There was a pause of consideration.

"Speak up pronto," said Sinclair. "Anybody know anything agin' the prisoner?"

Larsen stepped forward. "Your honor, it's pretty generally known—"

"I don't give a doggone for what's generally known. What d'you know?"

The Swede's smile did not alter in the slightest, but his voice became blunter, more acrid. From that moment he made up his mind firmly that he wanted to see John Irving Gaspar, otherwise Jig, hanged from the cottonwood tree above them.

"I was over to Shorty Lander's store the other day—"

His honor raised his hand in weary protest, as he smiled apologetically at the court. "Darned if I didn't plumb forget one thing," he said. "We got to swear in these witnesses before they can chatter. Is there anybody got a Bible around 'em? Nope? Montana, I wished you'd lope over to that house and see what they got in the line of Bibles."

Montana strode away in the direction of the house, and quiet fell over the unique courtroom. Larsen, so pleasant of face and so unbending of heart, was the first to speak.

"Looks to me, gents, like we're wasting a lot of time on a rat!"

The blond head of Cold Feet turned, and his large, dark eyes rested without expression upon the face of the Swede. He seemed almost literally to fold his hands and await the result of his trial. The illusion was so complete that even Riley Sinclair began to feel that the prisoner might be guilty—of an act which he himself had done! The opportunity was indeed too perfect to be dismissed without consideration. It was in his power definitely to put the blame on another man; then he could remain in this community as long as he wished, to work his will upon Sandersen.

Sandersen himself was a great problem. If Bill had spoken up in good faith to save Sinclair from the posse that morning, the Riley felt that he was disarmed. But a profound suspicion remained with him that Sandersen guessed his mission, and was purposely trying to brush away the wrath of the avenger. It would take time to discover the truth, but to secure that time it was necessary to settle the blame for the killing. Cold Feet was a futile, weak-handed little coward. In the stern scheme of Sinclair's life, the death of such a man was almost less than nothing.

"Wasting a lot of time on a rat!"

The voice of Larsen fell agreeably upon the ear of his honor. Behind that voice came a faraway murmur, the scream of a hawk. He bent his head back and looked up through the limbs of the cottonwood into the pale blue-white haze of the morning sky.

A speck drifted across it, the hawk sailing in search of prey. Under the noble arch of heaven floated that fierce, malignant creature!

Riley Sinclair lowered his head with a sigh. Was not he himself playing the part of the hawk? He looked straight into the eyes of the prisoner, and Jig met the gaze without flinching. He merely smiled in an apologetic manner, and he made a little gesture with his right hand, as if to admit that he was helpless, and that he cast himself upon the good will of Riley Sinclair. Riley jerked his head to one side and scowled. He hated that appeal. He wanted this hanging to be the work of seven men, not of one.

Montana returned, bringing with him a yellow-covered, red-backed book. "They wasn't a sign of a Bible in the house," he stated, "but I found this here history of the United States, with the Declaration of Independence pasted into the back of it. I figured that ought to do about as well as a Bible."

"You got a good head, Montana," said his honor. "Open up to that there Declaration. Here, Larsen, put your hand on this and swear you're telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. They ain't going to be any bum testimony taken in this court. We ain't going to railroad this lynching through."

He caught a glistening light of gratitude in the eyes of the schoolteacher. Riley's own breast swelled with a sense of virtue. He had never before taken the life of a helpless man; and now that it was necessary, he would do it almost legally.

Larsen willingly took the oath. "I'm going to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, damn me if I don't! I was over to Shorty Lander's store the other day—"

"What day?"

"Hmm! Last Tuesday, I reckon."

"Go on, Larsen, but gimme nothin' but the facts."

"I seen Jig come into the store. 'I want to look at a revolver,'" he said.

"'The deuce you do! What might you want to do with a revolver, Jig?' says Shorty. 'You mean you want a toy gun?'

"I remember them words particular clear, because I didn't see how even a spineless gent like Jig could stand for such a pile of insult. But he just sort of smiled with his lips and got steady with his eyes, like he was sort of grieved.

"'I want a gun that'll kill a man,' he says to Shorty.

"Shorty and me both laughed, but, when Shorty brung out a forty-five, doggone me if Jig didn't buy the gun.

"'Look here,' says he, 'is this the way it works?'

"And he raises it up in his skinny hand. I had to laugh.

"'Hold it in both hands,' says I.

"'Oh,' says he, and darned if he didn't take it in both hands.

"'It seems much easier to handle in this way,' says he.

"But that's what I seen. I seen him buy a gun to kill a man. Them was his words, and I figure they're a mouthful."

Larsen retired.

"Damagin' evidence, they ain't no question," said Mr. Clerk severely. "But I can lay over it, your honor."

"Blaze away, judge."

Larsen took the oath. "I'm going to show you they was bad feelings between the prisoner and the dead man, your honor. I was over to the dance at the Woodville schoolhouse a couple of weeks ago. Jig was there, not dancing or nothing, but sitting in a corner, with all the girls, mostly, hanging around him. They kept hanging around looking real foolish at him, and Jig looks back at 'em as if they wasn't there. Well, it riles the boys around these parts. Quade comes up to him and takes him aside.

"'Look here,' he says, 'why don't you dance with one girl instead of hogging them all?'

"'I don't dance,' says Jig.

"'Why do you stay if you won't dance?' asks Quade.

"'It is my privilege,' says Jig, smiling in that ornery way of his, like his thoughts was too big for an ordinary gent to understand 'em.

"'You stay an' dance an' welcome,' says Quade, 'but if you won't dance, get out of here and go home where you belong. You're spoiling the party for us, keeping all the girls over here.'

"'Is that a threat?' says Jig, smiling in that way of his.

"'It sure is. And most particular I want you to keep away from Sally Bent. You hear?'

"'You take advantage of your size,' says Jig.

"'Guns even up sizes,' says Quade.

"'Thank you,' says Jig. 'I'll remember.'

"Right after that he went home because he was afraid that Quade would give him a dressing. But they was bad feelings between him and Quade. They was a devil in them eyes of Jig's when he looked at big Quade. I seen it, and I knowed they'd be trouble!" Lodge then retired.

"Gents," said his honor, "it looks kind of black for the prisoner. We know that Gaspar had a grudge agin' Quade, and that he bought a gun big enough to kill a man. It sure looks black for you, Gaspar."

The prisoner looked steadily at Sinclair. There was something unsettling in that gaze.

"All we got to make sure of," said the judge, "is that that quarrel between Gaspar and Quade was strong enough to make Gaspar want to kill him, and—"

"Your honor," broke in Gaspar, "don't you see that I could never kill a man?" The prisoner stretched out his hands in a gesture of appeal to Sinclair.

Riley gritted his teeth. Suddenly a chill had passed through him at the thought of the hanging noose biting into that frail, soft throat. "You shut up till you're asked to talk," he said, frowning savagely. "I think we got a witness here that'll prove that you did have sufficient cause to make you want to get rid of Quade. And, if we have that proof, heaven help you. Montana, go get Sally Bent!"

Gaspar started up with a ring in his voice. "No, no!"

In response to a gesture from Sinclair, Denver Jim jerked the prisoner back onto the black rock. With blazing blue eyes, Gaspar glared at the judge, his delicate lips trembling with unspoken words.

Sinclair knew, with another strange falling of the heart, that the prisoner was perfectly aware that his judge had not the slightest suspicion of his guilt. An entente was established between them, an entente which distressed Sinclair, and which he strove to destroy. But, despite himself, he could not get rid of the knowledge that the great blue eyes were fixed steadily upon him, as if begging him to see that justice was done. Consequently, the judge made himself as impersonal as possible.



9

Sally Bent came willingly, even eagerly. It was the eagerness of an angry woman who wanted to talk.

"What is your name?"

"A name you'll come to wish you'd never heard," said the girl, "if any harm comes to John Gaspar. Poor Jig, they won't dare to touch a hair of your head!"

With a gentle voice she had turned to Gaspar to speak these last words. A faint smile came on the lips of Gaspar, and his gaze was far away, as if he were in the midst of an unimportant dream, with Sally Bent the last significant part of it all. The girl flushed and turned back to Riley.

"I asked you your name," said his honor gravely.

"What right have you to ask me my name, or any other question?"

"Mr. Lodge," said his honor, "will you loosen up and tell this lady where we come in?"

"Sure," said the judge, clearing his throat. "Sally, here's the point. They ain't been much justice around here. We're simply giving the law a helping hand. And we start in today on the skunk that shot Quade. Quade may have had faults, but he was a man. And look at what done the killing! Sally, I ask you to look! That bum excuse for a man! That Gaspar!"

Following the command, Sally looked at Gaspar, the smile of pity and sympathy trembling on her lips again. But Gaspar took no notice.

"How dare you talk like that?" asked Sally. "Gaspar is worth all seven of you put together!"

"Order!" said Riley Sinclair. "Order in this here court. Mr. Sergeant-at-arms, keep the witness in order."

Larsen strode near authoritatively. "You got to stop that fresh talk, Sally. Sinclair won't stand for it."

"Oscar Larsen," she cried, whirling on him, "I always thought you were a man. Now I see that you're only big enough to bully a woman. I—I never want to speak to you again!"

