Even though the slope was steep and broken and cut with boulders, Andrew Lanning let the reins hang slack and gave the mare her head. But, in spite of the difficulty of the course before her, Sally gave only half of her attention to it. She was mountain bred and mountain trained, and accordingly, she had that seventh sense in her dainty feet to which only mountain horses ever attain.

She knew a thousand little tricks. She knew that, when gravel began to slip beneath her, the thing to do was not to stop merely or to whirl and go back, but to spring like a cat to one side. For that small beginning might mean a landslide of no mean proportions. By that seventh sense on those small, black hoofs she understood the rocks; she sensed which of them were too slippery for acrobatics and which, for all their apparent smoothness, were so friable that she could get a toehold. She knew to a fraction of a degree what angle of a slope was practicable for a descent, and as for climbing, if she did not quite have the prowess of a mountain sheep, she had the same heart and the same calm scorn for heights. With this equipment it was no wonder that Sally went carelessly down the slope according to her own free will, sometimes walking, sometimes sitting back on her haunches and sliding, sometimes breaking into a beautiful, free gallop when she came onto a comparatively level shoulder of the hill.

But, no matter how busy she was, from time to time Sally tossed up a head that had made the heart of many a horse lover leap, and regarded the valley below her. It was a new country to Sally, and about strange things she was as curious, as pryingly inquisitive, as a woman. Everything about Sally, indeed, was daintily feminine, from the nice accuracy with which she put down her feet to the big, gentle, intelligent eyes, and there was even something feminine in the way her pricking ears quivered back to listen when her master spoke.

When he said, at length—“Ah, Sally, there’s where I fight my big fight and my last fight”—she came to an abrupt halt and raised her head to look down into the shadowy heart of the valley. From here one could plainly see the little village of Martindale and every winding of its streets. For the mountain air was as clear as glass. Having surveyed it to her own content, she turned her head and regarded the master from a corner of her eye, as one who would say: “I’ve seen a hundred towns, better or worse than that one. What the deuce is there about it to interest you?” But Andrew Lanning nodded to her, and she tossed her head again and started on down the slope with the same nervous, cat-like placing of her feet. Plainly these two were closely in tune. He was among men very much what she was among horses, with the same clean-cut, sinewy, tapering limbs and the same proud lift of the head and the same clear, dark eyes.

But as they drew closer to the bottom of the valley, his face clouded more and more with thought. He even went the length of drawing his rifle from its case to examine its action, and then he tried his revolvers. Having looked to them, he was more at ease, as could be told by the way he settled back in the saddle, but still it was plain that he approached Martindale very much in doubt as to the reception that waited for him there.

As if to hasten the conclusion, the moment the hoofs of Sally touched the smooth trail that slid down the valley floor, he gathered her to a fast gallop. She came up on the bit in a flash, eager to stretch out at full speed, and under the iron restraint of his wrist, her neck bowed. There was no suggestion of daintiness about her now. She was all power, all flying speed, all mighty lungs and generous heart, and she rushed down the trail with that deceptively easy, long stride that only a blooded horse can have. But, even in the midst of her joyous gallop, the mind of the master guided and controlled her, not with the tug of the reins but with a word, and at his voice she canted her head just a trifle to one side, in the beautiful way that horses have, and seemed to listen and read his mind and his heart.

“Not so fast, Sally,” he was saying. “Not so fast, old girl. We’re going into Martindale at full gallop, and we may go out again with twenty men and horses on our heels. Well, that won’t be anything new to us, eh?”

The wind had picked up a little whirl of dust before her; she cleared it from her nostrils with a snort and then came back to an easier gait, smooth as flowing water; her rider sat like a rock. And so they came to the outskirts of Martindale. It was one of those typical mountain towns, weather-stained, wind-racked, with the huddling houses that gave a comfortable promise of warmth in the winter snows and of cool shade in the summer. Andrew Lanning called Sally to a walk and went slowly along the main street.

If Martindale were awake, it only opened one eye at Andrew Lanning. There were no people at windows or on porches, so far as he could see, and very few sounds of life from the interiors of the shacks. The predominate sound was the dismal bellowing of a cow on a hillside pasture above the town, a disconsolate mother mourning for a son who had gone to make veal for the hungry. Not a particularly cheery welcome for Andrew Lanning, and his heart grew heavier with every step Sally took.

His manner had changed the moment he came between the two lines of houses that fenced him in. He sat bolt erect in the saddle, looking straight ahead of him, but his eyes had that curious, alert blankness of the pugilist who looks into your eyes and is nevertheless watching your hands. Andrew Lanning was watching, while he stared straight down the street, every window, every door, every yard that he passed, and when a little girl of nine or ten years came out on the porch of a shack, a quiver ran through the body of the rider before he saw that the newcomer was harmless. He turned squarely toward the child, whose great eyes were staring at the beauty of the horse. Andrew brought Sally to a halt.

“Hello, Judy!” he called. “Have you forgotten me?”

“Oh, my! Oh, my land!” exclaimed Judy, clasping her hands after a grown-up fashion. “Oh, Andy, you did come back.”

He chuckled, but his glance slipped up and down the street before he answered. “Don’t they expect me?”

“Of course they don’t.”

“Didn’t Hal Dozier tell ’em I was coming?”

“He did, but nobody believed it. My dad said …” She stopped and choked back the next words.

He leaned a little from the saddle. “Judy, you ain’t afraid of me?”

Her hands were clasped again. She came toward him with slow, dragging steps, as though her curiosity were gradually conquering her timidity, and all the while she peered into his face. Something approaching a smile began to grow on her lips. “Why, Andy, you ain’t so much changed. You’re most awful brown and you’re thinner and you’re older, but you ain’t changed. I think you’re even a lot nicer. Is this the hoss that everybody talks about all the time? Is this Sally?”

“This is Sally. Do you know where I got her?”

“Did you … did you … shoot somebody for her?”

His lips twitched. “A little boy gave her to me, Judy. What do you think of that?”

“I don’t see how he could. I don’t really, Andy.”

She stretched out her hand with the palm up—man’s age-old way of approaching a horse—and tried to touch Sally’s face. Under the smooth-flowing voice of Andy the mare tremblingly submitted, and discovering that the soft, little, brown hand of the girl did no harm, Sally began to sniff at it.

“I know what she wants!” said Judy delightedly. “She wants apples or something. Ain’t that it? Oh, you beauty! Might I ride her sometime?”

“Maybe. But what was it your father said?”

A shade of trouble came in her face. “I don’t believe a single thing they say about you, Andy.”

“Of course you don’t. You and me are old friends, Judy. But what does your dad say?”

“He says that … that … inside a couple of days you’ll shoot somebody or get shot. That ain’t true, is it, Andy?”

“Who knows, Judy?” he asked slowly. “But I hope not.”

He sent Sally down the street again with a touch of his heel, and then, remembering, he turned with a sudden smile and waved to the child. She brightened at once and waved after him. It comforted Andrew immensely to know that he had this one small ally in the town. Everything, it seemed, had changed , except Judy. Little Judy had grown lanky—even her freckles were bigger—but, inside, Judy was the same.

However, the town was different; it was more drab and shrunken, more hopeless. His discontent grew as he approached his destination, Hal Dozier’s office. Rounding the bend of the street, he came in sight of it, and he also came in sight of the commercial district of the town, namely the hotel and store and the blacksmith shop. The hotel veranda, that social gathering place of the mountain towns, was filled with idlers. They stared at Andrew with casual interest, but when they saw the full beauty of Sally, their interest quickened. A buzz went up and down the length of the veranda, and every man came to his feet. Andrew knew then that they had recognized him.

Every nerve in his right arm began to tingle, as though it possessed a life of its own, and that life was endangered, and every nerve in his body called on him to whip out his gun. But he checked the impulse and fought it down with a great effort. Not a gun had shown on the veranda. One man or two had stepped back through the door, to be sure, but otherwise each man remained rooted to his place.

Andrew rode on, deliberately turned his back on them, and dismounted in front of Dozier’s little town office. The big Dozier Ranch was far out of town among the hills, but Hal, who acted as a federal marshal, had written that he would be in town in his office. He rose with a brief, deep-throated shout at the sight of Andrew Lanning. Sally had been attempting to follow her master into the office, but the shout of the marshal drove her back. She slipped over to the window and cautiously put her head through the opening to overlook this interview and see that no harm came to her rider.

“I gave you up yesterday,” said Hal Dozier as he wrung the hand of Andrew Lanning. “Gave you up complete. Did you get my letters … both of ’em?”

