"



CHAPTER X

IN THE MOONLIGHT

She stood there in a bright patch of moonlight looking up into his face, seeing every line of it in the rich flood of light from the full moon, wondering dully if she had lost her sense of the real and the unreal. It seemed to her so rankly absurd, so utterly preposterous that he should seek to pretend with her. For, now that she had seen the limping gait of his big sorrel, was she more than certain that this was the man whom she had seen following her in the afternoon. And as she noted again the sinewy bigness of him, the garb of grey shirt, open vest and black chaps, she told herself angrily that he was a fool, or that he thought her a fool, to pretend that he knew nothing of that thing which had just happened in the lonely cabin. Even the grey neck-handkerchief, now knotted loosely about the brown throat, was there to give him the lie.... With shame and anger her cheeks burned until they went as crimson as hot blood could make them.

It was all so clear to her. She had refused to believe that he had robbed Hap Smith's mail bags. Why? She bit her lip in sudden anger: because he had fitted well in a romantic girl's eye! Fool that she was. She should have put sterner interpretation upon the fact that Thornton, coming rudely into the banker's private office, had admitted hearing part of her conversation with Mr. Templeton. Now she had no doubt that he had heard everything.

"Have you ever been over this trail? As far as the next ranch, seven miles further on?" he asked at last, his hard eyes coming away from the horse that stood with one foot lifted a little from the ground, the quick twitching of the foot itself, the writhing and twisting of the foreleg, speaking of the pain from the deep cut.

"No."

There was so much of hatred in the one short word which she flung at him, so much of passionate contempt, that he looked at her wonderingly.

"What's the matter, Miss Waverly?" he asked, his voice a shade gentler. "You seem all different somehow. Are you more tired than you thought?"

She laughed and the wonder grew in his eyes. He had never heard a woman laugh like that, had not dreamed that this girl's voice could grow so bitter.

"No," she told him coldly. She jerked her pony's reins out of Thornton's hand. "I am going to ride on. And I suppose you will ride that poor wounded horse until it drops!"

"No," he said. "That's why I asked if you knew the trails. I didn't notice he limped out there where I put the saddle on. It was dark under the trees, you know."

"Was it?" she retorted sarcastically, drawing another quick, searching look from him.

There was no call for an answer and he made none. He stepped to his horse's head, lifted the wincing forefoot very tenderly, and stooping close to it looked at it for a long time. The girl was behind the broad, stooping back. Impulsively her hand crept into the bosom of her dress, her face going steadily white as her fingers curved and tightened about the grip of the small calibre revolver she carried there. And then she jerked her hand out, empty.

She saw him straighten up, heard again the long, heavy sigh and marked how his face was convulsed with rage.

"I don't know why a man did that." He was only ten steps away and yet she turned her head a little sideways that she might catch the low words. She shivered. His voice was cold and hard and deadly. It was difficult for her to believe that in reality he had not forgotten her presence.

"No, I don't know why a man did that. But I'm going to know. Yes, I'm going to know if it takes fifty years."

"Where is my trail?" she called sharply. "I am going."

"You couldn't find it alone. I'm going with you."

Her scorn of him leaped higher in her eyes. It was her thought that he was going to ride this poor, tortured brute. For she knew that there was no other horse in the barn or about the camp. But he was quietly loosening his cinch, lifting down the heavy Mexican saddle, removing the bit from his horse's mouth.

"What are you going to do?" She bit her lips after the question, but it had leaped out involuntarily.

"I'm going to leave him here for the present. The wound will heal up after a while."

With the saddle thrown over his own shoulders, he ran a gentle hand over the soft nose of his horse which was thrust affectionately against his side, and turned away. She watched him, expecting him to go back to the barn to leave his saddle and bridle. But instead he set his face toward the hills beyond the cabin, where she supposed the trail was.

"I'll pick up another horse at the next ranch," he offered casually by way of explanation. "And we had better hit the trail. It's getting late."

Wordlessly she followed, her eyes held, fascinated by the great, tall bulk of him swinging on in front of her, carrying the heavy saddle with as little care to its weight as if he had been entirely unconscious of it, as no doubt such a man could be. She knew that already he had ridden sixty miles today and that it was seven miles farther to the ranch where he would get another horse. And yet there he strode on, swiftly, as though he had rested all day and now were going to walk the matter of a few yards.

She could not understand this man, whom, since she must, she followed. Had he not told her there in the cabin when he had played at hiding his identity from her, that he knew she was armed? And yet, encumbered with the saddle upon his shoulder, his right hand carrying the bridle, he turned his back square upon her with no glance to see if she were even now covering him with her revolver. And had she not called him a coward, thought him a coward? Was this the way a coward should act?

Again and again during those first minutes her hand crept to the bosom of her dress. Did he know it? she wondered. Was he laughing at her, knowing that she could not bring herself to the point of actually shooting? But then, she might cover him, call to him that she would shoot if he made her, and so force him to return the money he had stolen.

"He would laugh at me," she told herself each time, her anger at him and at herself rising higher and higher. "He would know that I could not kill him. Not in cold blood, this way!"

So Buck Thornton strode on, grim in the savage silence which gripped him, on through the shadows and out into the moonlight beyond the trees, and she followed in silence. There were times when she hated him so that she thought that she could shoot, shoot to kill. His very going with her angered her. Was it not more play-acting, as insolent as anything he could do, as insolent as his kissing her had been! She grew red and went white over it. It was as though he were laughing into her face, making sport of her, saying, "I am a gentleman, you see. I could stay here all night, and you would have to stay with me! But I am not taking advantage of you; I am walking seven miles over a hard trail, carrying a pack like a mule, that you may sleep tonight under the same roof with another woman."

Now she was tempted to wheel her horse, to turn back, to camp alone somewhere out there in the woods, or to ride the thirty miles back to Dry Town. And now, remembering the bank notes which had been taken from her, remembering the insult in the cabin, she held on after him, resolved that she would not lose sight of this man, that she would see him handed over to justice when she could taunt him, saying: "I didn't shoot you, you see, because I am a woman and not a tough. But I have given you into hands that are not woman's hands, because I hate you so!"

Her horse carried her on at a swift walk, but she did not have to draw rein to keep from passing Thornton. His long stride was so smooth, regular, swift and tireless that it soon began to amaze her. They had passed through the little valley in which Harte's place stood, and entered a dark canon leading into the steeper hills. The trail was uneven, and now and then very steep. Yet Thornton pushed on steadily with no slowing in the swift gait, no sign to tell that he felt fatigue in muscles of back or legs.

"He must be made of iron," she marvelled.