"Silence!" thundered Riley Sinclair, smiting his hard brown hands together. "Take that witness away and we'll hang Gaspar without her testimony. We don't really need it—anyways."

There was a shrill cry from Sally. "Let me talk!" she pleaded. "Let me stay! I won't make no more trouble, Mr. Sinclair."

"All right," he decided without enthusiasm. "Now, what's your name?"

"Sally Bent." She smiled a little as she spoke. That name usually brought an answering smile, particularly from the men of Sour Creek. But Sinclair's saturnine face showed no softening.

"Mr. Clerk, swear the witness."

Judge Lodge rose and held forth the book and prescribed the oath.

During that interval, Riley Sinclair raised his head to escape from the steady, reproachful gaze of John Gaspar. Down in the valley bottom, Sour Creek flashed muddy-yellow and far away. Just beyond, the sun gleamed on the chalk-faced cliff. Still higher, the mountains changed between dawn and full day. There was the country for Riley Sinclair. What he did down here in the valleys did not matter. Purification waited for him among the summit snows. He turned back to hear the last of Sally Bent's voice, whipping his eyes past Gaspar to avoid meeting again that clinging stare.

"Sally Bent," he said, "do you know the prisoner?"

"You know I know him. John Gaspar boards with us."

"Ah, then you know him!"

"That's a silly question. What I want to say is—"

"Wait till you're asked, Sally Bent."

She stamped her foot. Quietly Sinclair compared the girl and the accused man.

"Here's the point," he said slowly. "You knew Quade, and you knew John Gaspar."

"Yes."

"You know Quade's dead?"

"I've just heard it."

"You didn't like him much?"

"I used to like him."

"Until Gaspar blew in?"

"You've got no right to ask those questions."

"I sure have. All right, I gather you were pretty sweet on Quade till Gaspar come along."

"I never said so!"

"Girl," pronounced Riley solemnly, "ain't it a fact that you went around to a lot of parties and suchlike things with Quade?"

She was silent.

"It's the straight thing you're giving her," broke in Larsen. "After Gaspar come, she didn't have no time for none of us!"

"Ah!" said his honor significantly, scowling on Sally Bent. "After you cut out Quade, he got ugly, didn't he?"

"He sure did!" said Sally. "He said things that no gentleman would of said to a lady."

"Such as what?"

"Such as that I was a flirt. And he said, I swear to it, that he'd get Gaspar!" She stopped, panting with excitement. "He wanted to murder John Gaspar!"

Riley Sinclair lifted his heavy brows. "That's a pretty serious thing to say, Sally Bent."

"But, it's the truth! And I've even heard him threaten Gaspar!"

"But you tried to make them friends? You tried to smooth Quade down?"

"I wouldn't waste my time on a bully! I just told John to get a gun and be ready to defend himself."

"And he done it?"

"He done it. But he never fired the gun."

"What was the last time Quade seen you?"

"The day before yesterday. He come up here and told me that he knew me and John Gaspar was going to get married, and that he wouldn't stand still and see the thing go through."

"But what he said was right, wasn't it? Gaspar had asked you to marry him?"

She dropped her head. "No."

"What? You mean to say that Gaspar hadn't told you he loved you?"

"Never! But now that John's in this trouble, I don't care if the whole world knows it! I love John Gaspar!"

What a voice! What a lighted face, as she turned to the prisoner. But, instead of a flush of happiness, John Gaspar rose and shrank away from the outstretched hands of the girl. And he was pale—pale with sorrow, and even with pity, it seemed to Sinclair.

"No, no," said the soft voice of Gaspar. "Not that, Sally. Not that!"

Decidedly it would not do to let this scene progress. "Take away the witness, Montana."

Montana drew her arm into his, and she went away as one stunned, staring at John Gaspar as if she could not yet understand the extent of the calamity which had befallen her. She had been worse than scorned. She had been rejected with pity!

As she disappeared into the door of her house, Sinclair looked at the bowed head of John Gaspar.

"Denver!" he called suddenly.

"Yes, your honor."

"The prisoner's hands are tied. Wipe the sweat off'n his face, will you?"

"Sure!"

With a large and brilliant bandanna Montana obeyed. Then he paused in the midst of his operation.

"Your honor."

"Well?"

"It ain't sweat. It's tears!"

"Tears!" Riley Sinclair started up, then slumped back on his stump with a groan. "Tears!" he echoed, with a voice that was a groan. "John Gaspar, what kind of a man are you?"

He turned back to the court with a frown.

"Mr. Jury," he said, "look at this prisoner we got. Look him over considerable. I say, did you ever see a man like that? A man that ain't able to love a girl like Sally Bent when she just about throws herself at his head? Is he worth keeping alive? Look at him, and then listen to me. I see the whole of it, Mr. Jury."

Buck Mason leaned forward with interest, glowering upon John Gaspar.

"This skunk of a John Gaspar gets Sally all tied up with his sappy talk. Gets her all excited because he's something brand new and different. Quade gets sore, nacherallike. Then he comes to Gaspar and says: 'Cut out this soft talk to Sally, or I'll bust your head.' Gaspar don't love Sally, but he's afraid of Quade. He goes and gets a gun. He goes to Quade's house and tries to be friends. Quade kicks him out. Gaspar climbs back on his hoss and, while he's sitting there, pulls out a gun and shoots poor Quade dead. Don't that sound nacheral? He wouldn't marry Sally, but he didn't want another man to have her. And he wouldn't give up his soft berth in the house of Sally's brother. He knew Quade would never suspect him of having the nerve to fight. So he takes Quade unready and plugs him, while Quade ain't looking. Is that clear?"

"It sure sounds straight to me," said Buck Mason.

"All right! Stand up."

Mason rose.

"Take off your hat."

The sombrero was withdrawn with a flourish.

"God's up yonder higher'n that hawk, but seeing you clear, Buck. Tell us straight. Is Gaspar guilty or not?"

"Guilty as hell, your honor!"

A sigh from the prisoner. The last of life seemed to go from him, and Sinclair braced himself to meet a hysterical appeal. But there was only that slight drooping of the shoulders and declining of the head.

It was an appalling thing for Sinclair to watch. He was used to power in men and beasts. He understood it. A cunning devil of a fighting outlaw horse was his choice for a ride. "The meaner they are, the longer they last," he used to say. He respected men of evil as long as they were men of action. He was perfectly at home and contented among men, where one's purse and life were at constant hazard, where a turned back might mean destruction.

To him this meek surrender of hope was incomprehensibly despicable. If he had hesitated before, his hard soul was firm now in the decision that John Gaspar must die, and so leave Sinclair's own road free. With all suspicion of a connection between him and Quade's death gone, Riley could play a free hand against Sandersen. He turned a face of iron upon the prisoner.

"Sandersen and Denver Jim, bring the prisoner before me."

They obeyed. But when they reached down their hands to Gaspar's shoulders to drag him to his feet, he avoided them with a shudder and of his own free will rose and walked between them.

"John Irving Gaspar," said Sinclair sternly, "alias Jig, alias Cold Feet—which is a fitting and proper name for you—have you got anything to say that won't take too long before I pronounce sentence on you?"

He had to set his teeth. The sad eyes of John Gaspar had risen from the ground and fixed steadily, darkly upon the eyes of his judge. There was infinite understanding, infinite patience in that look, the patience of the weak man, schooled in enduring buffets. For the moment Sinclair almost felt that the man was pitying him!

"I have only a little to say," said John Gaspar.

"Speak up then. Who d'you want to give the messages to?"

"To no living man," said John Gaspar.

"All right then, Gaspar. Blaze away with the talk, but make it short."

John Gaspar raised his head until he was looking through the stalwart branches of the cottonwood tree, into the haze of light above.

"Our Father in Heaven," said John Gaspar, "forgive them as I forgive them!"

Riley Sinclair, quivering under those words, looked around him upon the stunned faces of the rest of the court; then back to the calm of Gaspar. Strength seemed to have flooded the coward. At the moment when he lost all hope, he became glorious. His voice was soft, never rising, and the great, dark eyes were steadfast. A sudden consciousness came to Riley Sinclair that God must indeed be above them, higher than the flight of the hawk, robed in the maze of that lofty cloud, seeing all, hearing all. And every word that Gaspar spoke was damning him, dragging him to hell.

But Riley Sinclair was not a religious man. Luck was his divinity. He left God and heaven and hell inside the pages of the Bible, undisturbed. The music of the schoolteacher's voice reminded him of the purling of some tiny waterfall in the midst of a mountain wilderness.

"I have no will to fight for life. For that sin, forgive me, and for whatever else I have done wrong. Let no knowledge of the crime they are committing come to these men. Fierce men, fighters, toilers, full of hate, full of despair, full of rage, how can they be other than blind? Forgive them, as I forgive them without malice. And most of all, Lord God, forgive this most unjust judge."

"Louder!" whispered Sinclair, his hand cupped behind his ear.

"Amen," said John Gaspar, as his head bowed again. The fascinated posse seemed frozen, each man in his place, each in his attitude.

"John Gaspar," said his honor, "here's your sentence: You're to be hanged by the neck till you're dead."

John Gaspar closed his eyes and opened them again. Otherwise he made no move of protest.