“I’ll tell you why I waited for the second letter,” said Andrew frankly. “I wanted to give you time to find out from the men around town how they would take my return. When you wrote in the second letter that you thought they’d give me a square deal and a chance to make good, I decided to come in. It wasn’t that I distrusted you … not for a minute. I knew that you’d be better than your word. You’ve got the governor’s pardon for me. That was the first big thing that gives me a chance to live like an honest man and hold up my head. But my job is to win back the trust of these people around here.”

The marshal shook his head. “I know what you want to do. And when I wrote to you and told you that they were willing to give you a fighting chance, I meant what I said. Just that and no more. You see, Andy, these blockheads have it fixed in their brains that if a man is a killer once, he’s a killer forever. I’ve tried to point out to them that you never were a killer, that you killed just one man, and that you killed him under excusable conditions. It makes no difference. They think the fever is in you, and that it will break out in gun talk, sooner or later.”

“They’re probably right,” said Lanning sadly.

“Eh?” asked the marshal.

“I mean it. Look here.”

He took the sheriff to the back window and pointed to the upstepping ranges of the mountains, ridge after ridge pouring into the pale-blue sky.

“That’s been my country for these past few years,” said Andrew softly. “I’ve been king of it. The law has fought me, and I’ve fought the law. A hard fight, and a hard life, but a wonderful one. Do you know the kind of an appetite it gives you to eat in a house surrounded by people who know there’s a price of ten thousand dollars on your head? Do you know what it is to sleep with one ear open? Do you know what it is to go hungry for days, with towns full of people and food in plain sight and easy reach, but fenced away from you with guns? It’s hard, but there’s a tang to a life like that. I say I’ve lived like a king. My gun was my passport. It was my coin. It paid my debts and my grudges. And now I’ve stepped out of my kingdom, Hal, and I’ve come down to this.”

He gestured despairingly toward the front of the little room at the street beyond. “Martindale! A rotten place for a grown-up man. No, Hal, it’s hard to make the change. I’m going to fight hard to make it. I’m going to fight like a demon to be an honest man and work for my living, but every night I’ll dream about the mountains and the freedom. And that’s why I say that maybe they’re right. Maybe I’ll break loose before long. I’ve gone without roping for a long time. Maybe I’ll jump the first fence I find in my way and land on another gent’s property, or his toes.”

Hal Dozier listened to this speech with a frown. “Then go away from Martindale. You know there’s one place where you’d be welcome, a place where nobody has heard of you.”

Andrew Lanning changed color. “Have you heard from her?” he asked huskily.

“I have.” He handed Andy a letter, and the latter unfolded it slowly, breathing hard. He found written in a swift freehand:

I know he is up for a hard battle, but he’ll win. He has too much true steel in him to lose any fight he really wants to win. Will you tell him that for me? And will you ask him to write?

“Well?” said Dozier as Andrew handed back the letter. “Will you do it? Will you write to her?”

“When I’ve earned the right to.” He wandered slowly toward the door.

“What are you going to do now?”

“I’m going to find out for myself. I’m going to learn if those gents yonder on the veranda want me to stay or want me to go back to the mountains. They can have their way about it.”

Hal Dozier attempted to stop him, but he brushed the restraint aside and walked slowly across the wide street toward the hotel. Dozier, thoughtfully rubbing his chin, looked after him, and Sally trotted after her master until she had reached his heels and then followed like a dog, reaching out and trying to catch the brim of the wide sombrero in her teeth, for Sally still kept a good deal of the colt in her makeup.

That evening Hal Dozier sat long at his desk, writing. Now and then he stopped to think, or even rose and paced the room until new ideas came to him, and it was late when he had finished a letter that ran as follows:

Dear Miss Withero:

I’m keeping the promise I made you to give you the news, as soon as there was news to give. To start with there’s the biggest and best kind of news. Andrew has come into town!

He came as big as life, and very much as you must remember him; a little thinner, I think, and a little sterner, compared to the old Andy we used to know about Martindale. He came on Sally, of course, and Sally, at least, hasn’t changed. I used to hate that horse. It was Sally, you know, who ran my Gray Peter to death. But she’s such a beauty that I’ve forgiven her. She follows Andy about like a dog. If it weren’t for her, he’d die of loneliness, I know.

But to get back to important facts. When Andy came in I ran over things as clearly as I could, told him that the governor had pardoned him for the past and hoped well for his future. I advised him to accept your invitation to go East, and I promised to help him in any way that I could.

But he was stubborn as steel. Under his gentle manner there’s no end of metal. As for you, he refuses even to mention your name, far less write to you, because, he says, he hasn’t earned the right to speak to you. As for going East and working out his life in a new country, he says that he loves these mountains, that he belongs here, that in the East he’d be a fish out of water, and that, if he isn’t strong enough to work out his destiny in his own land and among his own people, he doesn’t want to live at all. He said these things in such a way that I couldn’t find answers. I told him that the people of Martindale were neutral and pretty suspicious. But they’d give him a chance.

Do you know what he did then?

He walked straight out of my office and went to the veranda of the hotel. Here a dozen or more men were sitting around, and Andy made them a speech. I wish you could have heard it, it was so straight from the shoulder. And I won’t forget him standing up as straight as a soldier and looking them all in the eye. He has a hard look to meet, has Andrew, as you may know someday if you ever make him angry.

He told them in words of one syllable that he knew he’d led a bad life for the past two years. He didn’t make any bones of it, and he didn’t make any excuses. That isn’t his way. After he got started, he acknowledged that he’d lived as an outlaw. He said that he wanted to come back to Martindale, where he was born, and show the people of it that he could live as a sober, hard-working citizen. He said it was a bargain. As long as he roved around the mountains, he was simply a burden, for he lived off the work of other people. If he was allowed to settle down peaceably in the town, he would cease being a burden for anyone to carry. It was up to them. If they wanted to get rid of him and didn’t want him around, they had only to say the word, and he would jump on the horse that was standing behind him and ride away and never come back—peacefully. But if they allowed him to stay he would do his best to be as law-abiding as the next one.

Then he waited for his answer, but there was no answer made! They sat like owls on stumps and stared at him. They were afraid to give him a cheer and tell him to stay, and they were afraid to tell him to get out of town. Andrew waited a minute or two, and then he turned on his heel and walked away with his head down.

I tried to cheer him up and told him that the people of the town were simply waiting to see if he meant what he said, and that as soon as he showed them, they would be with him heart and soul. But he was too shrewd to believe me.

He went to his old blacksmith shop and opened it. Things were a little rusty, but pretty much as they had always been. He polished it up a bit and then sat down at the door to wait for work. But there’s a new blacksmith shop in Martindale now, and all the work that came in to town today drifted right past Andy’s old shop. They turned and stared at him, but they didn’t ask him to shoe their horses.

Tonight he went back to his uncle’s old house. I went to see him there. The old shack has run down since Jasper Lanning’s death, and I found Andrew pacing up and down in the dust, with the old, warped boards of the floor creaking under him. Not a very cheery place for him, you see. And he was as restless as a wolf in a cage, and every once in a while he would stop his pacing at a window and look out at the mountains and then begin to walk up and down again, leaving his trail in the dust of the floor.

He was in an ugly mood, but he tried to keep it concealed. He swore that he would stay on as long as he could, and then I came back to my office to write to you.

I’m afraid for Andy, Miss Withero, I’m mortally afraid. He’s closer to me than anything on earth. I went to kill him for the sake of the price on his head. He shot me down and then fought with four men to save my life. Men of Andy’s stamp aren’t turned out every day, and it’s a pity to see him fail.

But fail he inevitably will. The men of this town are watching and waiting for an explosion, and the more they watch and the more suspicious they grow, the more nervous Andrew is. He knows that a lot of them hate him and would shoot him in the back if they could. Sooner or later someone is sure to get drunk and cross him, or some crowd will get together and try to bully him. If either of these things happens, someone is going to die. It won’t be Andrew. After the explosion he’ll be on Sally on his way back to the mountains and the free life he loves. So you can very well see that I live over dry powder, with sparks flying all the time. When will Andy blow up?

There’s one thing that can dampen the powder. There’s one thing stronger than Andrew’s nervousness. You know what that one thing is—his love for you. It’s more than a love; it’s worship. You’re more than a woman to him. He’s dressed you up as a saint, aureole and all. When he speaks of you, his voice changes, and he lowers his eyes.

Well, Miss Withero, I think you would do a good deal to help Andrew. I want to find out how much. Will you come West to Martindale and see Andrew and give him patience for the fight? Five minutes of you mean more to him than five years of adventure and freedom.

He doesn’t know that I’ve written to you. I don’t dare tell him. He thinks he must make himself go through the trial and try to see you after he has proven himself. But I say that the trial is greater than his strength. What will you do?