In an hour they had come to the top of a ridge, and Thornton stopped, tossing his saddle to the ground. He had not once spoken since they left the Harte place. Now with quick fingers he made his cigarette. She stopped a dozen paces from him, and though one would have said that she was not looking at him, saw the flare of his match, glimpsed the hard set lines of his face, and knew that he would not speak until she had spoken. And the lines of her own face grew hard, and she turned away from him, feeling a quick spurt of anger that she had so much as looked at him when he had not turned his eyes upon her. He smoked his cigarette, swept up saddle and bridle, and moved on, striking over the ridge and down upon the other side.

It was perhaps ten minutes later when she saw, far off to the left, the glimmer of a light, lost it through the trees, found it again and knew that it told of some habitation. They came abreast of a branch trail, leading toward the lighted window; the girl's eager eyes found it readily, and then noted that Thornton was passing on as though he had seen neither light nor trail. She spoke hurriedly, saying:

"Isn't that the place? Where the light is?"

"No," he told her colourlessly and without turning. "That's the Henry place. We're going on to Smith's."

"Why don't we stop here? It's nearer. And I'm tired."

"We can stop and rest," he replied. "Then we had better go on. It's not very much further now."

"But why not here?" she cried insistently in sudden irritation that upon all matters this man dictated to her and dictated so assuredly. "One place is as good as another."

"This one isn't, Miss Waverly. There's a tough lot here, and there are no women among them. So we'll have to make it to Smith's. Do you want to rest a while?"

"No," she cried sharply. "Let's hurry and get it over with!"

He inclined his head gravely and they went on. And again her anger rose against this man who seemed over and over to wish to remind her that he was a gentleman. As though she had forgotten any little incident connected with him!

Again they made their way through lights and shadows, down into ragged cuts in the hills, over knolls and ridges, through a forest where raindrops were still dripping from the thick leaves and where she knew that without him she never could have found her way. And not once more did they speak to each other until, unexpectedly for her, they came out of the wood and fairly upon a squat cabin with a light running out to meet them through the square of a window.

"Smith's place," he informed her briefly.

Already three dogs had run to meet them, with much barking and simulated fierceness, and a man and a woman had come to the door.

"Hello," called the man. "Who is it?"

"Hello, John. It's Thornton. Howdy, Mrs. Smith." Thornton tossed his saddle to the ground, pushed down one of the dogs that had recognized him and was leaping up on him. "Mrs. Smith, this is Miss Waverly from Dry Town. A friend of the Templetons. She'll be grateful if you could take her in for the night."

Man and wife came out, shook hands with the girl, the woman led her into the cabin, and Smith took her horse. Then the rancher saw Thornton's saddle.

"Where's your horse?" he asked quickly.

"Back at Harte's. Lame."

In a very few words he told of a deep knife cut beneath the fetlock, explained Miss Waverly's presence with him, and ended by demanding,

"Who do you suppose did that trick for me, John? It's got me buffaloed."

Smith shook his head thoughtfully.

"By me, Buck," he answered slowly. "Most likely some jasper you've had trouble with an' is too yeller to get even any other way. I haven't seen any of your friends from Hill's Corners stickin' around though. Have you?"

"No. But Miss Waverly saw somebody on the trail the other side of Harte's this afternoon. Mistook him for me until I told her. A big man about my size riding a sorrel. Know who it was?"

Again Smith shook his head.

"Can't call him to mind, Buck. It might be Huston for size, but he hasn't got a sorrel in his string, an' then he's took on too much fat lately to be mistook for you. Go on inside. You'll want to eat, I guess. I'll put up the lady's horse an' be with you in two shakes."

"Thanks, John. But I had supper back at Harte's. Can you let me have a horse in the morning? I'll send him back by one of the boys."

"Sure. Take the big roan. An' you don't have to send him back, either. I'm ridin' that way myself tomorrow, an' I'll drop by an' get him."

"Which way are you ridin'?"

"To the Bar X. I got word last week three or four of my steers was over there. I want to see about 'em. Before," he added drily, "they get any closer to Dead Man's."

Thornton's nod indicated that he understood. And then, suddenly, he said,

"If you're going that way you can see Miss Waverly through, can't you? She's going to the Corners."

Smith whistled softly.

"Now what the devil is the like of her goin' to that town for?" he demanded.

"I don't know the answer. But she's going there." And as partial explanation, he added, "She's Henry Pollard's niece."

For a moment Smith pondered the information in silence. Then his only reference to it was a short spoken, "Well, she don't look it! Anyway, that's her look-out, an' I'll see her within half a dozen miles of the border. You'll turn off this side the Poison Hole, huh?"

"I'll turn off right here, and right now. I've got a curiosity, John," and his voice was harder than Winifred Waverly had ever heard it, "to know a thing or two about the way my horse went lame. I'm going to sling my saddle on your roan and take a little ride back to Harte's. Maybe I can pick up that other jasper's trail in the canon back there."

The two men went down to the stable, and while the rancher watered and fed the pony Thornton roped the big roan in the fenced-in pasture. Ten minutes after he had come to the Smith place he had saddled and ridden back along the trail toward Harte's.

The two women in the cabin looked up as Smith came in.

"Where's Mr. Thornton?" his wife asked.

"He's gone back," Smith told her. He drew out his chair, sat down and filled his pipe. Before Mrs. Smith's surprise could find words the girl had started to her feet, crying quickly:

"Gone back! Where?"

"To Harte's. A man knifed his horse back there." He stopped, lighted his pipe, and then said slowly, with much deep thoughtfulness, "If I was that man I'd ride some tonight! I'd keep right on ridin' until I'd put about seven thousand miles between me an' Buck Thornton. An' then ... well, then, I guess I'd jest naturally dig a hole an' crawl in it so deep nothin' but my gun stuck out!"

"What did he say?" she asked breathlessly.

"That's jest it, Miss. He didn't say much!"



CHAPTER XI

THE BEDLOE BOYS

All thoughts of denouncing Buck Thornton before these people fled before the girl had followed the rancher's wife into the cabin. They spoke of him only in tones warm with friendship and with something more than mere friendship, an admiration that was tinged with respect. They had known him since first he had come into this country, and although that had been only a little more than a year ago, they had grown to know him as men and women in these far-out places come to know each other, swiftly, intimately.

He was a favourite topic of conversation and they talked of him naturally, readily, and Mrs. Smith, fluently. She recounted, not guessing how eagerly the girl was listening to every word, many an episode which in the aggregate had given him the reputation he bore throughout these wild miles of cattle land, the reputation of a man who was hard, hard as rock "on the outside," as she put it, hard inside, too, when they drove him to it, but naturally as soft-hearted as a baby. She wished she had a boy like him! Why, when she and John hit hard luck, last year, what with the cattle getting diseased first and her and John getting laid up next, flat of their backs with the grip, that man was an angel in britches and spurs if there ever was an angel in anything! He'd nursed them and cooked for them, and lifted her out of her bed while he made it up himself, just as smooth and nice as you could have done, Miss. And he rode clean into town for a doctor, and brought him out and a lot of store stuff that was nice for sick folks to eat. And he'd paid the doctor, too, and laughed and said he'd come some day and borry the money back when he got busted playing poker!