"But not," continued Sinclair, "from this cottonwood tree."

A faint sigh, indubitably of relief, came from the posse.

Riley Sinclair arose. "Gents," he said, "I been thinking this over. They ain't any doubt that the prisoner is guilty, and they ain't any doubt that John Gaspar is no good, anyway you look at him. But a gent that can put the words together like he can, ought to get a chance to talk in front of a regular jury. I figure we'd better send for the sheriff to come over from Woodville and take the prisoner back there. One of you gents can slide over there today, and the sheriff'll be here tomorrow, mostlike."

"But who'll take charge of Gaspar?"

"Who? Why me, of course! Unless somebody else would like the job more? I'll keep him right here in the Bent cabin."

"Sinclair," protested Buck Mason, "you're a pretty capable sort. They ain't no doubt of that. But what if Jerry Bent comes home, which he's sure to do before night? There'd be a mess, because Jerry'd fight for Gaspar, I know!"

"Partner," said Riley Sinclair dryly, "if it come to that, then I guess I'd have to fight back."

It was foolish to question the power in that grave, sardonic face. The other men gave way, nodding one by one. Secretly each man, now that the excitement was gone, was glad that they had not proceeded to the last extremity. In five minutes they were drifting away, and all this time Sinclair watched the face of John Gaspar, as the sorrow changed to wonder, and the wonder to the vague beginnings of happiness.

Suddenly he felt that he had the clue to the mystery of Cold Feet. As a matter of fact John Gaspar had never grown up. He was still a weak, dreamy boy.



10

The posse had hardly thrown its masks to the wind and galloped down the road when Sally Bent came running from the house.

"I knew they couldn't," she cried to John Gaspar. "I knew they wouldn't dare. The cowards! I'll remember every one of them!"

"Hush!" murmured Gaspar. His faint smile was for Riley Sinclair. "One of them is still here, you see!"

With wrath flushing her face, the girl looked at Riley.

"How do you dare to stay here and face me—after the things you said!"

"Lady," replied Sinclair, "you mean after the things I made you say."

"Just wait till Jerry comes," exclaimed Sally.

At this Sinclair grew more sober.

"Honey," he said dryly, "when your brother drops in, you just calm him down, will you? Because if him and Gaspar together was to start in raising trouble—well, they'd be more action than you ever seen in that cabin before. And, after it was all over, they'd have a dead Gaspar to cart over to Woodville. You can lay to that!"

It took Sally somewhat aback, this confident ferociousness.

"Them that brag ain't always the ones that do things," she declared. "But why are you staying here?"

"To keep Gaspar till the sheriff comes for him."

Sally grew white.

"Don't you see that there's nothing to be afraid of?" asked John Gaspar. "See how close I came to death, and yet I was saved. Why, God doesn't let innocent men be killed, Sally."

For a moment the girl stared at the schoolteacher with tears in her eyes; then she flashed at Riley a glance of utter scorn, as if inviting him to see what an angel upon the earth he was persecuting. But Sinclair remained unmoved.

He informed them of the conditions of his stay. He must be allowed to keep John Gaspar in sight at all times. Only suspicious moves he would resent with violence. Sally Bent heard all of this with openly expressed hatred and contempt. John Gaspar showed no emotion whatever.

"By heaven," declared Sinclair, when the girl had gone about some housework, "I'd actually think you believed that God was on your side. You talk about Him so familiar—like you and Him was partners."

John Gaspar smiled one of his rare smiles. He had a way of looking for a long moment at another before he spoke. All that he was about to say was first registered in his face. It was easy to understand how Sally Bent had been entrapped by the classic regularity of those features and the strange manner of the schoolteacher. She lived in a country where masculine men were a drug on the market. John Gaspar was the pleasant exception.

"You see," explained Gaspar, "I had to cheer Sally by saying something like that. Women like to have such things said. She'll be absolutely confident now, because she thinks I'm not disturbed. Very odd, but very true."

"And it seems to me," said Sinclair, frowning, "that you're not much disturbed, Gaspar. How does that come?"

"What can I do?"

"Maybe you'd be man enough to try to break away."

"From you? Tush! I know it is impossible. I'd as soon try to hide myself in an open field from that hawk. No, no! I'll give you my parole, my word of honor that I'll make no escape."

But Sinclair struck in with: "I don't want your parole. Hang it, man, just do your best, and I'll do mine. You try to give me the slip, and I'll try to keep you from it. That's square all around."

Gaspar observed him with what seemed to be a characteristic air of judicious reserve, very much as if he suspected a trap. A great many words came up into the throat of Riley Sinclair, but he refrained from speech.

In a way he was beginning to detest John Gaspar as he had never detested any human being before or since. To him no sin was so great as the sin of weakness in a man, and certainly Gaspar was superlatively weak. He had something in place of courage, but just what that thing was, Sinclair could not tell.

Curiosity drew him toward the fellow; and these weaknesses repulsed him. No wonder that he stared at him now in a quandary. One certainty was growing upon him. He wished Gaspar to escape. It would bring him shame in Sour Creek, but for the opinion of these men he had not the slightest respect. Let them think as they pleased.

It came home to Riley that this was a man whose like he had never known before, and whom he must not, therefore, judge as if he knew him. He softened his voice. "Gaspar," he said, "keep your head up. Make up your mind that you'll fight to the last gasp. Why, it makes me plumb sick to see a grown man give up like you do!"

His scorn rang in his voice, and Gaspar looked at him in wonder.

"You'd ought to be packing yourself full of courage," went on Sinclair. "Here's your pal, Jerry Bent, coming back. Two agin' one, you'll be. Ain't that a chance, I ask you?"

But Gaspar shook his head. He seemed even a little amused.

"Not against a man like you, Sinclair. You love fighting, you see. You're made for fighting. You make me think of that hawk. All beak and talons, made to tear, remorseless, crafty."

"That's overrating me a pile," muttered Riley, greatly pleased by this tribute, as he felt it to be. "If you tried, maybe you could do a lot yourself. You're full of nerves, and a gent that's full of nerves makes a first-class fighting man, once he finds out what he can do. With them fingers of yours you could learn to handle a gun like a flash. Start in and learn to be a man, Gaspar!"

Sinclair stretched a friendly hand toward the shoulder of the smaller man. The hand passed through thin air. Gaspar had slipped away. He stood at a greater distance. On his face there was a strong expression of displeasure.

Sinclair scowled darkly. "Now what d'you mean by that?"

"I mean that I don't envy you," said Gaspar steadily. "I'd rather have the other thing."

"What other thing, Jig?"

Gaspar overlooked the contemptuous nickname, doubly contemptuous on the lips of a stranger.

"You go into the world and take what you want. I'm stronger than that."

"How are you stronger?" asked Riley.

"Because I sit in my room, and I can make the world come to me."

"Jig, I was never smart at riddles. Go ahead and clear yourself up with a few more words."

The other hesitated—not for words, but as if he wondered if it might be worth while for him to explain. Never in Riley Sinclair's life had he been taken so lightly.

"Will you follow me into the house?" asked Gaspar at length.

"I'll follow you, right enough," said Sinclair. "That's my job. Lead on."

He was brought through the living room of the cabin and into a smaller room to the side.

Comfort seemed to fill this smaller room. Bookcases ranged along one wall were packed with books. The couch before the window was heaped with cushions. There was an easy chair with an adjustable back, so that one could either sit or lie in it. There was a lamp with a big greenish-yellow shade.

"This is what I mean," murmured Jig.

Riley Sinclair's bold eye roved swiftly, contemptuously. "Well, you got this place fixed up pretty stuffy," he answered. "Outside of that, hang me if I see what you mean."

Cold Feet slipped into a chair and, interlacing those fingers whose delicacy baffled and disturbed Sinclair, stared over them at his companion.

"I really shouldn't expect you to understand, my friend."

"Friend!" Sinclair exploded. "You're a queer bird, Jig. What do you mean by 'friend'?"

"Why not?" asked this amazing youth, and the quiet of his face brightened into a smile. "I'd be swinging from the end of a rope if it weren't for you, you know."

Sinclair shrugged away this rejoinder. He trod heavily to the bookshelves, took up two or three random volumes, and tossed them heedlessly back into place.

"Well, kid, you're going to be yanked out of this little imitation world of yours pretty pronto."

"Ah, but perhaps not!"

"Eh?"

"Something may happen."

"What can happen?"

"Just something like you, my friend."

The insistence on that word irritated Riley Sandersen.

"Don't call me that," he replied in his most brutal manner. "Jig, d'you know what a friend means?" he asked. "How d'you figure that word out?"

Jig considered. "A friend is somebody you know and like and are glad to have around."

Contempt spread on the face of Sinclair. "That's just about what I knew you'd say."

"Am I wrong?"

"Son, they ain't anything right about you, as far as I can make out. Wrong? You're as wrong as a yearling in a blizzard. Wrong? I should tell a man you're wrong! Lemme tell you what a friend is. He's the bunkie that guards your back in a fight; he's the man that can ask for your hoss or your gun or your life, no matter how bad you want 'em; he's the gent that trusts you when the world calls you a liar; he's the one that don't grin when you're in trouble, who gives a cheer when you're going good. With a friend you let down the bars and turn your mind loose like wild hosses. I take out my soul like a gun and show it to my friend in the palm of my hand. It's sure full of holes and stains, this life of mine, but my friend checks off the good agin' the bad, and when you're through he says: 'Partner, now I like you better because I know you better.'