Hal Dozier

That night the letter was in the hands of Charles Merchant. He read it hastily, for Mary was waiting anxiously to take it back to its proper place. He detained her for a moment.

“Has she been talking about anything unusual?” he asked, almost fiercely.

“No, nothing.”

“Thank goodness!” said Merchant. “You’re sure? No mention of a journey?”

Mary grew thoughtful. “She asked me, when she was dressing for dinner, if I had ever been West, and if I’d like to go there.”

Merchant groaned. “She said that?”

“What’s in that? She was just talking about the mountains.”

“Only the mountains?”

“And she said there was a different breed of men there, too.”

“That’s all!”

He slammed the door after her and, going back to the window, slumped into a chair with his face between his hands. For all that he shut out the light from his eyes, he was seeing too clearly the picture of the lithe fellow, straight, graceful, dark-eyed, and light and nervous of hand—that was Andrew Lanning. He cursed the picture and the name and the thought of the name, as his mind went back to the night, so long ago, when the figure had leaned over his bed and asked through the darkness: “Where is the girl’s room?” And then, lest he make an outcry and alarm the house, Lanning had tied and gagged him.

In truth, the coming of Lanning had tied and gagged him forever, so far as Anne Withero’s interest was concerned. Afterward the name of Lanning had grown in importance, had become a legend, one of those soul-stirring legends that grow up, now and then, around the figure of a stirring man of action.

An outlaw certainly was beyond the pale of Anne’s interest, but Charles could see now that, perhaps, the very strangeness of the wanderer’s position and character had made him fascinating in the romantic eyes of the girl. And then, striking back through a thousand dangers and risking his life for the sake of one interview, Andy Lanning, the outlaw, had come to the Merchant house again and seen Anne Withero once more. Only twice they had seen one another, but out of those two meetings had come the wreck of his own affair with her. He gritted his teeth when he recalled it.

Moreover, he was quite certain that Hal Dozier was right. Hal was a shrewd judge of men and events. If he said that the girl could tame wild Lanning and keep him a law-abiding man, then he was right. But he must also be right when he said that Lanning was balancing on a precarious edge, ready to fall into violent action and outrage society again.

Was it not possible, then, to knock the ground from beneath the tottering figure? Could not the necessary impetus be supplied that would throw Lanning off his balance and plunge him once more into a career of crime? There must surely be a way. And he, Charles Merchant, had money, could buy who he willed to buy. The cause was worth it! It was a crusade, this saving of such a girl as Anne Withero from the low entanglements of an ex-criminal.

He packed his things that night. In the morning he said good-bye to her.

“I’m going West, Anne,” he told her. “I see that the past is still too close to you, and that you haven’t been able to forgive me entirely. I’m going West and wait, for I haven’t given up. I’m going to come back and try again. In the meantime, if it should happen that you need a helper, let me know. Will you do that?”

Even then he hoped that she might confide enough in him to admit that she was soon going West herself, but he was disappointed. She gave him a chilly farewell and no hint of her plans. In the morning he returned to New York and purchased a ticket for the West. Then he bought an early edition of an evening paper and went into the smoking room of the station to wait for his train. His eyes took in the headlines dimly. How could print catch his attention when a story of far more vital interest was running through his mind?

He turned the page, and a bulldog face caught his eye. He liked it for the ugliness that fitted in with his own mood of the moment. There was a consummate viciousness and cunning about the little eyes, protected under massive, beetling brows; there was power and endurance in the blocky chin, and the habitual scowl fascinated Merchant, for it was his own expression of the moment. He raised his hand and smoothed his forehead with grinding knuckles, and still the face held his eyes.

LEFTY GRUGER, he read beneath the picture, PARDONED!

It was placed in large letters—an event of importance, it seemed, was the pardoning of this Gruger. With awakened interest he followed the rather long article.

It developed that Lefty Gruger had been serving a life term on many counts. If he had lived to the age of two hundred, his term of punishment would still be unspent. But Lefty Gruger had been for eight years an ideal prisoner. Never once did the prison authorities have the slightest trouble with this formidable murderer, for such it seemed Lefty Gruger had been. The man had apparently reformed. The reporter quoted one of Lefty’s quaint sayings: “I dunno what’s in this heaven stuff, but maybe it ain’t too late for me to take a fling at it.”

In reality, during the eight years his life had been exemplary, he had never become a trusty on account of the appalling nature of the crimes attributed to him, but he was on the verge of this elevation when the outbreak came. It was one of those mad, unreasoning outbreaks that will come now and then in prisons. An unpopular guard was suddenly hemmed against the wall, and his weapons were torn from him by a dozen furious prisoners. He was already down and nearly dead when a small, but well-directed, tornado struck the murderers in the person of Lefty Gruger. He had come out of the blacksmith shop with the iron part of a pick in his hand, and he went through the little host of assailants, smashing skulls like eggs as he went.

In the sequel the guard’s life was saved, and seven prisoners died from the terrible effects of Lefty Gruger’s blows. But this heroism could not go unnoticed or unrewarded. The governor examined the case, determined to give Lefty a chance, and forthwith signed a pardon that was pressed upon him. The result was that the governor’s benign face appeared in a photograph beside the contorted scowl of Lefty Gruger. That was worth at least fifty thousand votes in certain parts of the state, although it was pointed out, with grim smiles in the police department, that Gruger was freed from a life sentence because he had killed more men at one sitting than he had been condemned for in the first instance.

The major portion of the article had to do with the desperate heroism of Lefty Gruger to save the guard, then with a detail of his exemplary conduct while in prison, and finally there was a very brief résumé of Lefty’s criminal career, now happily buried under the record of his more-recent virtues. It seemed that Lefty had been a celebrated gunman for many years, that he had escaped detection so long because he always did his jobs without confederates, and that, although it had been long suspected that he was guilty of killings, it was not until he had spent ten years in criminal life that he was finally taken and convicted.

Once he was in the hands of the law, it turned out that there were various people willing to inform against the professional murderer, men who had been held back by fear of him until he was safely lodged in the hands of the law. Now they were ready and eager to talk. Into the hands of the police came more or less convincing proof that Lefty Gruger had certainly been responsible for five murders, and perhaps many more. But even this testimony was not of the first order. The result was that, instead of hanging, Lefty received a life sentence.

Now he was returning to his old haunts off the Bowery. The street address drifted into Charles Merchant’s mind hazily. He was thinking with dreamy eyes, building a fairy story in the future. That dream lasted so long that the train departed with no Charles Merchant on it. Then he rose and sauntered into the street and took a taxi to the Bowery. At the stand where he had his shoes polished, in the hope of hearing chance news, the word was dropped: “Lefty’s back. He’s at Connor’s.”

Merchant, leaving his chair as the shine was completed, sauntered into a lunch counter across the street. Sitting at the end of the counter nearest the window, he kept a steady eye on the pavement and houses opposite. Still retaining that survey, he covertly counted out $100 in crisp bills and shoved them into a blank envelope.

Lefty Gruger was not long out of sight. Having become a hero overnight, he had to harvest the admiration of his fellows, and presently he was observed to stroll down the steps of his rooming house, preceded and surrounded by half a dozen as hard-faced fellows as Merchant had ever seen. But, among them all, the broad, scowling face of Lefty stood forth. Every brutal passion found adequate expression in some line or corner of his face. Suddenly it seemed to Merchant that he had known the recesses of that dark mind for years and years, and he felt himself contaminated by the very thought. He scribbled a few words on the envelope and left the lunch counter hurriedly. Crossing the street, he managed to intercept the course of Lefty’s crew at the far corner. He sidled apologetically through the midst of them, and, passing Lefty, he shoved the envelope containing the money into the latter’s coat pocket and went on.

Although he did not pause, it seemed to him that the stubby hand of Lefty had closed over that envelope, and the square-tipped fingers had sunk into the missive, and that he sensed the contents by their softness. But Merchant hurried on, took a taxi at the nearest corner, and went straight to a hotel. He had written on the envelope:

Inside two hours, at the corner of Forty-Seventh and Broadway, east side of the street.

In the hotel he flung himself on the bed, but he could not rest.

He knew very little about such matters, but he imagined that once a notorious criminal was at large, the police must keep an eagle eye upon him. If Lefty came to that meeting place, there might very well be a whole corps of observers on the watch from hidden places, and they might follow Lefty and note the interview with Merchant. But then again it was very doubtful if Lefty would make his appearance at all. He had $100 in his pocket for which he need not make an accounting. There was only one thing to which Charles Merchant trusted, and that was, having made such a little stake of easy money, the killer might continue on the trail.