"And then, all of a sudden, when you'd have thought he was soft that way clean through," she went on, her eyes blazing now at the memory of it, "them Bedloe boys come over lookin' for trouble. An' Buck sure gave it to them!"

"Tell me about it," the girl said quickly. "Who are the Bedloe boys? What did they do?"

"The Bedloe boys," Mrs. Smith ran on, eager in the recounting, "belong over to the Corners. Or the Corners belongs to them, I don't know which you'd say. Never heard of them boys? Well, most folks has. There used to be lots like the Bedloe boys when I was a girl, Miss, but thank gracious they're getting thinned out powerful fast. First an' last an' all the time they're rowdies an' gunfighters an' bad men. There's more of their kind in Hill's Corners, but these are the worst of the outfit. They keep close in to the Corners, seeing it's right on the state line, where they can dodge from one state to another when it comes handy. Which is right often.

"There's three of 'em. Charley an' Ed an' the youngest one everybody calls the Kid. That's three an' I guess there's a good many more would be glad of the chance to shoot Buck up. I guess the Bedloes heard that time that John was sick. Anyway, they come over, all three of 'em, hunting trouble. Buck was out in the barn, feeding the horses, an' they didn't know he was on the ranch. The Kid, he's the youngest of the mess an' the worst an' the han'somest, with them little yeller curls, an' his daredevil blue eyes, come on ahead, riding his horse right up to the door, yelling like a drunk Injun an' cussing so it made a woman wonder how any woman could ever have a son like him. He tried to ride his horse right in the door, an' when it got scared of me an' John lyin' in bed, an' rared up, the Kid hit it over the head with the gun in his hand, an' slipped out'n the saddle, laughin' at it stagger.

"But he come on in an' Charley come in, too. Ed Bedloe was out in the far corral, gettin' ready to throw the gate open an' turn out the cows an' stampede 'em off'n the ranch. What for?" She lifted her bony shoulders. "Oh, nothin'. They'd jus' had trouble with my John about six months before, an' was taking a good chance to smash up things in general about the ranch. They swore they was going to burn the cabin an' the barn an' scatter the stock an' do anything else they could put their hands to. An' while they was in here, cussing an' abusing my John, who couldn't even get up an' grab his shotgun in the corner, an' insulting me all they could lay their dirty tongues to, there's a step at the door right behind 'em, light as a cat, an' here's Buck come in from the barn.

"I wish you'd seen that man's eyes! Then you'd know what I mean when I say he gets hard, hard an' bitter sometimes. An' his voice—it was so low an' soft you might 'a' thought he was putting a baby to sleep with it! There was two of them boys, big an' ugly-mean, an' they both had guns on, in sight. There was jus' one of Buck Thornton, an' I didn't know yet he ever toted a gun. He uses his hands, mostly, I reckon, Buck does. He didn't say much. He just got them two hands of his on Charley Bedloe's neck, an' I thought he was goin' to break it sure. An' Charley got flung clean out in the yard before the Kid had finished going for his gun! You wouldn't believe a man could be that quick.

"Quick? It wasn't nothin' to his next play. I tell you the Kid's hand was on the way to his gun an' Buck didn't have a gun on him, you'd have said. An' then he did have a gun, an' John an' me didn't even see where he got it, an' he didn't seem to be in a hurry, an' he'd shot before the Kid could more'n pull his gun up!"

"He killed him?"

"He could have killed him just as easy as a man rolls a cigareet! There wasn't six feet between 'em. Only men like Buck Thornton don't kill men unless they got to, I guess. But he shot the Kid in the arm, takin' them chances as cool as an icicle; an' when the Kid dropped his gun an' then grabbed at it with his other hand, Buck shot him in the left arm the same way. An' then, using his hands, he threw him out. An' I don't believe Charley Bedloe more'n got on his hands an' knees outside! An' then somehow Buck has a gun in each hand, and has stepped outside, too. And I reckon the Bedloe boys saw the same thing in his eyes me an' John saw there when he come back in. Anyway, they got on their horses an' we ain't seen hide nor hair of 'em since."

Miss Waverly sat very still, leaning forward a little, her eyes big and bright upon the eyes of this other woman. The man, despite her calmer judgment, appealed to her imagination....

"You'd think," Mrs. Smith went on, "that that man would be tired enough for one day, wouldn't you? Ridin' all day, walking seven mile toting that big saddle on his back; an' now he goes an' starts out to ride the Lord knows how far. What do you suppose a man like him is made out'n?"

Smith answered her out of the corner of his mouth from which a slow curl of smoke was mounting:

"Sand, mostly."

* * * * *

No, the girl could not say to these people that which she had to say of Buck Thornton. She switched the conversation abruptly, asking them to tell her of Hill's Corners.

She knew something of the place already. Mr. Templeton had told her a great deal when insistently urging her not to do the thing she had determined to do and she had thought that he exaggerated merely in order to turn her aside from her purpose. She had even heard far-reaching rumours of the border town in Crystal City, where her own home had been for the five years since the deaths of her parents. These rumours, too, she had supposed inflated as rumours will be when they are bad and have travelled far. Now it was a little anxiously that she asked for further information, and not altogether because she sought some new topic.

"She's Henry Pollard's niece, Mary," Smith said rather hurriedly. The girl glanced at him sharply. There was something in his tone which told her that he was warning his wife, cautioning her to speak guardedly of Pollard or not at all.

When, an hour later, she went to bed, she lay long sleepless, wondering, nervously dreading the morrow. For these people who should know gave Hill's Corners the same name that Mr. Templeton had given it, the same name it bore as far as Crystal City and beyond. It was one of those far removed towns which are the last stand of the lawless, the ultimate breastwork before the final ditch into which in his hour the gunfighter has finally gone down. Desperate characters, men wanted in two states and perhaps in many more, flocked here where they found the one chance to live out their riotous lives riotously. Here they could "straddle" the line, and when wanted upon one side slip to the other. And hereabouts, for very many miles in all directions, the big cattle men, the small ranchers, the "little fellows," all slept "with their eyes open and their gunlocks oiled."

But, she tried to tell herself, Henry Pollard had sent for her, he was her own mother's brother, he would not have had her come here if it were not safe. He had written clearly enough, had told her in his letter that he could not leave the Corners, that he must have the money, that there were hold-up men in the country who would not hesitate to rob the stage if they learned that he had five thousand dollars in it, that she could bring the bills which Templeton would have ready for her and that there would be no suspicion, no danger for her. And she would believe her uncle, would believe that these people had had trouble with the Bedloes and perhaps others in the town, and that they warped the truth in the telling. For was any more faith to be put in the word of the Smiths than in that of Buck Thornton himself? And did she not know him for what he was, a man who was not above assaulting a defenceless girl, not above robbery?