"Son, I don't know what God means very well, and I ain't any bunkie of the law, but I'm tolerable well acquainted with what the word 'friend' means. When you use it, you want to look sharp."

"I really believe," Jig said, "that you would be a friend like that. I think I understand."

"You don't, though. To a friend you give yourself away, and you get yourself back bigger and stronger."

"I didn't know," said Jig softly, "that friendship could mean all that. How many friends have you had?"

The big cowpuncher paused. Then he said gently at length, "One friend."

"In all your life?"

"Sure! I was lucky and had one friend."

Cold Feet leaned forward, eagerness in his eyes. "Tell me about him!"

"I don't know you well enough, son."

That jarring speech thrust Jig back into his chair, as if with a physical hand. There, as though in covert, he continued to study Sinclair. Presently he began to nod.

"I knew it from the first, in spite of appearances."

"Knew what?"

"Knew that we'd get along."

"And are we getting along, Jig?"

"I think so."

"Glad of that," muttered the cowpuncher dryly.

"Ah," cried John Gaspar, "you're not as hard as you seem. One of these days I'll prove it. Besides, you won't forget me."

"What makes you so sure of that?"

Jig rose from his chair and stood leaning against it, his hands dropped lightly into the pockets of his dressing gown. He looked extraordinarily boyish at that moment, and he seemed to have the fearlessness of a child which knows that the world has no real account against it. Riley Sinclair set his teeth to keep back a flood of pity that rose in him.

"You wait and see," said Jig. He raised a finger at Sinclair. "I'll keep coming back into your mind a long time after you leave me; and you'll keep coming back into my mind. Oh, I know it!"

"How in thunder do you?"

"I don't know. Just because—well, how did I understand at the trial that you knew I was innocent, and that you would let no harm come to me?"

"Did you know that?" asked Sinclair.

Instead of answering, Jig broke into his soft, pleasant laughter.



11

"Laugh and be hanged," declared Sinclair. "I'm going outside. And don't try no funny breaks while I'm gone," he said. "I'll be watching and waiting when you ain't expecting." With that he was gone.

At the door of the house a gust of hot wind struck him, for the day was verging on noon, and there seemed more heat than light in the sun. Even to that hot gust Sinclair jerked his bandanna knot aside and opened his throat gratefully. He felt as if he had been under a hard nervous strain for some time past. Cold Feet, the craven, the weak of hand and the frail of spirit, had tested him in a new way. He had been confronting a novel and unaccountable thing. He felt very oddly as if someone had been prodding into corners of his nature yet unknown even to himself. He tingled from the rapier touches of that last laughter.

Now his eyes roamed with relief across the valley. Heat waves blurred the hollow and pushed Sour Creek away until it seemed a river of mist—yellow mist. He raised his attention out of that sweltering hollow to the cool, blue, mighty mountains—his country!

Presently he had forgotten all this. He settled his hat on the back of his head and began to kick a stone before him, following it aimlessly.

Someone was humming close to him, and he turned sharply to see Sally Bent go by, carrying a bucket. She smiled generously, and though he knew that she doubtless hated him in her heart and smiled for a purpose, he had to reply with a perfunctory grin. He stalked after her to the little leaping creek and dipped out a full bucket.

"Thanks," said Sally, wantonly meeting his eye.

As well try to soften a sphinx. Sinclair carried the dripping bucket on the side nearest the girl and thereby gained valuable distance. "I'm mighty glad it's you and not one of the rest," confided Sally, still smiling firmly up to him.

He avoided that appeal with a grunt.

"Like Sandersen, say," went on the girl.

"Why not him?"

"He's a bad hombre," said the girl. "Hate to have Jig in his hands. With you it's different."

Sinclair waited until he had put down the bucket in the kitchen. Then he faced Sally thoughtfully.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because you're reasonable."

"Did Jig tell you that?"

"And a pile more. Jig says you're a pretty fine sort. That's his words."

The cowpuncher caressed the butt of his gun with his fingertips, his habitual gesture when in doubt.

"Lady," he said at length, "suppose I cut this short? You think I ain't going to keep Cold Feet here till the sheriff comes for him?"

"You see what it would mean?" she asked eagerly. "It wouldn't be a fair trial. You couldn't get a fair jury for Jig around Sour Creek and Woodville. They hate him—all the young men do. D'you know why? Simply because he's different! Simply because—"

"Because all the girls are pretty fond of him, eh?"

"You can put it that way if you want," she answered steadily enough, though she flushed under his stare. Then: "you'll keep that in mind, and you're man enough to do what you think is right, ain't you, Mr. Sinclair?"

He shifted away from the hand which was moving toward him.

"I'll tell you what," he answered. "I'm man enough to be afraid of a girl like you, Sally Bent."

Then he saw her head fall in despair, as he turned away. When he reached the shimmering heat of the outdoors again, he was feeling like a murderer. His reason told him that Cold Feet was "yaller," not worth saving. His reason told him that he could save Jig only by a confession that would drive him, Sinclair, away from Sour Creek and his destined victim, Sandersen. Or he could save Jig by violating the law, and that also would drive him from Sour Creek and Sandersen.

Suddenly he halted in the midst of his pacing to and fro. Why was he turning these alternatives back and forth in his mind? Because, he understood all at once, he had subconsciously determined that Cold Feet must not die!

The face of his brother rose up and looked into his eyes. That was the friend of whom he would not speak to Jig, brother and friend at once. And as surely as ever ghost called to living man, that face demanded the death of Sandersen. He blinked the vision away.

"I am going nutty," muttered Sinclair. "Whether Sandersen lives or dies, Jig ain't going to dance at a rope's end!"

Presently Sally called him in to lunch, and Riley ate halfheartedly. All during the meal neither Sally nor John Gaspar had more than a word for him, while they talked steadily together. They seemed to understand each other so well that he felt a hidden insult in it.

Once or twice he made a heavy attempt to enter the conversation, always addressing his remarks to Sally Bent. He was received graciously, but his remarks always fell dead, and a moment later Cold Feet had picked up the frayed ends of his own talk and won the entire attention of Sally. Riley was beginning to understand why the youth of that district detested Cold Feet.

"Always takes some soft-handed dude to make a winning with a fool girl," he comforted himself.

He expected the arrival of Jerry Bent before nightfall, and with that arrival, perhaps, there would be a new sort of attack on him. Sally and Cold Feet were trying persuasion, but they might encourage Jerry Bent to attempt physical force. With all his heart Riley Sinclair hoped so. He had a peculiar desire to do something significant for the eyes of both Sally and Jig.

But nightfall came, and then supper, and still no Jerry appeared. Afterward, Sinclair made ready to sleep in Jig's room. Cold Feet offered him the couch.

"Beds and me don't hitch" declared Riley, throwing two or three of the rugs together. "I ain't particular partial to a floor, neither, but these here rugs will give it a sort of a ground softness."

He sat cross-legged on the low pile of rugs, while he pulled off his boots and smoked his good-night cigarette. Jig coiled up in a big chair, while he studied his jailer.

"But how can you go to bed so early?" he asked.

"Early? It ain't early. Sun's down, ain't it? Why do they bring on night, except for folks to go to sleep?"

"For my part the best part of the day generally begins when the sun goes down."

With patient contempt Riley considered John Gaspar. "You look kind of that way," he decided aloud. "Pale and not much good with your shoulders. Now, what d'you most generally do with your time in the evening?"

"Why—talk."

"Talk? Huh! A fine way of wasting time for a growed-up man."

"And I read, you know."

"I can see by the looks of them shelves that you do. How many of them books might you have read, Jig?"

"All of them."

"I ask you, man to man, ain't they mostly somebody's idea of what life is?"

"I suppose that's a short way of putting it."

"And I ask you ag'in, what's better to take a secondhand hunch out of what somebody else thinks life might be, or to go out and do some living on your own hook?"

Cold Feet had been smiling faintly up to this point, as though he had many things in reserve which might be said at need. Now his smile disappeared.

"Perhaps you're right."

"And maybe I ain't." Sinclair brushed the entire argument away into a thin mist of smoke. "Now, look here, Cold Feet, I'm about to go to sleep, and when I sleep, I sure sleep sound, taking it by and large. They's times when I don't more'n close one eye all night, and they's times when you'd have to pull my eyes open, one by one, to wake me up. Understand? I'm going to sleep the second way tonight. About eight hours of the soundest sleep you ever heard tell of."

Jig considered him gravely.

"I'm afraid," he answered, "that I won't sleep nearly as well."

Riley Sinclair smiled. "Wouldn't be no ways nacheral for you to do much sleeping," he agreed. "Take a gent that's in danger of having his neck stretched, like you, and most generally he don't do much sleeping. He lies around awake, cussing his luck, I s'pose. Take you, now, Cold Feet, and I s'pose you'll be figuring on how far a hoss could carry you in the eight hours that I'll be sleeping. Eh?"