He wasted the two hours that remained before him with difficulty and then went out and took his place at the head of Times Square, in the full rush of the late-afternoon crowd. Eagerly he swept the heads of the crowd, but there was no Lefty. Presently he felt a light jerk at his coat, and then a stocky, little man hurried past him and shouldered skillfully through the mob. It was Gruger beyond a doubt. The rear view of those formidable, square shoulders was almost as easily recognizable as the face of the criminal. Merchant followed unhesitatingly.

Gruger opened the door of a taxi waiting at the curb and stepped in, leaving the door open. Merchant accepted the silent invitation and climbed into the interior. The abrupt starting of the engine flung him back to the seat, and the driver reached out an arm of prodigious length and slammed the door. It seemed to Merchant that he was trapped and a prisoner. An edge of paper in his own pocket caught his eye as he looked down. He drew out his own envelope and saw, as it bulged open, the money. He shoved it into an inside coat pocket and then for the first time turned to Lefty. The latter wore a faint, ugly smile.

“But I intended this …” began Merchant, oddly embarrassed.

“I know,” said Lefty, “but I don’t take coin till after I’ve done a job, and then I want spot cash.”

There was something so formidable about the way he jerked out these words that it made Merchant feel as though the gunman had already done a killing and now demanded payment. He moistened his lips and watched the stocky, little man.

“But I thought you might be in need of a little stake,” he ventured again.

“I ain’t never broke,” declared Lefty in his positive manner. “I got friends, mister. Now what you want?”

“I want in the first place to go where we can talk.”

“You do, eh? What’s the matter with right here?”

“But the driver?”

“Say, he’s all right. He’s a friend of mine.”

“But suppose we were seen to have entered this cab and were followed?”

“Pal, nobody ain’t going to follow him, not through this jam.”

The driver was weaving through the press of traffic with the easiest dexterity, seeming to make the car small to slip through tight holes, and keeping in touch with his motor as though it were a horse under curb and spur.

“In the first place,” began Merchant heavily, “I don’t know how to let you know that you can trust any promises I make in regard to …”

“Money? Sure you can. You’re Charles Merchant. You come out of the West, you got a big ranch from your old man, and your bank account would gag a mule. All right, I know you.”

Charles Merchant swallowed. “How in the world … ?”

“Did I tumble to that gag? I’ll tell you. You didn’t think I let you do a fadeaway after you passed me the bunk, do you? Nope. I ditched the gang, done a sidestep, and slid after you to your hotel, grabbed your name off the book, and the rest was easy.”

“How?”

“How? Why I got friends. They looked you up inside half an hour, and there you are. Now what’s what?”

There was something startling in this abrupt way of brushing through preliminaries and getting down to the heart of things. Merchant had expected long and delicate diplomatic fencing before he even broached the aim he had in mind. He found that he was brought to the heart of his subject inside the first minute.

“In a word,” he said, breathing hard, “it is a task of the first magnitude.”

Lefty studied him, not without contempt and just a touch of bewilderment.

“Guess I get you. Somebody to be bumped off? When and where, and what’s the stake?”

Merchant gasped. Then he answered tersely: “As fast as you can get to the place. That place is Martindale, and it’s a good two thousand miles from New York. The price is what you think it’s worth.”

“I don’t like out-of-town jobs,” said Lefty calmly. “They get me off my feed a little, and two thousand miles is pretty bad. Seeing it’s you, ten thousand ain’t too much to ask.”

He said it in such a businesslike manner that, although Merchant was staggered by the price, he did not seriously object. A moment’s thought assured him that $10,000 was cheap, infinitely cheap, if it brought him to his goal.

“And when do you want me to start, governor?”

“At once. About the money, what part will you want?”

“Ain’t I told you that I’m never broke? I don’t need any.”

“The whole thing after … after … ?”

“After I deliver the goods? That’s it.”

“But how do you know … ?”

“That you’ll pay? Easy! You think it over a minute, and you’ll see why you’ll pay.”

And Merchant knew with a shudder that this was the last debt in the world that he would try to dodge.

“Now that we’ve settled things,” he said, “I want to tell you about the man in the case.”

“He don’t matter,” said Lefty largely. “He don’t matter at all. All I want is his name.”

Charles Merchant rubbed his chin in thought. It was strange that sectional pride should crop out in him in this matter of all matters. He looked coldly upon Lefty Gruger.

“Ever have a run-in with a Western gunfighter?” he asked.

“Me? Sure. Went as far West as Kansas City once and got mixed up with a tough mug out of the hills. They told me he was quick as a flash at getting out his cannon. Bunk! A revolver is pretty fair, but an automatic is the medicine for these Western gunfighters! They shoot one slug, standing straight up. I spray ’em by just holding down my finger. Fast draw? I don’t draw. I drop a fist in my pocket and let her go!”

“Was that how it went with the gunman you met in Kansas City?”

“Sure it was. The boob didn’t have a chance. He stood up straight like a guy getting ready to make a speech and grabs for his gat. I jumps behind a table and begins zigzagging. He didn’t have a chance of hitting me. While I was jumping back and forth, I turn on the spray. Seven slugs, and they all landed. He wouldn’t’ve held a pint of water, he was so full of holes when I finished with him.”

Charles Merchant wiped his forehead. What he had looked upon as a forlorn hope changed to a feeling of far greater certainty.

“Now,” he said, “listen to reason. You may be very good with a gun. Of course you are. But this fellow, Lanning …”

“First name?”

“Andrew. This Andrew Lanning is good with a gun, too. He’s beaten the best men of the mountains. With rifle or revolver it doesn’t seem that he can miss. You may be almost as good, but, if you stand up to him, you stand a fine chance of being killed, Lefty. Don’t take the chance. Make a sure thing of it.”

“Shoot him in the back?” said Lefty coldly. “That what you mean?”

“Why not? You’ll get ten thousand just the same.”

The voice of Lefty changed to a snarl. “Maybe you think,” he said furiously, “that you’re talking to a butcher? Maybe you think that?”

“I … I …” Merchant choked in his distress. “The fact is, in a business like this, I like to feel that my money is invested as safely as possible, and I think …”

“I want you to think this,” said Lefty, and he shook a swiftly vibrating forefinger under the nose of his companion. “You’re talking to a white man. I never shot a gent while he had his back turned. I never shot him when he was took by surprise. I never shot him when he was drunk. I never shot him when he was sick. I’ve fought every man face to face. They flopped, because they didn’t have the nerve or the dope on gunfighting. That’s my way. If a bird is good enough to flop me, then he collects, and I don’t. That’s all. If I didn’t work for my coin, d’you think I could enjoy making it? No! I ain’t a man killer, I’m a sportsman, mister, and you want to write it down in red. Gimme a good, sporting chance, and I take it. Give me a sure thing, and I tell you to go hang. I’ve never took up a sure thing, and I never will. But I’m after game, big game! Some gents like to go out into the jungle and hunt for tigers. I have more fun than that, because I hunt things a thousand times worse’n tigers. I hunt men. It ain’t the money alone that I work for. I got enough salted away to do for me. But I like the fun, bo. It’s in my nature.”

He sat back again, contented, flushed after having expounded his creed, defying Merchant to argue further in the matter. It bewildered Charles, this singular profession of faith.

“This Lanning guy … ?” went on Lefty more gently. “You stop worrying. I’ll plant him. I’ll salt him away with lead so’s you never have to worry about him none no more. That what you want?”

When Charles Merchant nodded, the gunman continued easily. “You just jot down the directions to the place. That’s all I want.”

From the roof to the bellows, there had been hardly a thing about the old blacksmith shop that did not need repairing. The anvil alone was intact. Even the sledgehammers were sadly rusted. He spent the first few days putting things in order and making repairs. But this was about the only work that came his way. To be sure, now and then, someone of the more curious dropped into his shop and had a horse shod in order to see the celebrated desperado at work. It would be something to ride home and point to the iron on the feet of a horse and say: “Andrew Lanning put those shoes on. I seen him do it.”

But this made up a mere dribble of work, although Hal Dozier had sent in a few small commissions from his ranch. He had even offered to set up a shop for Andy on his ranch and said that he had ample ironwork to remunerate both himself and Andrew, but the ex-outlaw had other plans. He was determined to fight out the battle in Martindale itself.

There was something dreamlike about the whole thing. It had not been so many years ago since the men of Martindale looked down on the Lanning kid as being “yaller clear through.” In those days they had greeted any mention of his name with a smile and a shrug. Then came the unlucky day when he knocked down a man and fled in fear of his life, leaving an unconscious victim who appeared to be dead. Feeling that he was outlawed by his crime, Andy had become an outlaw in fact. That was the small, the accidental, beginning that, it seemed, was to determine the whole course of his life. He had plenty of chances to think about himself, past and future, as he sat idly in the little shop, day after day, waiting for work.