Wearied out, she went to sleep, her last waking thoughts trailing off through the night after a man who could laugh like a boy, whose eyes could grow very gentle or very, very hard and inexorable.

In the morning John Smith's first words to her drove again a hot, angry flush into her face. For he told her that Thornton, before he would ride away last night, had made sure that Smith would accompany her, showing her the way and "taking care of her." She bit her lip and turned away. She was grateful that soon breakfast was eaten, the horses saddled and once more she was riding out toward the south-east. Smith rode at her elbow.

All morning they rode slowly, over rough trails in the mountains where a horse found scant foothold, where they wound down into deep, close walled canyons where the sunlight was dim at noon, where the pines stood tall and straight in thick ranks untouched by an ax. They came out into little valleys, past a half dozen ranch houses, saw many herds of cattle and horses, crossed Indian Gully, topped another steep ridge and at last looked down upon the Poison Hole ranch.

The ranch lay off to the east as they looked down upon it, a great sweep of rolling hills sprinkled with big oaks looking like shrubs from their vantage point, cut in two by the Big Little River, along the banks of which and out in the meadow lands many herds of cattle ranged free. Rising in his stirrup Smith pointed out to her the spot near the centre of the big range where Buck Thornton's "range house" was, a dozen miles away over the rolling country. And then he swung about and pointed to the south, saying shortly:

"Yonder's the country you're lookin' for. We strike due south here along the edge of the Poison Hole ranch. When we get to that next string of lulls you can see the hills of three states, all at once and the same time. And you can see the town you're headed for; it sets on top a sort of hill. Down yonder," and he swung his long arm off to the south-west, "is the Bar X outfit; that's as far as I'm going. But, if you want company, one of the boys will sure be glad to ride on with you. The Corners is only about a dozen mile from there on."



CHAPTER XII

RATTLESNAKE POLLARD

IT was barely noon, the air clear, the sky cloudless, when Winifred Waverly rode into Hill's Corners. She had shaken her head at the suggestion of further escort. Here, in the open country and in the full sunlight, she was grateful for the opportunity of being alone.

At the foot of a gentle eminence she entered the narrow, winding street of the town, a crooked little town physically both in the matter of this meandering alley-like thoroughfare and in the matter of the hastily builded, unprepossessing houses; a crooked town in its innermost character, it was easy to believe. On either hand as she rode forward were low, squat, ugly shacks jammed tight together or with narrow passageways between their unlovely walls, these spaces more often than not cluttered and further disfigured by piles of rusty tins, old clothing and shoes and other discarded refuse. As she rode farther she saw now and then the more pretentious buildings, some with the false fronts which deceived nobody, the houses appearing shoddy and aged and sinister, one here and there deserted and given over to ruin, disintegration and spiders spinning unmolested in dark corners.

The next peculiar impression created upon her was that some evil charm was over the place, that in the sweet sunlight it lay drugged, that in those rows of slatternly shacks where the sunlight did not enter men either hid in dark secrecy or lay in some unnatural stupour. The whole settlement seemed preternaturally quiet; the fancy came to her that the town had died long ago and that she merely looked on its ghost.

She had shrunk before now at the thought of men coming to the doors to stare after her, and perhaps even to call coarsely after her; now it seemed the dreariest thing in all the world to ride down this dirty, muddy street and see no man or woman or child, not so much as a saddled horse at a hitching pole. She came abreast of the most pretentious building of Hill's Corners; its swing doors were closed, but from within she heard a low, monotonous hum of languid voices. Upon the crazy false front, a thing to draw the wondering eye of a stranger, was a gigantic and remarkably poorly painted picture of a bear holding a glass in one deformed paw, a bottle in the other, while the drunken letters of the superfluous sign spelled: "The Brown Bear Saloon." Almost directly across the street from the Brown Bear was a rival edifice which though slightly smaller was no less squat and ugly and which bore its own highly ambitious sign: a monster hand clutching a monster whiskey glass, with the illuminating words beneath, "The Here's How Saloon." That the two works of art were from the same brain and hand there was no doubting. In the inscriptions the n's and s's were all made backwards, presenting an interesting and entirely suitable air of maudlin drunkenness.

The girl hurried by. There were other saloons, so many, so close together that, used as she was to frontier towns, she wondered at it; she saw other buildings whose signs informed her they were store and post-office, drug store, blacksmith shop and restaurant. And now the first visible token of life, a thin spiral of smoke from "Dick's Oyster House." She passed it, pushing her horse to a gallop. She had seen the two or three men upon the high stools at the counter taking their coffee and bacon. They had swung about quickly, like one man, at the cook's grin and quiet word. One of them even called out something as she passed; another laughed.

As she rode down the tortuous street, fairly racing now, the blood whipped into her face, she caught a glimpse of a man standing by his horse, preparing to swing up into the saddle. His eyes followed her with a look in them easy to read and unpleasant; something too ardently admiring to be trusted. She had seen the man's face. He was a big man, broad and straight and powerful, builded like a Vulcan. He was branded unmistakably as a rowdy; his very carriage, a sort of conscious swagger, the bold impudence of his face told that. The laughing face stood out before her eyes as she rode on, evil and reckless and handsome, with very bright blue eyes and hair curling in little yellow rings about the forehead from which the hat was pushed back. It was her first glimpse of the youngest of the Bedloe boys, the worst of them the "Kid."

She knew that she would find her uncle's house at the end of the street. Mr. Templeton had told her that, and had described it so that she could have no trouble in knowing it. And as she rode on, making the curve of the long, crooked lane which had come to be known as Dead Man's Alley, she found time to wonder that such a town could be so silent and deserted with the sun so high in the sky. For she had not learned that here men did in their way what men do in larger cities, that they turned the day topsy turvy, that the street seethed with surging life through late afternoon and night and the dark hours of the morning, that the saloons stood brightly lighted then, that their doors were filled with men coming and going, that games ran high, voices rose high, while life, as these men knew it, ran higher still.

At last she came to Henry Pollard's house. It stood back from the street in a little yard notable for the extreme air of untidiness the rank weeds gave it and for its atmosphere of semi-desertion among its few stunted, twisted, unpruned pear trees. The fence about it had once been green, but that was long, long ago. The doors were closed, the shades close drawn over the windows, the house still and gloom-infested even in the sunlight.

Stronger and higher within her welled her misgivings; for the first time she admitted to herself that she was sorry that she had tried to do this thing which Mr. Templeton had told her was madness. She hesitated, sitting her horse at the gate, with half a mind to whirl and ride back whence she had come. And then, with an inward rebuke to her own timidity, she dismounted and hurried along the weed bordered walk, and knocked at the door.