There was a suggestive lift of the eyebrows, as he spoke, but before Jig had a chance to study his face, he had turned and wrapped himself in one of the rugs. He lay perfectly still, stretched on one side, with his back turned to Jig. He stirred neither hand nor foot.

Outside, a door slammed heavily; Cold Feet heard the heavy voice of Jerry Bent and the beat of his heels across the floor. In spite of those noises Riley Sinclair was presently sound asleep, as he had promised. Gaspar knew it by the rise and fall of the arm which lay along Sinclair's side, also by the sound of his breathing.

Cold Feet went to the window and looked out on the mountains, black and huge, with a faint shimmer of snow on the farthest summits. At the very thought of trying to escape into that wilderness and wandering alone among the peaks, he shuddered. He came back and studied the sleeper. Something about the nonchalance with which Sinclair had gone to sleep under the very eye of his prisoner affected John Gaspar strangely. Doubtless it was sheer contempt for the man he was guarding. And, indeed, something assured Jig that, no matter how well he employed the next eight hours in putting a great distance between himself and Sour Creek, the tireless riding of Sinclair would more than make up the distance.

Gaspar went to the door, then turned sharply and glanced over his shoulder at the sleeper; but the eyes of Sinclair were still closed, and his regular breathing continued. Jig turned the knob cautiously and slipped out into the living room.

Jerry and Sally beckoned instantly to him from the far side of the room. The beauty of the family had descended upon Sally alone. Jerry was a swart-skinned, squat, bow-legged, efficient cowpuncher. He now ambled awkwardly to meet John Gaspar.

"Are you all set?" he asked.

"For what?"

"To start on the trail!" exclaimed Jerry. "What else? Ain't Sinclair asleep?"

"How d'you know?"

"I listened at the door and heard his breathing a long time ago. Thought you'd never come out."

Sally Bent was already on the other side of Gaspar, drawing him toward the door.

"You can have my hoss, Jig," she offered. "Meg is sure as sin in the mountains. You won't have nothing to fear on the worst trail they is."

"Not a thing," asserted Jerry.

They half led and half dragged Cold Feet to the door.

"I'll show you the best way. You see them two peaks yonder, like a pair of mule's ears? You start—"

"I don't know," said Jig. "It seems very difficult, even to think of riding alone through those mountains."

Sally was white with fear. "You ain't going to throw away this chance, Jig? It'll mean hanging sure, if you don't run now. Ask Jerry what they're saying in Sour Creek tonight?"

Jerry volunteered the information. "They're all wondering why you wasn't strung up today, when they got so much evidence agin' you. Also they're thinking that the boys played plumb foolish in turning you over to this stranger, Sinclair, to guard. But they're waiting for Sheriff Kern to come over from Woodville an' nab you in the morning. They's some that says that they won't wait, if it looks like the law is going to take too long to hang you. They'll get up a necktie party and break the jail and do their own hanging. I heard all them things and more, Jig."

John Gaspar looked uncertainly from one to the other of his friends.

"You've got to go!" cried Sally.

"I've got to go," admitted Cold Feet in a whisper.

"I've got Meg saddled for you already. She's plumb gentle."

"Just a minute. I've forgotten something."

"You don't mean you're going back into that room where Sinclair is?"

"I won't waken him. He's sleeping like the dead."

Jig turned away from them and hurried back to his room. Having opened and closed the door softly, he went to a chest of drawers near the window and fumbled in the half-light of the low-burning lamp. He slipped a small leather case into the breast pocket of his coat, and then stole back toward the door, as softly as before. With his hand on the knob, he paused and looked back. For all he knew, Sinclair might be really awake now, watching his quarry from beneath those heavy lashes, waiting until his prisoner should have made a definite attempt to escape.

And then the big man would rise to his feet as soon as the door was closed. The picture became startlingly real to John Gaspar. Sinclair would slip out that window, no doubt, and circle around toward the horse shed. There he would wait until his prisoner came out on Meg, and then without warning would come a shot, and there would be an end of Sinclair's trouble with his prisoner. Gaspar could easily attribute such cunning cruelty to Sinclair. And yet there was something untested, unprobed, different about the rangy fellow.

Whatever it was, it kept Gaspar staring down into the lean face of Sinclair for a long moment. Then he went resolutely back into the living room and faced Sally Bent; Jerry was already waiting outdoors.

"I'm not going," said Gaspar slowly. "I'll stay."

Sally cried out. "Oh, Jig, have you lost your nerve ag'in? Ain't you got no courage?"

The schoolteacher sighed. "I'm afraid not, Sally. I guess my only courage comes in waiting and seeing how things turn out."

He turned and went gloomily back to his room.



12

With the first brightness of dawn, Sinclair wakened even more suddenly that he had fallen asleep. There was no slow adjusting of himself to the requirements of the day. One prodigious stretching of the long arms, one great yawn, and he was as wide awake as he would be at noon. He jerked on his boots and rose, and not until he stood up, did he see John Gaspar asleep in the big chair, his head inclining to one side, the book half-fallen from his hand, and the lamp sputtering its last beside him. But instead of viewing the weary face with pity, Sinclair burst into sudden and amazed profanity.

The first jarring note brought Gaspar up and awake with a start, and he stared in astonishment at the uninterrupted flood which rippled from the lips of the cowpuncher. It concluded: "Still here! Of all the shorthorned fatheads that I ever seen, the worst is this Gaspar—this Jig—this Cold Feet. Say, man, ain't you got no spirit at all?"

"What do you mean?" asked Gaspar. "Still here? Of course I'm still here! Did you expect me to escape?"

Sinclair flung himself into a chair, speechless with rage and disgust.

"Did you think I was joking when I told you I was going to sleep eight hours without waking up?"

"It might very well have been a trap, you know."

Sinclair groaned. "Son, they ain't any man in the world that'll tell you that Riley Sinclair sets his traps for birds that ain't got their stiff feathers growed yet. Trap for you? What in thunder should I want you for, eh?"

He strode to the window, still groaning.

"There's where you'd ought to be, over yonder behind them mule ears. They'd never catch you in a thousand years with that start. Eight hours start! As good as have eight years, kid—just as good. And you've throwed that chance away!"

He turned and stared mournfully at the schoolteacher.

"It ain't no use," he said sadly. "I see it all now. You was cut out to end in a rope collar."

Not another word could be pried from his set lips during breakfast, a gloomy meal to which Sally Bent came with red eyes, and Jerry Bent sullenly, with black looks at Sinclair. Jig was the cheeriest one of the party. That cheer at last brought another explosion from Sinclair. They stood in front of the house, watching a horseman wind his way up the road through the hills.

"It's Sheriff Kern," said Jerry Bent. "I can tell by the way he rides, sort of slanting. It's Kern, right enough."

Sally Bent choked, but Jig continued to hum softly.

"Singin'?" asked Riley Sinclair suddenly. "Ain't you no more worried than that?"

The voice of the schoolteacher in reply was as smooth as running water. "I think you'll bring me out of the trouble safely enough, Mr. Sinclair."

"Mr. Sinclair'll see you damned before he lifts a hand for you!" Riley retorted savagely.

He strode to his horse and expended his wrath by viciously jerking at the cinches, until the mustang groaned. Sheriff Kern came suddenly into clear view around the last turn and rode quickly up to them, a very short man, muscular, sweaty. He always gave the impression that he had been working ceaselessly for a week, and certainly he found time to shave only once in ten days. Dense bristle clouded the lower features of his face. He was a taciturn man. His greetings took the form of a single grunt. He took possession of John Gaspar with a single glance that sent the latter nervously toward his saddle horse.

"I see you got this party all ready for me," said the sheriff more amiably to Riley Sinclair, who was watching in disgust the clumsy method of Jig's mounting. "You're Sinclair, I guess?"

"I'm Sinclair, sheriff."

They shook hands.

"Nice bit of work you done for me, Sinclair, keeping the boys from stringing up Jig, yonder. These here lynchings don't set none too well on the reputation of a sheriff. I guess we're ready to start. S'long Sally—Jerry. Are you riding our way, Sinclair?"

"I thought I'd happen along. Ain't never seen Woodville yet."

"Glad to have you. But they ain't much to see unless you look twice at the same thing."

They started down the trail three abreast.

"Ride on ahead," commanded Sinclair to Jig. "We don't want you riding in the same line with men. Git on ahead!"

John Gaspar obeyed that brutal order with bowed head. He rode listlessly, with loose rein, letting the pony pick its own way. Once Sinclair looked back to Sally Bent, weeping in the arms of her brother. Again his face grew black.

"And yet," confided the sheriff softly, "I ain't never heard no trouble about this Gaspar before."

"He's poison," declared Sinclair bitterly, and he raised his voice that it would unmistakably carry to the shrinking figure before them. "He's such a yaller-hearted skunk, sheriff, that it makes me ashamed of bein' a man!"

"They's only one thing I misdoubt," said the sheriff. "How'd that sort of a gent ever get the nerve to murder a man like Quade? Quade wasn't no tenderfoot, and he could shoot a bit, besides."

"Speaking personal, sheriff, I don't think he done it, now I've had a chance to go over the evidence."