His funds were dwindling meanwhile. An angle of the affair, at which he had not looked before, now presented itself. He might be actually starved out of the town. He might be starved into submission.

All day, every day, he could hear the cheery clangor of hammer on anvil in the new and rival blacksmith shop down the street. There was plenty of business there, plenty of it. His competitor had tried to placate this terrible rival soon after his arrival. He came to visit the latter in his shop at the beginning of the working day.

“I’m Sloan,” he said, “Bill Sloan. Maybe you don’t know me?”

“Sure,” said Andy. “I know you.”

“You and me being sort of business rivals, as you might say,” said Sloan, “I got this to say for a start. I ain’t going to use no crooked ways of getting customers away from you, Lanning.”

“I guess you won’t,” said Andrew gently.

“Matter of fact, now and then, I get an overflow of trade. I might send some of it down to your shop, Lanning.”

It touched Andrew, the embarrassment of this huge, sturdy-hearted fellow. He went to him and touched his shoulder.

“Sloan,” he said, “I know what’s on your mind. You think I’m getting mad at you, because you get the work. I’m not. Get everything you can, and don’t send me any overflow. You’re married, and you have kids. Get all the work you can. As for me, I’m not going to try to rustle trade with a gun.”

On the afternoon of the next day Hal Dozier stopped before the shop with a suggestion.

“Andy,” he said, “Si Hulan is in town. Staying up at the hotel right now. He’s looking for hands. Why don’t you trot up to see him? He’d be glad to take you on if he has any sense. Got a big ranch. Soon as he learns that he can trust you, he’d be apt to make you foreman. You’re the man to handle that rough gang of his.”

Andy Lanning was not at all enthusiastic.

“You see,” he replied, “I’d be glad to do that, but Sally isn’t much good at working cows. She’s never had much experience.”

“You could teach her.”

“I could teach her, but that dodging and hustling around in a bunch isn’t very good for a horse’s legs.”

“I know. Then ride another horse, Andy. Keep Sally for Sundays and holidays, eh?”

“Ride another horse?” asked Andrew. “Man alive, Hal, you don’t mean that!”

“Why not?” asked the marshal.

Andrew was breathless. “Sally and me,” he attempted to explain. “Why … Sally and me are pals, you might say, Dozier.” He whistled softly, and at once the lovely head of Sally came around the corner of the shop. There she stood with her head raised, then canted to one side, her ears pricked, while she examined her master curiously.

“She plays out there all day,” said Andrew, smiling at the mare. “I turn her loose in the morning when I come down to work, and she follows down here and plays around in the lot. Sometimes old Missus Calkin’s dog, old Fanny, you know, comes over and plays a game with Sally. Game seems to be for Fanny to set her teeth in Sally’s nose, and for Sally to let her come as close to it as she can without doing it. Hear Sally snorting and Fanny snarling, and you’d think they was a real battle on. Well, you see how it is. I couldn’t very well get on with Sally if I rode another horse. Besides, the minute I got off another horse, Sally would kick the daylights out of the nag. That’s Sally’s way … jealous as a cat and ready to fight for attention. She’ll come over here and nose in between us pretty soon if I talk to you and don’t pay no attention to her.” He rose as he spoke and winked at the marshal. “Watch her now.”

He turned his back on Sally, and the marshal looked from one to the other of them. He thought them very much alike, these two. There was the same touch of wildness in both, the same high-headed pride, the same finely tempered muscles, the same stout spirit. Only one man had ever succeeded in riding Sally with a saddle, and that man was her present master. For the rest she was as wild as ever. And it came to the marshal that the same was true of the boy. One person in the world could tame him, and that was Anne Withero.

Sally had stood her exclusion from the conversation as long as possible. She now snorted and stamped with a dainty forehoof. It caused Andy to wink at the marshal, but he gave her no direct attention, and presently she came hesitantly forward and, in reach of Andy, she laid her short ears back on her neck and bared her teeth. The marshal stifled an exclamation, so wicked was the look of Sally at that moment, so snake like she was with her long, graceful neck and glittering eyes. The teeth closed on a fold of Andy’s shirt at the shoulder, and she tugged him rudely around.

He faced her with pretended anger. “What kind of manners is this?” demanded the master. “You need teaching, and by hell, you’ll get it. Now get out!” He threw up his arm, and the horse sprang sideways and back, lithe and neat footed as an enormous cat. There she stood alert, with ears pricking again.

“Look at that,” said Andy. “Ready for a game, you see? What can you do with a horse like that?”

“Ain’t you ever had to discipline her? Never used a whip on her?” asked the marshal.

“I should say not,” replied Andy. “If I seen a gent raise a whip on Sally, I’d …”

“Wait a minute!”

Andy shuddered and allowed the interruption to silence him. “I dunno,” he muttered. “I could stand almost anything but that. If they was to shy a stone at Sally, like they done the other day …”

“Did they do that?” asked the marshal softly.

“It was the Perkins kid,” said Andy. “Sally dodged the stone a mile, but it was sharp edged enough to have hurt her bad. I went in to see Jim Perkins.”

“You did? But you talked soft, Andy?”

“I done as well as I could. He said that boys will be boys, and then, all at once, I wanted to take him by the throat. It came to me like a fit. I fought it off, and I was weak afterward.”

“Did you say anything?”

“Not a word, but Jim Perkins went to the door with me, looking scared, and he said that he’d see that they was no more stones thrown at Sally.” The very memory of his anger made Andy change, and his mouth grew straight and hard.

“Then Sally doesn’t get on very well with the folks in town?” asked Hal Dozier. He himself had been too much on his big ranch of late to follow things in Martindale closely.

“She gets on with the kids pretty fine, but if a man comes near her, she tries to take a chunk out of him with her teeth, or brain him with her heels. There was young Canning the other day … he just jumped the fence in time.” He broke into riotous laughter.

“Wait a minute,” cut in the marshal. “There seems to be two sides to this story. Is that a laughing matter? Canning might have been killed!”

“Served him right for teasing her.”

The marshal shook his head. “You’d better see Hulan,” he suggested.

After a little more talk, Andrew accepted the advice. The Hulan Ranch was neighbor to the town. He would be practically in Martindale, and all that he wanted was to convince Martindale of his honest determination to reform. Saying good-bye to the marshal, he went straight to the hotel.

Business was slack; men were plentiful on the range at this season, so Andrew was not the only one who went to the hotel to call on old Si Hulan. He found that the rancher was in his room interviewing the applicants one by one. He had three vacancies, and he intended to fill them all, but only after he had seen every man who was asking for a place. There were a dozen men on the veranda, all waiting to be seen or, having been seen, they waited for the selection of the rancher. They were playing together like a lot of great, senseless puppies, working off practical jests that caused more pain than laughter, and every man was sharp-eyed for a chance to take advantage of his fellow. Even as Andy approached, someone happened to turn his head as he walked down the veranda. Instantly he was tripped and sent pitching across the porch. He stopped his fall by thrusting both arms into the back of another who was driven, catapulting, down the steps. This man in turn attempted to stop his momentum by breaking the shock at the expense of Andy Lanning.

The latter had his back turned, but a running shadow warned him, and he leaped aside. The other rushed past with arms stretched out, grinning.

There was a sudden cessation of laughter on the porch as Andrew turned. The man who had attempted to knock him down from behind came to a stumbling halt and faced about, deadly pale, his lips twitching, and the expectancy of the men on the veranda was a thing to be felt like electricity in the air. It was very clear to Andy that they expected him to take offense and, being a gunman, to show his offense by drawing his revolver. The white, working face of the big fellow before him told the same story. The man was terribly afraid, facing death, and certain of his destruction. But his great brown hand was knotted about the butt of his gun, and he would not give way. Rather die, to be sure, than be shamed before so many. Pity came to Andy, and he smiled into the eyes of the other.

“There’s no harm done, partner,” he said gently, and went up on the veranda.

He left the big man behind him, stunned. Presently the latter went to the hitching rack, got his horse, and rode down the street. He would tell his children and his grandchildren in later years how he faced terrible Andy Lanning and came away with his life.

The crowd on the veranda began to break out of their silence again, but the former mirth was not restored. A shadow of dread had passed over them, and their spirits were still dampened. Covertly every eye watched Andrew. He went gloomily up the steps and laid his hand on the back of the first chair he saw, just as another man came hurriedly from the interior of the hotel.

“Hey,” he called, “my chair, you!”

Andrew turned, and the newcomer stopped, as though he had received a blow in the face.

“I made a mistake,” he said.

“Take your chair,” replied Andrew gravely. “There are plenty more.”

The other moistened his white lips. “I don’t want it,” he said unevenly. “Besides, I’m going right back inside.”