There came quick answer, a man's voice, heavy and curt, crying:

"Who is it?"

"Are you Mr. Pollard?" she called back, her voice a little eager, more than a little anxious.

"Yes." There was a note as of excitement in the voice. "Is that you, Winifred?"

"Yes, uncle. I ... I ..."

She faltered, hesitated, and broke off pitifully. She had heard the eagerness in Pollard's voice, guessed at what it was that he was thinking, knew that now she would have to tell him that she had failed in the errand which he had entrusted to her, that she had let a man rob her of the five thousand dollars of which he stood so urgently in need. Oh, why had she attempted to do it, why had she not listened to Mr. Templeton? And, now, what would her uncle say?

"Just a minute, Winifred. I'm a little under the weather and am in bed. Now." She heard no footsteps; yet there was the noise of a wooden bar being drawn away from the door. "Come in. You'll pardon me, being in bed, my dear. And fasten the door after you, will you, please?"

She stepped across the threshold and into the darkened house, her heart beating quickly. As she slipped the bar back into its place she saw that there was fastened to the end of it a cord which passed through a pulley over the door and then ran down the hallway, disappearing through another door at the left. So, following the cord, she went on slowly.

The outside of the house had given her a certain impression. Now, in a flash, that impression was superseded by a new one. Here was the home of a man of means, the heavy, rich furniture spoke of that, the painting there in the living room into which she glanced, the tastefully papered walls, the thick carpet muffling her footfalls. If only the curtains were thrown back, if only the sun were looking in upon it all!

And now the man. Henry Pollard, whom she had not seen since she was a very little girl and then only during his short visit at her father's house, struck her as being in some way not entirely unlike this habitation of his. A gentleman gone to seed, was that it?

His manner was courteous, courtly even, his speech soft, his eyes gentle as they rested upon her, gentle and yet eager. There was something fine about his face, about the eyes and high forehead, and yet alongside it there was something else which drove a little pain into the girl's eyes. The mouth was hard, there were deep, set lines about it and about the eyes there was a hint of cruelty which not even his smile hid entirely. And though she strove to smile back bravely as she came forward to kiss him, she knew that she was disappointed, and a little uneasy.

She knew that Henry Pollard must be about fifty; she saw that he looked to be sixty. He had pulled himself up against his pillows and had drawn on a dressing gown to cover his shoulders. He was well groomed; he had had a shave yesterday; he did not look sick. But he did look old, like a man who had aged prematurely and suddenly; and he did look worried and tired, as though he had not slept well last night.

"I am alone just now," he smiled. "Mrs. Riddell is keeping house for me, but I heard her go out a little while ago. For something for breakfast, I suppose. You are looking well, Winifred. I knew you would be pretty. Now, sit down."

No word yet of her errand, no query as to its success. She was grateful to him for that. She wanted a moment, time in which to feel that she knew him a little bit, before she could tell him. But she saw in his eyes that he was curbing his eagerness, and that she would have to tell him in a moment.

"I am sorry that you are sick, Uncle Henry," she said hastily, taking the chair near his bed. "It isn't anything serious, is it?"

"No, no." His answer was as hasty as her question had been. "Just rheumatism, Winifred. I'm subject to it here of late."

Then she saw that he had sat stiffly, that his shoulder, the left shoulder, was carried awkwardly and was evidently bandaged.

"I'm sorry," she said again. And then, determined to tell him before he should ask, "Uncle, I...." Oh, it was so hard to say with him looking at her with those keen, bright eyes of his! "You should have got some one else to help you. I have failed.... I have lost your money for you!"

She dropped her face into her hands, trembling, striving to keep her tears back, feeling now, as she had not felt before, as if she had been altogether to blame for all that had happened, as though it had been her carelessness that had cost her uncle his five thousand dollars. And when at last he did not speak and she looked up again, she saw that his eyes had not changed, that there was no surprise in them, that if he felt anything whatever he hid it.

"Don't cry about it, my dear," he said gently. He even smiled a little. "Tell me about it. You were robbed of it? Before you had more than got out of light of Dry Town?"

"How do you know?" she cried.

"I don't know, my dear. But I do know that the stage came on through, with no attempt at a hold-up, and I guessed that our little ruse didn't fool anybody. When I got the empty strong box from the bank I knew pretty well what to look for."

"But," she told him, flushed with her hope, "we'll get it back! For I know who robbed me, I can swear to him!"

Pollard's hand, lying upon the bed spread, had shut tight. She noticed that and no other sign of emotion.

"And I know!" he said harshly. "Yes, I'll get it back! Now, tell me how it happened."

"It was a man named Buck Thornton...."

She saw the quick change of light in his eyes and in the instant knew that if Buck Thornton hated Henry Pollard he was hated no less in return. Further, she saw that back of the hatred there was a sort of silent laughter as though the thing she had said had pleased this man as no other thing could have pleased him, that in some way which she could not understand, this information had moved him as he had not been moved by news of his heavy loss. And she wondered.

"You are ready to swear to that?" he asked sharply, his eyes searching and steady and eager upon hers. "You will swear that it was Thornton who robbed you?"

"Yes," she cried hotly as she remembered the insult of a kiss and in the memory forgot the robbery itself.

"I'll get him now," he muttered. "Both ways; going and coming! Tell me all about it, Winifred."

She began, speaking swiftly, telling him of her meeting with Thornton at the bank, of her suspicion that he had overheard her talk with the banker. Then of her second meeting with the man after she had seen him on the trail behind her, the encounter at the Harte cabin.... A sudden banging of the kitchen door, and he had stopped her abruptly, putting his hand warningly upon her arm.

"Later. It can wait. That is Mrs. Riddell. She will show you to your room. And it will be better, my dear, if you say nothing to her. Or to any one else just yet."

She got to her feet and went to the door. Turning there, to smile back at her uncle, she saw that his pillows had slipped a little and that under them lay a heavy revolver. And she surprised upon the man's face a look which was gone so quickly that she wondered if she had seen right in the darkened room, a look so filled with malicious triumph. Instead of being profoundly disturbed by the tidings of her adventure, the man appeared positively to gloat.... Now, more than ever, did she regret that she had come to the town of Dead Man's Alley.