"Maybe he didn't, but most like he'll hang for it. The boys is dead set agin' him. First, he's a dude; second, he's a coward. Sour Creek and Woodville wasn't never cut out for that sort. They ain't wanted around."

That speech made Riley Sinclair profoundly thoughtful. He had known well enough before this that there were small chances of Jig escaping from the damning judgment of twelve of these cowpunchers. The statement of the sheriff made the belief a fact. The death sentence of Jig was pronounced the moment the doors of the jail at Woodville clanged upon him.

They struck the trail to Sour Creek and almost immediately swung off on a branch which led south and west, in the opposite direction from the creek. It was a day of high-driving clouds, thin and fleecy, so that they merely filtered the sunlight and turned it into a haze without decreasing the heat perceptibly, and that heat grew until it became difficult to look down at the blazing sand.

Now the trail climbed among broken hills until they reached a summit. From that point on, now and again the road elbowed into view of a wide plain, and in the center of the plain there was a diminutive dump of buildings.

"Woodville," said the sheriff. "Hey, you, Jig, hustle that hoss along!"

Obediently the drooping Gaspar spurred his horse. The animal broke into a gallop that set Gaspar jolting in the seat, with wildly flopping elbows.

"Look at that," said Sinclair. "Would you ever think that men could be born as awkward as that? Would you ever think that men would be born that didn't have no use in the world?"

"He ain't altogether useless," decided the sheriff. "Seems as how he's done noble in the school. Takes on with the little boys and girls most amazing, and he knows how to keep even the eighth graders interested. But what can you expect of a gent that ain't got no more pride than to be a schoolteacher, eh?"

Sinclair shook his head.

The trail drifted downward now less brokenly, and Woodville came into view. It was a wretched town in a wretched landscape, far different from the wild hills and the rich plowed grounds around Sour Creek. All that came to life in the brief spring, the long summer had long since burned away to drab yellows and browns. A horrible place to die in, Sinclair thought.

"Speaking of hosses, that's a wise-looking hoss you got, sheriff."

"Rode him for five years," said the sheriff. "Raised him and busted him and trained him all by myself. Ain't nobody but me ever rode him. He can go so soft-footed he wouldn't bust eggs, sir, and he can turn loose and run like the wind. They ain't no better hoss than this that's come under my eye, Sinclair. Are you much on the points of a hoss?"

"I use hosses—I don't love 'em," said Sinclair gloomily. "But I can read the points tolerable."

The sheriff eyed Sinclair coldly. "So you don't love hosses, eh?" he said, returning distantly to the subject. It was easy to see where his own heart lay by the way his roan picked up its head whenever its master spoke.

"Sheriff," explained Sinclair, "I'm a single-shot gent. I don't aim to have no scatter fire in what I like. They's only one man that I ever called friend, they's only one place that I ever called home—the mountains, yonder—and they's only one hoss that I ever took to much. I raised Molly up by hand, you might say. She was ugly as sin, but they wasn't nothing she couldn't do—nothing!" He paused. "Sheriff, I used to talk to that hoss!"

The sheriff was greatly moved. "What became of her?" he asked softly.

"I took after a gent once. He couldn't hit me, but he put a slug through Molly."

"What became of the gent?" asked the sheriff still more softly.

"He died just a little later. Just how I ain't prepared to state."

"Good!" said the sheriff. He actually smiled in the pleasure of newfound kinship. "You and me would get on proper, Sinclair."

"Most like."

"This hoss of mine, now, has sense enough to take me home without me touching a rein. Knows direction like a wolf."

"Could you guide her with your knees?"

"Sure."

"And she's plumb safe with you?"

"Sure."

"I know a gent once that said he'd trust himself tied hand and foot on his hoss."

"That goes for me and my hoss, too, Sinclair."

"Well, then, just shove up them hands, sheriff!"

The sheriff blinked, as the sun flashed on the revolver in the steady hand of Sinclair. There was a significant little jerking up of the revolver. Each time the muzzle stirred, the hands of the sheriff jumped higher and higher until his arms were stiffly stretched. Gaspar had halted his horse and looked back in amazement.

"I hate to do it," declared Sinclair. "Right off I sort of took to you, sheriff. But this has got to be done."

"Sinclair, have you done much thinking before you figured this all out?"

"Enough! If I knowed you one shade better, sheriff, I'd take your word that you'd ride on into Woodville, good and slow, and not start no pursuit. But I don't know you that well. I got to tie you on the back of that steady old hoss of yours and turn you loose. We need that much start."

He dismounted, still keeping careful aim, took the rope coiled beside the sheriff's own saddle horn and began a swift and sure process of tying. He worked deftly, without undue fear or haste, and Gaspar came back to look on with scared eyes.

"You're a fool, Sinclair," murmured the sheriff. "You'll never get shut of me. I'll foller you till I drop dead. I'll never forget you. Change your mind now, and we'll say nothing has happened. But if you keep on, you're done for as sure as my name is Kern. Take you by yourself, and you'd be a handful to catch. But two is easier than one, and, when one of them two is a deadweight like Gaspar, they ain't nothing to it."

He finished his appeal completely trussed.

"I ain't tied you on the hoss," said Sinclair. "Take note of that. Also I'm leaving you your guns, sheriff."

"I hope you'll have a chance to see 'em come out of the holster later on, Sinclair."

The cowpuncher took no notice of this bitterness. Gaspar, who looked on, was astonished by a certain deferential politeness on the part of the big cowpuncher.

"Speaking personal, I hope I don't never have no trouble with you, sheriff. I like you, understand?"

"Have your little joke, Sinclair!"

"I mean it. I know I'm usin' you like a skunk. But I got a special need, and I can't take no chances. Sheriff, I tell you out of my heart that I'm sorry! Will you believe me?"

The sheriff smiled. "The same as you'll believe me when we change parts, Sinclair."

The big man sighed. "I s'pose it's got to be that way," he said. "But if you come for me, Kern, come all primed for action. It'll be a hard trail."

"That's my specialty."

"Well, sheriff, s'long—and good luck!"

The sheriff nodded. "Thanks!"

Pressing his horse with his knees, Kern started down the trail at a slow canter. Sinclair followed the retiring figure, nodding with admiration at the skill with which the sheriff kept his mount under control, merely by power of voice. Presently the latter turned a corner of the trail and was out of sight.

"But—I knew—I knew!" exclaimed John Gaspar. "Only, why did you let him go on into town?" The cold glance of Sinclair rested on his companion. "What would you have done?"

"Tied him up and left him here."

"I think you would—to die in the sun!" He swung up into his saddle. "Now, Gaspar, we've started on what's like to prove the last trail for both of us, understand? By night we'll both be outlawed. They'll have a price on us, and long before night, Kern will be after us. For the first time in your soft-hearted life you've got to work, and you've got to fight."

"I'll do it, Mr. Sinclair!"

"Bah! Save your talk. Talk's dirt cheap."

"I only ask one thing. Why have you done it?"

"Because, you fool, I killed Quade!"



13

From the first there was no thought in the sheriff's mind of riding straight into Woodville, trussed and helpless as he was. Woodville respected him, and the whole district was proud of its sheriff. He knew that five minutes of laughter can blast the finest reputation that was ever built by a lifetime of hard labor. He knew the very faces of the men who would never let the story die, of how the sheriff came into town, not only without his prisoner, but tied hand and foot, helpless in the saddle.

Without his prisoner!

Never before in his twenty years as sheriff had a criminal escaped from his hands. Many a time they had tried, and on those occasions he had brought back a dead body for the hand of the law.

This time he had ample excuse. Any man in the world might admit that he was helpless when such a fellow as Riley Sinclair took him by surprise. He knew Sinclair well by reputation, and he respected all that he had heard.

No matter for that. The fact remained that his unbroken string of successes was interrupted. Perhaps Woodville would explain his failure away. No doubt some of the men knew of Sinclair and would not wonder. They would stand up doughtily for the prowess of their sheriff. Yet the fact held that he had failed. It was a moral defeat more than anything else.

His mind was made up to remain in the mountains until he starved, or until he had removed those shameful ropes—his own rope! At that thought he writhed again. But here an arroyo opening in the ragged wall of a cliff caught his eye. He turned his horse into it and continued on his way until he saw a projecting rock with a ragged edge, left where a great fragment had recently fallen away.

Here he found it strangely awkward and even perilous to dismount without his hands to balance his weight, as he shifted out of the stirrups. In spite of his care, he stumbled over a loose rock as he struck the ground and rolled flat on his back. He got up, grinding his teeth. His hands were tied behind him. He turned his back on the broken rock and sawed the ropes against it. To his dismay he felt the rock edge crumble away. It was some chalky, friable stuff, and it gave at the first friction.

Beads of moisture started out on the sheriff's forehead. Hastily he started on down the arroyo and found another rock, with an edge not nearly so favorable in appearance, but this time it was granite. He leaned his back against it and rubbed with a short shoulder motion until his arms ached, but it was a happy labor. He felt the rock edge taking hold of the ropes, fraying the strands to weakness, and then eating into them. It was very slow work!

The sun drifted up to noon, and still he was leaning against that rock, working patiently, with his head near to bursting, and perspiration, which he could not wipe away, running down to blind him. Finally, when his brain was beginning to reel with the heat, and his shoulders ached to numbness, the last strand parted. The sheriff dropped down to the ground to rest.