Before Andrew could speak again, the latter had turned and gone hastily through the door. Lanning sat down, buried in gloom. Dead silence reigned along the veranda now. He knew what was in their thoughts—that twice they had come within the verge of seeing gunplay. And he writhed at the thought. Did they think he was a professional bully to take advantage of them? He knew, as well as they knew, that an ordinary man had no ghost of a chance against his trained speed of hand and steadiness of nerve and lightning accuracy of eye. Did they think he would force issues on them? Yet he felt bitterly that, sooner or later, they would actually herd him into a mortal fight. Indeed one of these boys would not wait to ask questions. If he crossed the path of Lanning by chance, he would take it for granted that guns were the order of the day and draw his weapon. And then what was the chance of Andy, except to kill, or be killed?

Decidedly the marshal was right. He must get onto the Hulan Ranch and let Martindale grow more gradually acclimated to the changed Andrew Lanning. He knew that this position of his was one that many a bullying gunfighter had labored years to attain and had gloried in, but to him it was a horror. He wanted to stand up before them and tell them they were wrong. But he had tried that on the first day of his return to the town, and he had seen in every face the conviction that he lied.

He was glad when it came his turn to see Hulan, and as he stepped through the door into the inner hall, he heard the murmur of voices break out again on the veranda in subdued whispers, and he knew that they were talking of him.

Old Si Hulan greeted him with amazing warmth. He was a stringy, old man who had once been bulkily strong and was still active. Age had diminished him, but it had not crippled him. His lean, much-wrinkled face lighted, and he came out from behind the table to grip the hand of Andrew.

“Why, son,” he said, “are you hunting for work on my ranch?”

“That’s it,” said Andy. He had never known the old man well, and this generous greeting warmed his heart.

“You are? Then I’ll tell a man that this is my lucky day. I been looking for your make of a man for a long time. Sit down, lad. Sit down and lemme look you over.” He pushed Andrew into a chair. “In the old days they didn’t think much of you. I’ve heard ’em talk, the idiots! But I knowed that a Lanning was always a Lanning, same as a hawk is always a hawk, even if a chicken does the hatching.”

He kept grinning and chuckling to himself in the pauses of his talk.

“You go back and get your blankets,” he said, “and get ready to come along with me this evening. Or, if you ain’t got blankets, it don’t make any difference. I’ll fix you up like a king. I’ll give you an outfit any rider on the range would be proud of.”

“That’s mighty fine,” returned Andy, amazed by this cordiality. “About the wages … you can fix your own price. I’m pretty green at ranch work.”

“We’ll agree on wages,” said the old man. “Ain’t any trouble on that head.”

“Another thing you ought to know before you take me on. My horse ain’t very good at working cattle. Matter of fact, I wouldn’t even train her for that job. But if it’s just riding the range, she’ll be fine for that. But not for a lot of roping and heavy work.”

It seemed that Si Hulan was daunted by these remarks.

“Roping?” he demanded. “Roping? You? Why, boy, d’you think I’m going to use a mountain lion to pull a wagon? Cow work! Ride the range!” He rocked back on his heels, tucked his thumbs into the armholes of his vest, and burst into a roar of laughter.

“Son,” he said, when he found his voice again, “you hark to me. The job I got for you is right in your own line.” He lowered his tone, and his eyes twinkled discreetly. “Up yonder in the hills I got the finest little layout for moonshining that ever you see. I raise my own grain, you see, and I feed it into my own still. Nothing easier. And I got the still cached away where the best fox in the police service would never find it. Well, Andy, what I’m going to use you for is running that moonshine over the hills and down to the river. That’s where I market it. I got a tough gang of boys working the run for me now, but what I need is a leader that’ll keep ’em in order. And you’re the man for me. I guess they ain’t any of ’em so hard but what they’ll soften up when Andy Lanning gives ’em an order. As for the wages, they ain’t going to be none. You and me will just split up the profit, almost any reasonable way you say. I furnish the goods, and you take what little risk they is. It ain’t really no big risk. It’s for running the men that I want you.”

He had kept up his harangue so closely and with such a hot enthusiasm that Andrew could not interrupt him until he reached this point, and he interrupted by rising from the chair into which Si Hulan had thrust him.

“Mister Hulan,” he said slowly, “you got me all wrong. I’m going straight. I’m staying inside the law as long as the law will let me. Run your own still. It’s nothing to me, but I’ll have no hand in it.”

Hulan gasped. Then he nodded. “I see,” he said. “Trying me out? I don’t blame you for being mistrustful of folks after what you’ve been doing the past few years, but …”

“First and last and all the time,” said Andrew, “I mean what I say. I’m going straight, Hulan. I can’t take that job. But, if you got an honest job running cattle on the range, let me take a try at it, and I’ll thank you for the chance. I don’t care what the wages are.”

Hulan snorted, a flush growing up his withered face.

“That’s the song, is it?” he asked. “D’you think I’m a fool, Lanning? D’you think you have anybody in this town fooled? Don’t you suppose everybody knows that you’re in here on some crooked job?” His voice became a growl. “I’ll tell you one thing that may surprise you. You wonder why nobody has asked you to step out of town, why we’ve been so simple we’ve let you stay and make your plans and your plots, whatever they may be. But we ain’t been sleeping, Andy. Not by a long sight. They’s five of the best men in this town has got together and sworn to keep a hoss saddled night and day, ready to jump on your trail and run you down the minute you make your break. And we got other towns all posted, so we can get in touch with them pronto, the minute you tear loose.

“Why am I telling you all this? Simply to show you where you stand. No, Lanning, once wrong always wrong, and we know it. That’s why I make you my offer. Come out with me, and I’ll cover up your tracks. If you stay down here and try to work your game, we’ll get you the minute you step crooked. Why, you fool, we been holding our breath ever since you come in, waiting for a chance to nail you!”

Andrew Lanning watched him gloomily. It was all in line with the attitude of the younger men on the veranda of the hotel. It was perfectly plain now. They hated him; they feared him, and they would get him if they dared. They would bide their time. If appearances were against him for a moment, they would make their play. The governor of the state had pardoned him, but society had not forgiven him, would not forgive him. With a breaking heart, he saw the vision of Anne Withero, the happiness of which he had dreamed, grow dim and flicker out into complete darkness.

He turned slowly away from Hulan and stepped into the hall, and then slowly down the stairs. As he went, anger rose in him and swelled his heart. It was unfair, cruelly unfair. In some way they should be made to pay for their stupidity. He hated them all.

At the bottom of the stairs he came upon a knotted little group, standing with their heads together, listening to some jest or gossip.

“Get out of the way!” said Andy Lanning angrily.

They jerked their heads aside, saw him, and then melted back from his path. Andrew strode through them without deigning a glance in either direction. He detested them as much as they feared him. If they wanted war, let it be war. He heard the whisper stir behind him, but he strode on through the door and went slowly down the steps to the ground. War, indeed, had been declared.

Through the little town of Martindale a single whisper traveled as distinctly and as swiftly as the report of cannon down a small gorge. Hal Dozier heard of the first outbreak of the ex-outlaw ten minutes after it happened. He went straight to the hotel and found a grave conclave deliberating on the veranda. There was no sign of the usual jesting or the usual tales. They crowded their heads close together and talked with frowns. The marshal knew that serious trouble was in the air.

He was more alarmed than ever when they fell silent at his approach. He singled out Si Hulan, who was among the rest, and put the question to him.

“What’s wrong with Andy Lanning?”

“What’s wrong? Everything’s wrong with him. He’s no good,” said the old rancher with deliberation. “I offer him a job with me … a regular, honest job at good pay,” continued Hulan, lying smoothly, “and the infernal young hound asked me what he got on the side. I asked him what he meant by that. He said I ought to know that he wasn’t interested in small-fry talk. He wanted action and big pay, and he didn’t care for the danger. That’s the sort of talk he gave me. I told him to get out of my room and never let me see his face again. And he went, growling.”

Hal Dozier scented the lie under this talk. He had known Hulan for a long time as a man of dubious life, but now it was impossible for him directly to challenge the statement. All he could say was: “It doesn’t sound like Andy. He doesn’t talk that way, Hulan.”

“Not to you. Sure he don’t talk that way to you,” said Hulan. “He’s pulled the wool over your eyes and made a fool of you, Hal. Everybody in town knows it except you, and it’s time that you be told. That kid comes to you and makes good talk, says he’s going to reform. The rest of us know that he’s gone wrong. Once wrong always wrong. He’s going to the bad, and you’re a fool to let him take you in.”

A younger man could not have talked quite so frankly to the formidable marshal. But Si Hulan was too old to be in danger of physical attack, and he spoke his mind outright to Dozier.