CHAPTER XIII

THE RANCH ON BIG LITTLE RIVER

Buck Thornton had returned to the Poison Hole ranch. But first he had ridden from the Smith place down the trail to Harte's, where he made swift, careful search for some sign to tell him who was the man who had lamed his horse maliciously and seemingly with no purpose to be gained. Further, he had sought for tracks to tell him from where this man had come, where he had gone. When he had found nothing he went, he hardly knew why, to the cabin, pushed the door open and entered. And instead of learning anything definitely now he was merely the more perplexed. By the fireplace lay a chair, overturned. There had been some sort of hurried movement here, perhaps a struggle. The table had been pushed to one side, one leg catching in the rag rug and rumpling it. He struck a match, lighted the lamp and sought for some explanation. When had this struggle, if struggle there had been, occurred? It must have been after he and Miss Waverly had set out on the trail to Smith's, he told himself positively. Then there had been two people here in the meantime, for it takes two people to make a tussel. And they had gone. Who could it be? Was he after all to find a clue to the man who had maimed his horse?

Looking about him curiously it chanced that he found something that drove a puzzled frown into his eyes. It had caught in the frayed edge of the rug, and to have been so caught and so left meant that it had been done during the struggle he had already pictured. He took it up into his hand, trying to understand. For it was the rowel of a spur, a tiny, sharp, shining rowel that had come loose from a spur he remembered very well. And he remembered, too, that Winifred Waverly had had her spurs on when she came out to him at the barn!

"It happened while I was out after the horses!" He sat down, the shining spiked wheel lying in the palm of his hand, his brows drawn heavily. "While I was out there ... it happened. Some jasper came in here, there was some sort of a tussle ... and she didn't say a damned word about it!"

Yes, he was certain now that something had happened during the brief time between his going out for the horses and the girl's coming to him at the barn. Something that had changed her, that had killed her friendliness toward him, that had made her cold and cruelly different.

"The same man who slipped his knife across my horse's foot came in here and saw her while I was out for the horses," he said slowly. "The same man. It must have been. And she could tell me who it was and she didn't. Why? After they had struggled here, too! Why?"

He could see no reason in it all, no reason for her silence, no reason for a man's malicious cruelty to a horse. Nor were these the only things which he could not understand. Groping for the truth, he began carefully to run over the things which had seemed strange to him and which now struck him as being connected in some plan darkly hidden.

The girl was Henry Pollard's niece. He began with that fact. She was on her way to Pollard's and on an errand which the banker Templeton had called mad and dangerous. Some man had followed her, a man whom she had twice seen on the trail and whose outfit resembled Thornton's, resembled it too closely to be the result of chance! The same headstall with the red tassel, the same grey neck-handkerchief, a sorrel horse....

"By God!" whispered the cowboy, a sudden light in his eyes, "he lamed my horse so it would limp the same as his! So she'd be sure she had seen me on the trail behind her! And when she came out and saw my horse limping she knew I had lied to her!"

But why? Why? What lay back of all this?

In the end he put out the light, slipped the spur rowel into his vest pocket, and went out to his horse. Then when an hour's search brought him no nearer to the hidden truth for which he was groping, he gave up trying to pick up this other man's trail in the rocky soil about Harte's place and turned back toward the south-east and his own ranch.

"I'm going to have a talk with you, Miss Grey Eyes," he said softly. "I've got to give you back your spur, and I'm going to ask you some questions."

He rode late into the night, stopped for a few hours under the stars with saddle blanket for bed, and in the dawn pushed on again.

For the few days which followed he had, in the stress of range work, little time for thought of the riddle which had been set for him to solve, and when he had time after the day's work he was tired and ready for sleep. He was working short handed now for the very simple and not uncommon reason that he was spending no dollar which he did not have to spend. The payments he had already made to Pollard had been heavy for him, and there was yet another five thousand dollars to be forthcoming in six months. The contract was clear upon the point, and he knew that if he failed to meet his obligation Henry Pollard would be vastly pleased, being in a position to keep the fifteen thousand which had been paid to him and to get his range back to boot.

Perhaps because Henry Pollard had never lived upon the ranch during the twenty years he had owned it improvements were few and poor. There was the barn, too small now, which must come down in another year; there was the old corral which was little used since Thornton had had the newer, bigger one builded. Then, for ranch house, there was a single room cabin, its walls of heavy logs from the hills at the head of the Big Little River, its door of great thick planks rough and nail studded, its roof of shakes. A hundred yards from it, at the foot of the knoll upon which the ranch house stood, was a similar cabin, a dozen feet longer, serving as the men's bunk house.

Big Little River wound about the foot of the knoll, separating Thornton's cabin from the bunk house, three or four feet deep here and spanned by a crude footbridge. In its windings it made a sort of horseshoe about the knoll so that looking out from the door of the cattle man's cabin one saw the sluggish water to east, west and north.

Upon the third morning after his return to the range Thornton rose early, scowled sleepily at the little alarm clock whose strident clamour had startled him out of his sleep at four o'clock, kicked off his pajamas and with towel in hand started down to the river for his morning plunge. Subconsciously he noted a scrap of white paper lying upon the hewn log which served as doorstep, but he paid no heed to it. He had his dip, diving from the big rock from which most mornings of the year he dived into the deepest part of the stream; and in a little came back through the brightening daylight rosy and tingling and with the last webs of sleep washed out of his brain. Again he noted the paper; this time he stooped and caught it up. For now he saw that it was folded, carefully placed where he must see it, pinned down with a sharp pointed horseshoe nail.

"Now who's sending me letters this way?" he demanded of himself.

And he flushed a little and called himself a fool because he knew that he half expected to find that it was a note from a certain girl with unforgettable grey eyes. But before he had read the few words, as soon in fact as his eyes had fallen upon the uneven, laboriously constructed letters of the lead-pencilled scrawl, he knew that this did not come from her hand. The signature puzzled him; it consisted of two letters, initials evidently, a very large j, not capitalized, followed by a very small capital C.

"Now, who's J.C.?" he muttered. "I can call to mind no J.C. who would be writing me letters!"

As he read the note a look of astonishment came into his eyes. It ran:

"Deer buck, I am shure up against hard luck. Dont know nobody but you can give me a hand remember that time down in El paso I was yore freind. Come to old shack by Poison hole tonight & dont tell nobody & bring sum grub Buck remember El paso.

"j.c.

"p.s. I was yore freind buck."

Thornton remembered. He went slowly about his dressing, turning again and again to look at the note he had placed upon his little pine table. That had been five years ago. He was riding between Juarez and El Paso, having just sold a herd of steers from the range he had owned in Texas then. He had been detained in the Mexican town until after dark, and before its lights had ceased winking behind him he had known that though his precaution of taking a check instead of gold had saved his money to him it had not saved him from coming very close to death. There were still three scars, two in the shoulder, one in the right side, to show where the bullets had bitten deep into him, from behind. He had been searched swiftly, roughly, his clothing torn by the hurried fingers of the man who had shot him.

It had been close to midnight when his consciousness came back to him. A little man, hard featured but gentle fingered, was working over him. It was Jimmie Clayton. And Clayton had found the crumpled check in the darkness, had gotten the wounded man on his own horse, had taken him to El Paso, and finally had saved his life, nursing him, working over him day and night for the two weeks in which his life was in danger.