Presently he drew out his jackknife and methodically cut the remaining bonds. It came to him suddenly, as he stood up, that someone might have seen this singular performance and carried the tale away for future laughter. The thought drove the sheriff mad. He swung savagely into the saddle and drove his horse at a dead run among the perilous going of that gorge. When he reached the plain he paused, hesitant between a bulldog desire to follow the trail single-handed into the mountains and run down the pair, and a knowledge that he who retreats has an added power that would make such a pursuit rash beyond words.

A phrase which he had coined for the gossips of Woodville, came back into his mind. He was no longer as young as he once was, and even at his prime he shrewdly doubted his ability to cope with Riley Sinclair. With the weight of Gaspar thrown in, the thing became an impossibility. Gaspar might be a weakling, but a man who was capable of murder was always dangerous.

To have been thwarted once was shame enough, but he dared not risk two failures with one man. He must have help in plenty from Woodville, and, fate willing, he would one day have the pleasure of looking down into the dead face of Sinclair; one day have the unspeakable joy of seeing the slender form of Gaspar dangling from the end of a rope.

His mind was filled with the wicked pleasure of these pictures until he came suddenly upon Woodville. He drew his horse back to a dogtrot to enter the town.

It was a short street that led through Woodville, but, short though it was, the news that something was wrong with the sheriff reached the heart of the town before he did. Men were already pouring out on the veranda of the hotel.

"Where is he, sheriff?" was the greeting.

Never before had that question been asked. He switched to one side in his saddle and made the speech that startled the mind of Woodville for many a day.

"Boys, I've been double-crossed. Have any of you heard tell of Riley Sinclair?"

He waited apparently calm. Inwardly he was breathless with excitement, for according to the size of Riley's reputation as a formidable man would be the size of his disgrace. There was a brief pause. Old Shaw filled the gap, and he filled it to the complete satisfaction of the sheriff.

"Young Hopkins was figured for the hardest man up in Montana way," he said. "That was till Riley Sinclair beat him. What about Sinclair?"

"It was him that double-crossed me," said the sheriff, vastly relieved. "He come like a friend, stuck me up on the trail when I wasn't lookin' for no trouble, and he got away with Gaspar."

A chorus, astonished, eager. "What did he do it for?"

"No man'll ever know," said the sheriff.

"Why not?"

"Because Sinclair'll be dead before he has a chance to look a jury in the face."

There were more questions. The little crowd had got its breath again, and the words came in volleys. The sheriff cut sharply through the noise.

"Where's Bill Wood?"

"He's in town now."

"Charley, will you find Billy for me and ask him to slide over to my office? Thanks! Where's Arizona and Red Chalmers?"

"They went back to the ranch."

"Be a terrible big favor if you'd go out and try to find 'em for me, boys. Where's Joe Stockton?"

"Up to the Lewis place."

Old Shaw struck in: "You ain't makin' no mistake in picking the best you can get. You'll need 'em for this Riley Sinclair. I've heard tell about him. A pile!"

The very best that Woodville and its vicinity could offer, was indeed what the sheriff was selecting. Another man would have looked for numbers, but the sheriff knew well enough that numbers meant little speed, and speed was one of the main essentials for the task that lay before him. He knew each of the men he had named, and he had known them for years, with the exception of Arizona. But the latter, coming up from the southland, had swiftly proved his ability in many a brawl.

Bill Wood was a peerless trailer; Red Chalmers would, the sheriff felt, be one day a worthy aspirant for the office which he now held, and Red was the only man the sheriff felt who could succeed to that perilous office. As for Joe Stockton, he was distinctly bad medicine, but in a case like this, it might very well be that poison would be the antidote for poison. Of all the men the sheriff knew, Joe was the neatest hand with a gun. The trouble with Joe was that he appreciated his own ability and was fond of exhibiting his prowess.

Having sent out for his assistants on the chase, the sheriff retired to his office and set his affairs in order. There was not a great deal of paper work connected with his position; in twenty minutes he had cleared his desk, and, by the time he had finished this task, the first of his posse had sauntered into the doorway and stood leaning idly there, rolling a cigarette.

"Have a chair, Bill, will you?" said the sheriff. He tilted back in his own and tossed his heels to the top of his desk. "Getting sort of warm today, ain't it?"

Bill Wood had never seen the sheriff so cheerful. He sat down gingerly, knowing well that some task of great danger lay before them.



14

All that Gaspar dreaded in Riley Sinclair had come true. The schoolteacher drew his horse as far away as the trail allowed and rode on in silence. Finally there was a stumble, and it seemed as if the words were jarred out from his lips, hitherto closely compressed: "You killed Quade!"

A scowl was his answer.

But he persisted in the inquiry with a sort of trembling curiosity, though he could see the angry emotions rise in Sinclair. The emotion of a murderer, perhaps?

"How?"

"With a gun, fool. How d'you think?"

Even that did not halt John Gaspar.

"Was it a fair fight?"

"Maybe—maybe not. It won't bring him back to life!"

Riley laughed with savage satisfaction. Gaspar watched him as a bird might watch a snake. He had heard tales of men who could find satisfaction in a murder, but he had never believed that a human being could actually gloat over his own savagery. He stared at Riley as if he were looking at a wild beast that must be placated.

Thereafter the talk was short. Now and again Sinclair gave some curt direction, but they put mile after mile behind them without a single phrase interchanged. Gaspar began to slump in the saddle. It brought a fierce rebuke from Sinclair.

"Straighten up. Put some of your weight in them stirrups. D'you think any hoss can buck up when it's carrying a pile of lead? Come alive!"

"It's the heat. It takes my strength," protested Gaspar.

"Curse you and your strength! I wouldn't trade all of you for one ear of the hoss you're riding. Do what I tell you!"

Without protest, without a flush of shame at this brutal abuse, John Gaspar attempted to obey. Then, as they topped a rise and reached a crest of a range of hills, Gaspar cried out in surprise. Sour Creek lay in the hollow beneath them.

"But you're running straight into the face of danger!"

"Don't tell me what I'm doing. I know maybe, all by myself!"

He checked his horse and sat his saddle, eying Gaspar with such disgust, such concentrated scorn and contempt, that the schoolteacher winced.

"I've brought you in sight of the town so's you can go home."

"And be hanged?"

"You won't be hanged. I'll send a confession along with you. I've busted the law once. They're after me. They might as well have some more reasons for hitting my trail."

"But is it fair to you?" asked Gaspar, intertwining his nervous fingers.

Sinclair heard the words and eyed the gesture with unutterable disgust. At last he could speak.

"Fair?" he asked in scorn. "Since when have you been interested in playing fair? Takes a man with some nerve to play fair. You've spoiled my game, Gaspar. You've blocked me every way from the start, Cold Feet. I killed Quade, and they's another in Sour Creek that needs killing. That's something you can do. Go down and tell the sheriff when he happens along and show him my confession. Go down and tell him that I ain't running away—that I'm staying close, and that I'm going to nab my second man right under his nose. That'll give him something to think about."

He favored the schoolteacher with another black look and then swung out of the saddle, throwing his reins. He sat down with his back to a stunted tree. Gaspar dismounted likewise and hovered near, after the fashion of a man who is greatly worried. He watched while Sinclair deliberately took out an old stained envelope and the stub of a pencil and started to write. His brows knitted in pain with the effort. Suddenly Gaspar cried: "Don't do it, Mr. Sinclair!"

A slight lifting of Sinclair's heavy brows showed that he had heard, but he did not raise his head.

"Don't do what?"

"Don't try to kill that second man. Don't do it!"

Gaspar was rewarded with a sneer.

"Why not?"

The schoolteacher was desperately eager. His glance roved from the set face of the cowpuncher and through the scragged branches of the tree.

"You'll be damned for it—in your own mind. At heart you're a good man; I swear you are. And now you throw yourself away. Won't you try to open your mind and see this another way?"

"Not an inch. Kid, I gave my word for this to a dead man. I told you about a friend of mine?"

"I'll never forget."

"I gave my word to him, though he never heard it. If I have to wait fifty years I'll live long enough to kill the gent that's in Sour Creek now. The other day I had him under my gun. Think of it! I let him go!"

"And you'll let him go again. Sinclair, murder isn't in your nature. You're better than you think."

"Close up," growled the cowpuncher. "It ain't no Saturday night party for me to write. Keep still till I finish."

He resumed his labor of writing, drawing out each letter carefully. He had reached his signature when a low call from John Gaspar alarmed him. He looked up to find the little man pointing and staring up the trail. A horseman had just dropped over the crest and was winding leisurely down toward the plain below.

"We can get behind that knoll, perhaps, before he sees us," suggested Jig in a whisper. His suggestion met with no favor.

"You hear me talk, son," said Sinclair dryly. "That gent ain't carrying no guns, which means that he ain't on our trail, we being figured particularly desperate." He pointed this remark with a cold survey of the "desperate" Jig.

"But the best way to make danger follow you, Jig, is to run away from it. We stay put!"

He emphasized the remark by stretching luxuriously. Gaspar, however, did not seem to hear the last words. Something about the strange horseman had apparently riveted his interest. His last gesture was arrested halfway, and his color changed perceptibly.