He went on: “You’ve made a pet out of this man killer, Hal. That’s bad enough for you, because one of these days he’ll turn and sink his teeth in you. But it’s particular bad for us in this here town, because you ain’t the only one he’s apt to muss up. I say it wasn’t square to bring him in.”

There was a gloomy murmur from the others, and Hal Dozier studied them in despair. One by one they told the story of how Lanning had come down the stairs and ordered the crowd to separate so that he could walk through. They told the tale profanely and expressively, and they assured the marshal that the next time such a thing happened they would not stand upon the order of procedure, they would fall upon young Andrew Lanning and teach him manners.

“Boys,” said the marshal gravely, “I know how you feel. You think that Lanning is taking advantage of you, because he’s a proved gunfighter. Maybe it looks that way, but if I could get close to this trouble, I know I could show you that you’d badgered Andy into it. He ain’t a bully. He never was, and he never will be. But they’s some around this town that’s been treating him like he was a bear to be baited. Well, boys, if you ever tease Andy to the point when he breaks loose, he’ll turn out the worst rampaging bear you ever see. Keep that under your hat, but give Andy a chance to make good, which he can do.”

With this mixture of cajoling and warning, Hal left the hotel and sought Lanning. He found his young protégé buried in gloom in the silent blacksmith shop. Andrew lifted his head slowly and greeted his friend with a lackluster eye.

“Keep your heart up,” advised the marshal. “Work will begin to come in to you, son. This old shop will be full of business all day long, as soon as the boys in town are sure you mean to settle down. You were a good blacksmith in the old days, and they know it. But no more busting out like you done today.”

It was proof of the despair of Andrew that even to Hal Dozier he did not offer the true explanation of that affair. He let it go.

“Hal,” he said sadly, “the main trouble is that I don’t think I want the work to come in. I was a blacksmith in the old days. I liked it, and I liked to make things. But it doesn’t interest me any more.”

“What in the world are you, then?”

“I dunno, Hal. I can’t find out. Maybe I’m what they figure me to be … no good.”

The marshal found that he had no answer ready, and he could only make one suggestion. “If you can’t make a go of the blacksmith work, come with me. I’ll make you a deputy. They’s a big bunch of cash right now over in the bank, and they have been asking me for a good man to guard it. Will you let me give them your name?”

But Andy shook his head. “They wouldn’t take me. Besides, I’m not ready to give up yet.”

Hal Dozier went straight to the telegraph office and wired to Anne Withero: COME QUICK, OR NOT AT ALL.

In the evening he received an answer from Anne Withero, saying she was coming on the next train. That telegram gave him heart. But would Andrew Lanning hold out until the arrival of this great ally?

The marshal did not know it, but the great temptation was coming to Andrew even at that very moment. He sat in the old shack that his uncle, Jasper Lanning, had owned before him. Never had it seemed more dreary, more deserted. As he was coming home from the shop at the end of the idle day, little Judy had crossed the street to avoid passing close to him, and that told Andy more than the curses of a crowd of grown men what the town thought of him.

He felt the blight of it cold in his heart all the time that he was cooking his supper, and then he sat down to the meal without appetite. The bacon was cold, the flapjacks soggy, the potatoes half cooked. He forced himself to eat.

All the windows were open, for the night was coming on close and windless, and he wished to take advantage of every stir of the air. It was very hot, and it seemed to have grown hotter since the coming of the darkness. The little flame of the lantern seemed to add to it. He could feel the glow against his face, and there was the nauseating odor of kerosene and the foul-burning wick. But he had not heart enough to trim the wick and freshen the light.

When he had finished his meal, there was the doubly disagreeable duty of washing the dishes. The water was greasy to the touch, nauseating again. The walls of the kitchen were hung with shadows, memories of the old days, and those old days seemed cramped and disagreeable. He was returning to that life, and there was no glamour to it. It was like crawling into a hole and waiting for death.

He finished his task by banging the dishpan onto its nail on the rough-finished boards of the wall and strode slowly back to the other room. There he sat down with a book, but the print would not take hold of his eye. He found the book falling to his lap, while his mind wandered through the past. He had lived greater things than were in these romantic pages. He had been part and parcel and the prime mover in deeds that had stirred the length and the breadth of the mountain desert. And a faint, grim smile played and grew and died on his lips, as he remembered some of them.

He was recalled from his dreaming sharply, as though by a voice. All at once, although he did not change from his position, he was tinglingly alert. Another person had entered the room and stood at the door behind him. An added sense, which only men who have been hunted possess, informed him of that fact. Someone was there. His mind flashed over a score of possibilities of men who hated him, men who might have trailed him to the town to wreak vengeance. Any one of them would be capable of shooting him in the back without warning.

All this went through his mind in the least part of a second. Then in a flash he whirled out of his chair, slipping into the dense shadow on the floor with the speed of a snake that twists and strikes. As he fell, the long gun, which never left his hip, was gleaming in his hand.

The man at the door jerked both empty hands above his head and cursed softly. He was a handsome fellow with a rather colorless face, bright eyes, and an alert, straight carriage.

“Don’t shoot!” he called. “Don’t shoot, Andy!”

The latter came softly to his feet, but still crouched, panting and savage under the urge of that swift impulse to fight. He kept low in the shadow that washed across the room, below the level of the table on which the squat lantern sat. In this shadow Andy slipped to the farther corner of the room. There he was in a position that neither the two windows nor the open door commanded. Here he straightened, still with the revolver ready.

“You can drop your hands now, Scottie,” he ordered.

Scottie had turned slowly to follow the movements of Lanning, always with his arms stiffly above his head.

“Whispering winds!” he exclaimed, as he brought his hands down. “Fast as ever, eh? Thought you’d be slowed up a little by the quiet life, but you’re not.”

“What’s up?” demanded Andrew Lanning. “And what d’you want, Scottie? Is there anyone outside?”

“Nobody that means you any harm. Suspicious, aren’t you, these days? How does that come, Andy? Living among these fine, quiet, honest men in Martindale, I should think that your life would be like a smooth-flowing river.” He grinned impishly at Lanning.

“You’ve said enough,” said Andy. It was a new man who faced Scottie, a dangerous, cunning, agile man whose eyes never ceased roving from door to window to the face of his guest. “Why are you here?”

Scottie sauntered to a chair and dropped into it, his hands folded behind his head. In this fashion, with a slow and lordly turning of the eyes, he surveyed the house.

“Not a lot to boast of as a house, Andy. Why am I here? Why, just for a chat. Dropped in to chat about old days, you know, Andy. The way you sat there, with your book upside down and your eye looking at nothing, I thought you might be thinking of the same thing. What about it?”

Andy watched him carefully, but he dropped the gun back in the holster.

“Well, Scottie?”

The latter refused to be pinned down to reasons and purposes. He rambled on. “Any of our camps could beat this, eh? In the old days when Allister led us around? Those were free times, Andy. Money, liquor, good cigars, best chuck on the range. Can you come over that here in Martindale?”

Andy was silent. Into his mind had flashed a picture of the campfire and the circle of faces bathed in yellow light and carved from black shadow.

“But I suppose you got friends down here who more than make up for what you miss, eh?”

There was a flash and twinkle in his bright eyes. How unlike the eyes of any man Lanning had seen in Martindale since his return. For the wolf light was in them, and as his heart leaped in response, he knew that the wolf light was in his own eyes. He knew that if he lived a long and peaceful life to the very end, that light would gleam from time to time in his face, and the fierce, free, joyous urge would pulse and rush through his veins. It was in him, and it was part of him. When he spoke to Scottie, like spoke to like. One word between them might mean more than a whole conversation with the men of Martindale. Two glances were question and reply.

“Leave out my Martindale friends,” said Andy dryly. “Why are you here? And who came with you?”

“I came alone.”

Andy smiled.

“You’re right, chief,” said Scottie. “You know I wouldn’t risk coming down here alone.”

“Who’s with you?”

“Ask.”

Andy whistled a prolonged, low note that traveled far and quavered up at the end weirdly. After a moment there came a still-softer answer.

“Larry la Roche and Clune, eh? Where’s the big fellow?”

Scottie made a careless gesture of lighting a match and blowing it out.

“Dead?” asked Andy huskily.

“Dead.”

“How?”

“They cornered him at Old Willow, Jordan and his two cubs of kids. Jordan came up and talked to him. His kids sneaked around behind and drilled him.”

Andy began to pace up and down lightly, swiftly, soundlessly. “I wish I’d been there!” he said. “Jordan, eh?”

“I wish you’d been there,” replied Scottie. “The big fellow would never have dropped out if you’d been there to lead. But the rest of us couldn’t handle him, and now he’s done for. As a matter of fact, chief, the three of us have come down here to make a little proposition to you.” He leaned forward, his elbows sprawling out on the table. “Lanning, will you listen?”