Since then Thornton had seen little of Clayton. He had known even at the time of the shooting that the man was as hard a character as his close-set, little eyes and weasel face bespoke him; he had come to know him as an insatiate gambler, the pitiful sort of gambler who is too much of a drunkard to be more than his opponent's dupe at cards. He had found him to be a brawler and very much of a ruffian. But though he did not close his eyes to these things they did not matter to him. For gratitude and a sense of loyalty were two of the strong silver threads that went to make up the mesh of Buck Thornton's nature, and it was enough to him that little Jimmie Clayton had played the part of friend in a town where friends were scarce and at a time when but for a friend he would have died.

It was not alone the fact of Clayton's turning up here and now that surprised the cattle man; it was the fact of his turning up anywhere. For he had thought that Clayton, weak natured and so very often the other man's tool, was serving time in the Texas penitentiary. For, three years ago, rumour had brought to him word of a sheriff's clean-up, and the names of three men who had been working a crude confidence game, bold rather than shrewd, and Jimmie Clayton's name was one of the three. He had heard only after the men had been convicted and sentenced for five years apiece, and had at the time regretted that he could not have known sooner so that in some way he might have returned the favour he had never forgotten.

At last having dressed, he shoved the letter into his pocket, and went down to the bunk house for breakfast. To the cook and to the three men already at the table he had little to say, so full were his thoughts of Jimmie Clayton. He was wondering what "hard luck" the little fellow had run up against, why he was hiding out at a place like the Poison Hole shack, how he had gotten the letter to the range cabin, and, if he had brought it himself, why he had not made himself known last night.

He gave his few, succinct orders for the day, made his hurried meal, and went to the corral for his horse. And all that day he rode hard out in the broken country where the eastern end of the range ran up and back into the gorges of the mountains, shifting herd, collecting stragglers, bringing them down into the meadow lands where the feed was abundant now that he had sold the cattle he had had ranging there in order that he might raise the money to make up the five thousand dollars for Henry Pollard.

As he rode he spoke seldom to the horse running under him or to the boys with whom he worked, his thoughts flying now to another horse, lamed from a knife cut, now to a girl whose spur rowel he carried in his vest pocket, now to a man whose appealing letter he carried in another pocket. And he was glad when the day was done and the boys raced away through the dusk to their supper.

Not infrequently did he ride on after he had told the others to "knock off," working himself harder than he could ask them to work, riding late to look at the water holes or find a new pasture in some of the little mountain valleys or to bring in a fresh string of saddle horses for the morrow's riding. So now, as darkness gathered, he watched the boys scamper away to their food and smoke and bunks, and rode on slowly toward the north.

He chose this time, the thickening darkness before moonrise, for he had caught the insistent plea for secrecy running through the lines of the letter. And so, though he was not a little impatient and curious, he let his tired horse choose its own loitering gait, willing that the night draw down blacker about him.

He crossed the Big Flat, rich grassy land watered by the Big Little River, and struck off into the hills that closed in about it, following the river trail. It was very still, with no sound save the swish of the water against the willows drooping downward from its banks, no light save the dim glimmer of the early stars. For two miles he followed the stream, then left it for a short cut over the ridge, to pick it up again upon the farther side. Now he was in a tiny valley with the mountains close to the spot which gave its name to the range.

Big Little River writhed in from the east, twisted out to the south. And in the shut-in valley it made and left behind it to all but cover the entire floor of the valley a lakelet of very clear water not over a quarter of a mile from edge to edge, but very deep. Upon the far side, a little back and close under the overhanging cliffs, there was a great, jagged-mouthed, yawning hole, of a type not uncommon in this part of the western country, from which heavy, noxious gases drifted sometimes when the wind caught them up, gases which for the most part thickened and made deadly the dark interior. There were skeletons to be seen dimly by daylight down there, ten feet below the surface of the uneven ground, the vaguely phosphorescent bones of jack rabbits that had fallen into this natural trap, of coyotes, even of a young cow that had been overpowered before it could struggle upward along the steep sides. And the odour clinging to the mouth of the hole was indescribably foul and sickening.

Not a pretty place, and yet some man many years ago had builded him a habitation here that was half dugout, half log lean-to. The door of the place faced Poison Hole, and was not two hundred yards from it. The hovel had been in disuse long before Buck Thornton came to the range save as a shelter to some of the wild things of the mountains.

From the southern shore of the lake Thornton stared across the little body of water trying to make out a light to tell him that Clayton was expecting him. But there was no fire, and the stars, reflecting themselves in the natural mirror, failed to show him so much as the outline of the lean-to in the shadows of the cliffs. He turned down into the trail which ran about the shore, passed around the western end of the lake, and riding slowly, his eyes ever watchful about him as was the man's habit, he came at last to the deserted "shack."



CHAPTER XIV

IN THE NAME OF FRIENDSHIP

Twenty yards from the door he drew rein, sitting still, frowning into the darkness. Not for the first time was he realizing that the note might not be from Clayton at all; that some other man could have known of his debt of gratitude to the little fellow who had befriended him five years ago; that the name might have been used to draw him here, alone and very far from any ears to hear, any eyes to see, what might happen. He could name a half dozen men who were not above this sort of thing, men who had, some of them, sworn to "get him." There were the Bedloe boys, the three of them. There were two other men who do not come into this story. There was Henry Pollard.

"And it would be almighty like Pollard to put up a job like this," he told himself grimly. "He could afford to pay a man a good little pile to get me out of the game, and keep the money I've paid him and get back his range besides. And I reckon the Kid would be one of a dozen who would take on the job dirt cheap!"

He reined his horse a little deeper into the shadows. Then he slipped swiftly from the saddle, one end of his thirty-feet rope in his hand, the other end about the horse's neck, and with a quick flick of the quirt sent the animal trotting ahead to swing about and stop when the rope drew taut. He half expected his ruse to draw fire from somewhere in the darkness. Instead there came a low voice, sharp and querulous, through the open door.

"That you, Buck?"

"Yes. That you, Clayton?"

"Yes. Are you alone?"

"Yes."

Then Thornton came on swiftly, coiling his rope as he walked. For he had recognized the voice.

"What's the matter, Jimmie?" He was at the door now, peering in but making nothing of the blot of shadows.

"Come in," Clayton answered. "An' shut the door, Buck. I'll make a light when the door's shut."

He stepped in, dropping his rope, and moving slowly again, his back against the wall. For after all he would not be sure of everything until there was a light, until he saw that he was alone with Clayton.