"You stay, then, Mr. Sinclair," he said hurriedly. "I'm going to slip down the hill and—"

"You stay where you are!" cut in Sinclair.

"But I have a reason."

"Your reasons ain't no good. You stay put. You hear?"

It seemed that a torrent of explanation was about to pour from the lips of Jig, but he restrained himself, white of face, and sank down in the shade of the tree. There he stretched himself out hastily, with his hands cupped behind his head and his hat tilted so far down over his face that his entire head was hidden.

Sinclair followed these proceedings with a lackluster eye.

"When you do move, Jig," he said, "you ain't so slow about it. That's pretty good faking, take it all in all. But why don't you want this strange gent to see your face?"

A slight shudder was the only reply; then Jig lay deadly still. In the meantime, before Sinclair could pursue his questions, the horseman was almost upon them. The cowpuncher regarded him with distinct approval. He was a man of the country, and he showed it. As his pony slouched down the slope, picking its way dexterously among the rocks, the rider met each jolt on the way with an easy swing of his shoulders, riding "straight up," just enough of his weight falling into his stirrups to break the jar on the back of the mustang.

The stranger drew up on the trail and swung the head of his horse in toward the tree, raising his hand in cavalier greeting. He was a sunbrowned fellow, as tall as Sinclair and more heavily built; as for his age, he seemed in that joyous prime of physical life, twenty-five. Sinclair nodded amiably.

"Might that be Sour Creek yonder?" asked the brown man.

"It might be. I reckon it is. Get down and rest your hoss."

"Thanks. Maybe I will."

He dropped to the ground and eased and stiffened his knees to get out the cramp of long riding. Off the horse he seemed even bigger and more capable than before, and now that he had come sufficiently close, so that the shadow from his sombrero's brim did not partially mask the upper part of his face, it seemed to Sinclair that about the eyes he was not nearly so prepossessing as around the clean-cut fighter's mouth and chin. The eyes were just a trifle too small, a trifle too close together. Yet on the whole he was a handsome fellow, as he pushed back his hat and wiped his forehead dry with a gay silk handkerchief.

Sinclair noted, furthermore, that the other had a proper cowpuncher's pride in his dress. His bench-made boots molded his long and slender feet to a nicety and fitted like gloves around the high instep. The polished spurs, with their spoon-handle curve, gleamed and flashed, as he stepped with a faint jingling. The braid about his sombrero was a thing of price. These details Sinclair noted. The rest did not matter.

"The kid's asleep?" asked the stranger, casting a careless glance at the slim form of Jig.

"I reckon so."

"He done it almighty sudden. Thought I seen him up and walking around when I come over the hill."

"You got good eyes," said Sinclair, but he was instantly put on the defensive. He was heartily tired of Cold Feet Gaspar, his peculiarities, his whims, his weaknesses. But Cold Feet was his riding companion, and this was a stranger. He was thrown suddenly in the position of a defender of the helpless. "That's the way with these kids," he confided carelessly to the stranger. "They get out and ride fast for a couple of hours. Full of ambition, they are. But just when a growed man gets warmed up to his work; they're through. The kid's tired out."

"Come far?" asked the stranger.

"Tolerable long ways."

Sinclair disliked questions, and for each interrogation his opinion of the newcomer descended lower and lower. His own father had raised him on a stern pattern. "What you mean by questions, Riley? What you can't figure out with your own eyes and ears and good common hoss sense, most likely the other gent don't want you to know." Thereafter he had schooled himself in this particular point. He could suppress all curiosity and go six months without knowing more than the nickname of a boon companion.

"You come from Sour Creek, maybe?" went on the other.

"Sort of," replied Sinclair dryly.

His companion proceeded to dispense information on his own part so as to break the ice.

"I'm Jude Cartwright."

He paused significantly, but Sinclair's face was a blank.

"Glad to know you, Mr. Cartwright. Mostly they call me Long Riley."

"How are you, Riley?"

They shook hands heartily. Cartwright took a place on the ground, cross-legged and not far from Sinclair.

"I guess you don't know me?" he asked pointedly.

"I guess not."

"I'm of the Jesse Cartwright family."

Sinclair smiled blankly.

"Lucky Cartwright was my dad's name."

"That so?"

"I guess you ain't ever been up Montana way," said the stranger in disgust which he hardly veiled.

"Not much," said Sinclair blandly.

"I wished that I was back up there. This is a hole of a country down here."

"Hossflesh and time will take you back, I reckon."

"I reckon they will, when my job's done."

He turned a disparaging eye upon Sour Creek and its vicinity.

"Now, who would want to live in a town like that, can you tell me?"

It occurred very strongly to Riley Sinclair that Cartwright had not yet fully ascertained whether or not his companion came from that very town. And, although the day before, he had decided that Sour Creek was most undesirable and all that pertained to it, this unasked confirmation of his own opinion grated on his nerves.

"Well, they seems to be a few that gets along tolerable well in that town, partner."

"They's ten fools for one wise man," declared Cartwright sententiously.

Sinclair veiled his eyes with a downward glance. He dared not let the other see the cold gleam which he knew was coming into them. "I guess them's true words."

"Tolerable true," admitted Cartwright. "But I've rode a long ways, and this ain't much to find at the end of the trail."

"Maybe it'll pan out pretty well after all."

"If Sour Creek holds the person I'm after, I'll call it a good-paying game."

"I hope you find your friend," remarked Riley, with his deceptive softness of tone.

"Friend? Hell! And that's where this friend will wish me when I heave in sight. You can lay to that, and long odds!"

Sinclair waited, but the other changed his tack at once.

"If you ain't from Sour Creek, I guess you can't tell me what I want to know."

"Maybe not."

The brown man looked about him for diversion. Presently his eyes rested on Cold Feet, who had not stirred during all this interval.

"Son?"

"Nope."

"Kid brother?"

"Nope."

Cartwright frowned. "Not much of nothing, I figure," he said with marked insolence.

"Maybe not," replied Sinclair, and again he glanced down.

"He's slept long enough, I reckon," declared the brown man. "Let's have a look at him. Hey, kid!"

Cold Feet quivered, but seemed lost in a profound sleep. Cartwright reached for a small stone and juggled it in the palm of his hand.

"This'll surprise him," he chuckled.

"Better not," murmured Sinclair.

"Why not?"

"Might land on his face and hurt him."

"It won't hurt him bad. Besides, kids ought to learn not to sleep in the daytime. Ain't a good idea any way you look at it. Puts fog in the head."

He poised the stone.

"You might hit his eye, you see," said Sinclair.

"Leave that to me!"

But, as his arm twisted back for the throw, the hand of Sinclair flashed out and lean fingers crushed the wrist of Cartwright. Yet Sinclair's voice was still soft.

"Better not," he said.

They sat confronting each other for a moment. The stone dropped from the numbed fingers of Cartwright, and Sinclair released his wrist. Their characters were more easily read in the crisis. Cartwright's face flushed, and a purple vein ran down his forehead between the eyes. Sinclair turned pale. He seemed, indeed, almost afraid, and apparently Cartwright took his cue from the pallor.

"I see," he said sneeringly. "You got your guns on. Is that it?"

Sinclair slipped off the cartridge belt.

"Do I look better to you now?"

"A pile better," said Cartwright.

They rose, still confronting each other. It was strange how swiftly they had plunged into strife.

"I guess you'll be rolling along, Cartwright."

"Nope. I guess I like it tolerable well under this here tree."

"Except that I come here first, partner."

"And maybe you'll be the first to leave."

"I'd have to be persuaded a pile."

"How's this to start you along?"

He flicked the back of his hand across the lips of Sinclair, and then sprang back as far as his long legs would carry him. So doing, the first leap of Sinclair missed him, and when the cowpuncher turned he was met with a stunning blow on the side of the head.

At once the blind anger faded from the eyes of Riley. By the weight of that first blow he knew that he had encountered a worthy foeman, and by the position of Cartwright he could tell that he had met a confident one. The big fellow was perfectly poised, with his weight well back on his right foot, his left foot feeling his way over the rough ground as he advanced, always collected for a heavy blow, or for a leap in any direction. He carried his guard high, with apparent contempt for an attack on his body, after the manner of a practiced boxer.

As for Riley Sinclair, boxing was Greek to him. His battles had been those of bullets and sharp steel, or sudden, brutal fracas, where the rule was to strike with the first weapon that came to hand. This single encounter, hand to hand, was more or less of a novelty to him, but instead of abashing or cowing him, it merely brought to the surface all his coldness of mind, all of his cunning.

He circled Cartwright, his long arms dangling low, his step soft and quick as the stride of a great cat, and always there was thought in his face. One gained an impression that if ever he closed with his enemy the battle would end.

Apparently even Cartwright gained that impression. His own brute confidence of skill and power was suddenly tinged with doubt. Instead of waiting he led suddenly with his left, a blow that tilted the head of Sinclair back, and then sprang in with a crushing right. It was poor tactics, for half of a boxer's nice skill is lost in a plunging attack. The second blow shot humming past Sinclair as the latter dodged; and, before the brown man could recover his poise, the cowpuncher had dived in under the guarding arms.