A match sputtered, making vague shadows as it was held in a cupped hand. It travelled downward to the earthen floor, found the stub of a candle, and then the greater light, poor as it was, drove out the shadows. And Thornton saw that it was Jimmie Clayton, that the man was alone, and that evidently his note had put it mildly when he had said that he had struck "hard luck."

The man, small, slight and nervous looking, lay upon a bed of boughs, covered with an old saddle blanket, his eyes bright as though with fever or fear. The skin of his face where it was seen through the black stubble of beard looked yellow with sickness. The cheek bones stood out sharply, little pools of shadow emphasizing the hollowness of his sunken cheeks. Above the waist he was stripped to his undershirt; a rude bandage under the shirt was stained the reddish brown of dried blood. A quick pity drove the distrust out of the eyes of the man who saw and who remembered.

"You poor little devil!" he said softly. He reached out his hand quickly, downright hungrily, for Jimmie's.

Clayton took the hand eagerly and held it a moment in his tense hot fingers as his eyes sought and studied Thornton's. Then he sank back with a little satisfied sigh, lying flat, his hands under his head.

"I'm sure gone to seed, huh, Buck?" he demanded.

"It's tough, Jimmie. Tell me about it."

The broken line of discolored teeth showed suddenly under the lifted lip.

"It ain't much to tell, Buck," Clayton answered slowly as the snarl left the pinched features. "But it's somethin' for a man to think about when he lays in a hole like this like a sick cat. But, Buck," and he spoke sharply, "didn't you bring no grub with you?"

"Yes, Jimmie. Wait a minute." Thornton stepped outside, not forgetting to close the door quickly after him, jerked the little package from his saddle strings where it had posed all day as his own lunch, and brought it back into the dugout. "I didn't know just what you wanted, but here's some bread and a hunk of cold meat and here's some coffee. We'll get it to boiling in a minute, and..."

"An' a drink, Buck?" eagerly. "You brung a flask, didn't you?"

"Yes, Jimmie," Thornton assured him with a quiet smile. He whipped the flask from his pocket and removing the cork held it out. "I remember that you used to say a meal without a drink wasn't any use to you."

Clayton put out a swift hand for the flask, shot it to his lips, and the gurgle of the running liquor spoke of a long draught.

"Now, the grub, Buck." He sat up, a little healthier color in his cheeks. "Let the coffee go; it'll come in handy tomorrow."

Thornton made a cigarette and leaning back against the door watched this outcast who bore the brand of the hunted on his brow, whose eyes were feverish with a hunger that was ravenous.

"Poor little old Jimmie," he muttered under his breath.

Clayton picked over the contents of the little package with hasty fingers, pushing the bread aside, eating noisily of the meat. When at last he had finished he rolled up the remainder of the lunch in the greasy paper, thrust it under the corner of his blanket, and put out his hands for the tobacco and papers.

"I ain't even had a smoke for three days, Buck. Hones' to Gawd, I ain't."

"Now, Jimmie," Thornton suggested when both men were smoking, and Clayton again lay on his back, resting, "better tell me about it. Can't I move you over to my cabin?"

"No, Buck. You can't. An' I'll tell you." He broke off suddenly, his eyes burning with an anxious intensity upon Thornton's. Then, with a new note in his voice, a half whimper, he blurted out, "Hones' to Gawd, I'll blow my brains out before I let 'em get me again! But you wouldn't give me away, Buck, would you? You'd remember how I stuck by you down in El Paso, won't you, Buck? You wouldn't give a damn for ... for a reward if they was to offer one, would you, Buck? 'Cause you know I'd shoot myself if they got me, an' you don't forget how I stuck to you, do you, Buck?"

"No, Jimmie," came the assurance very softly. "I don't give a damn for the reward and I don't forget. Pull yourself together, Jimmie."

"Then here it is, an' I'll give you my word, s'elp me Gawd, that every little bit of it is like I'm tellin' you. I ain't stringin' you, Buck, an' I am puttin' myself in your hands, like one friend with another. That's right, ain't it?"

"That's right, Jimmie. Go ahead."

"They had me in the pen, then; you knowed that, Buck? Run me in, by Gawd, because I happened to be havin' a drink with a man named Stenton an' a man named Cosgrove an' a dirty Mex as was all crooked an' was wanted for somethin' they pulled off back down there ... I don't know rightly what it was, damn if I do, Buck! But they wanted somebody, an' they got the deadwood on them jaspers, an' me bein' seen with 'em, they put me across, too. Put me across three years ago, Buck! An' it was hell, jes' hell, that's all. Hell for a man like me, Buck, as is used to sleepin outdoors an' the fresh air blowin' over the big ranges, an' horses an' things. An' ... well, I stood it for three years, Buck. Three years, man! Think o' that! You don't know what it means. An' then, when I couldn't stand it no longer," and his voice dropped suddenly and the look of the hunted ran back into his eyes, "I broke jail. An' I got this."

He touched his fingers gingerly to the bandaged side, wincing even with the gesture.

"Two bullets," he muttered. "Colt forty-fives. An' I been like this nine days. Or ten, I ain't sure. An' nights, Buck. The nights ... Gawd!"

Thornton, his lips tightening a little, watched the man and for a moment said nothing. And then, suddenly, his voice commanding the truth:

"Don't hold back anything, Jimmie," he said. "It'll be all over the country in a week, anyway. How'd you make your get-away? Did you have to kill anybody?"

He had his answer in the silence which for ten seconds Clayton's twitching lips hesitated to break. When spoken answer came it was broken down into a whisper.

"I ... I wasn't goin' to hurt anybody, Buck. Hones' to Gawd, I wasn't. An' then, then I got hold his gun, an' I seen he was goin' to fight for it, an' I ... I had to shoot! I didn't go to kill him, Buck! An' he shot me firs' with the other gun ... you oughta see them holes in my side!... an'...." He stopped abruptly, and then, a little defiance sweeping up into his eyes, rushing into his voice, he ended sulkily, "The son of a —— had it comin' to him!"

For a long time Buck Thornton, sunk into a deep, thoughtful silence, said nothing. Jimmie's account of an adventure of this kind was sure to be garbled; considering it in an attempt to get to the truth at the bottom of it was an occupation comparable to that of staring down into muddy water in search of a hidden white pebble. He knew Jimmie Clayton. He knew him as perhaps Clayton did not know himself. The man had been sent to state's prison, not because of the company he kept, but because, in Jimmie's own words, "he had it comin'." He had known long ago that Jimmie Clayton would end this way, or worse. Now Clayton was giving his own version of the killing of the guard, and this version would probably be a lie. But through all of these considerations which Thornton saw so clearly there was something else; something seen as clearly, looming high and distinct above them: Jimmie had played the part of friend when but for a friend Thornton would have died. That counted with Buck Thornton. And now Clayton had sent for him, had entrusted into his hands all hope of safety. And he was not this man's judge.