Andrew hesitated, and before he could answer, Scottie struck smoothly into his talk.

“Chief, we need you back. I admit that we did a dirty trick. I admit that you’ve reason not to trust us. Particularly me. But you were getting Hal Dozier off free, and every one of us hates Hal Dozier like poison, and has reason to. We couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t stand it. I made a mistake and tried to get Dozier, whether you wanted to or not. Well, I didn’t do it. You turned out faster in the head and stronger than the whole lot of us. I admit it, Andy. I’m older than you are. I’ve followed the game a lot longer than you’ve followed it, but I’ll freely admit that, next to Allister, you’re the best leader that ever rode the mountains. And time will give you as much or more than Allister had.

“Clune and Larry la Roche and I are three good men. You know that. But, without a leader, we play lone hands, and we get poor results. And what leader can we get? I tried to hold the boys together. I couldn’t do it. I’m ashamed to admit it, but it’s true. Then we agreed to follow Larry, but he’s too hotheaded, just as you told us a long time ago. Matter of fact we thought you were too young to know much. It’s taken the last few months to teach us that you knew a lot more than we gave you credit for. In short, we agree that we have to have you back.

“Allister picked you to follow him in the lead, and Allister was right. You were the next best man to him. We see that now. If you come to us, you’ll be the chief, just as Allister was, and you’ll settle the disputes, decide on the plans, and take two shares for yourself every time we split the pot. How does that sound to you, Andy?”

Lanning opened his lips to speak and then sank into a chair, with something like a groan. “No!” he declared.

“Lad, we need you.”

“Clear out, Scottie,” said Andrew.

“But I’m coming back,” said Scottie, rising, but smiling in the face of Andrew. “I’m coming back, and when I come back, I’ll get another answer. Remember, Andy, we’re three who can do more than three things, and with you to organize and keep us together we’ll live like kings, free kings, Andy. You’re not cut out for life in a dump like this. Don’t forget, I’m coming back.”

“Don’t do it,” replied Andrew. “I’ve given you my answer. Stay away.”

But Scottie laughed mockingly, waved from the doorway, and disappeared into the deep, hot black of the night.

Andrew stared after him with trembling lips, and his deep agitation showed in his face. He had to fight hard to keep from following.

There had been strange men in Martindale, but none stranger than the man who arrived the next morning. It would have been hard to imagine one less in tune and in touch with his surroundings. The slouching, loose-dressed careless cowpunchers on the hotel veranda stared at him askance, as he came up the steps. He wore a little, low-crowned, narrow-brimmed derby, a low collar, very tight for the bull-like neck, close-fitting clothes, through which the rolling muscles of his shoulders bulged under the coat, rubber-heeled shoes, square and comfortably blunt of toe.

When he signed his name on the register, he seemed to be trying to dig the pen through the paper, and the name sprawled huge and legible at a great distance: J. J. Gruger. While he waited to be taken to his room, he snapped a tailor-made cigarette out of a box and lighted it with singular dexterity.

He was the sort of man the cowboys would ordinarily have laughed at, almost openly. But there was something muscularly intense about the bulldog face of J. J. Gruger that discouraged laughter, and his eyes had a way of jerking from place to place and lingering a piercing instant, wherever they fell.

He was only a moment in his room upstairs, and then he came down. With short, springy steps he proceeded to the dining room and ate hugely. After that he came out onto the veranda, not to lounge about, but as one on business bent. He did not approve of Martindale any more than Martindale approved of him, and he was not at all eager to disguise his emotions. Having surveyed the white-hot, dusty street he turned with a characteristic suddenness upon one of the loungers who was no less a person than Si Hulan.

But the address of Lefty Gruger was not nearly so jerky and blunt as one would have expected from his demeanor. He drew up a chair beside Si, who eyed him curiously, and leaned a little toward the crafty old rancher. In his manner there was a sort of confiding interest, as though he were imparting a secret of great value. And he talked rather from the side of his mouth, gauging his voice so accurately that the sound traveled as far as the ear of Si Hulan and not an inch farther.

“Name’s Gruger,” he said by way of introduction. “I’m up here looking for a bird called Lanning. Got any dope on him, or is he a stranger to you?”

“More or less,” said Si. “He’s twenty-five or twenty-six years old, and I’ve knowed him along about twenty-four years, I reckon. But I wouldn’t say we was ever familiar-like.”

There was a little glint in the quick eyes of Lefty as they traveled over the face of his companion. In some subtle way the two came to an understanding on the spot.

“If you mean you ain’t a friend of this guy,” said Lefty, “it don’t bother me none. I ain’t his brother myself. But can you tell me anything about him?”

Si Hulan cleared his throat and paused, as if making up his mind how far he could go. Then he felt his way as he spoke. “Lanning was a nice, quiet kid around town,” he said. “Nobody had nothing ag’in him, thought he was kind of spineless, as a matter of fact. All at once he busted loose. Got to be a regular fighter, a gunfighter!”

He waited to see if this shot had taken effect.

“You don’t say,” said Lefty with polite interest.

“Maybe you don’t know what a gunfighter is, friend,” observed Hulan.

“Maybe not,” said Lefty guilelessly.

“It means a gent who lives with his gun day and night and never lets it get more than an inch or so out of his hand. He practices all the time. Tries the draw, tries himself at a mark, and gets ready to use that gun in a fight to kill. And the usual windup is that he gets so blamed skillful that he ends by trying himself out and picking fights till he drops somebody. Then he’s outlawed and goes to the devil.”

“But I sort of get it that young Lanning ain’t gone to the devil yet.”

“Son,” said Si Hulan, who now seemed to feel at ease with the stranger, “that boy is rapping at Satan’s door, and he’ll get inside pretty pronto.”

“Uhn-huh,” said Lefty Gruger.

“Yesterday he made a little bust,” said Si Hulan. “He’s been here with us a few days, trying to make out that he figures on living real quiet. But yesterday he sort of busted loose. And now we’re sitting around waiting for him to make a play. And the minute he pulls a gun, he’ll be salted down. He’s no good. Once wrong always wrong.”

“You’ve said a mouthful, pal,” observed Lefty Gruger.

His little eyes twinkled with thought for a moment. Then he sat up and hailed a freckle-faced youngster passing the veranda.

“Son,” he said, “will you go find Andrew Lanning for me and tell him there’s a man waiting for him at the hotel.”

He followed the request with the bright arc of a quarter that spun into the clutching hand of the boy. The latter stared at the generous stranger for a moment, then dug his bare toes inches deep in the dust and gave himself a flying start down the street. Lefty Gruger watched him thoughtfully. An idea had come to him that he considered, for its simplicity and its effectiveness, to be the equal of any he had ever had in his entire criminal career. A glow of satisfaction with himself spread through him. It was a conclusive proof that the enforced idleness of his career in the prison had not dulled his wits a particle.

Presently he eluded a question of Si Hulan, slipped out of his chair, and began to walk up and down in front of the veranda, gradually increasing his distance until he was out of earshot of the men on the verandah—out of earshot as long as only a conversational tone was used. This was the strategic point that he wished to attain, and when the voices on the veranda had faded to a blur behind him, he halted, settled his hat more firmly to shade his eyes, and waited, cursing the dazzling flare of the sunlight from the dust of the street.

He had hardly reached this position when he saw his quarry coming. He knew the man as well as if a herald had gone before, announcing that this was Andrew Lanning. The bold, free step, the well-poised head, and something, moreover, of hair-trigger alertness about the man convinced him that this was the gunfighter; this was certainly the man of action.

Lefty slipped his hand into his coat pocket and ran the tips of his fingers lovingly over the familiar outlines of the automatic. He withdrew his hand, bringing out a cigarette box, and took out and lighted his smoke with his usual speed. He had snapped the match away, and it was fuming in the dust when Andrew Lanning came close.

Lefty surveyed him with a practiced eye. The promise from the distance was more than borne out in the details that he observed at close hand. Here was a man among many men. Here was a foeman worthy, almost, of his own steel. A sort of honest enthusiasm welled up in the heart of Lefty Gruger, just as the boxer feels a savage joy when his own first blow of the battle is deftly blocked, and a jarring return thuds home against head and breast. Lefty Gruger measured his enemy and felt that the battle might well be close.

“You’re Lanning,” he said smilingly, and held out his stubby hand.

It was very essential that he should be seen by the veranda crowd to greet Andrew Lanning amiably. He could not resist the temptation, however, and allowed some of his bull strength to go into the grip. There was an amazing reaction. His own bulky hand had hardly begun to tighten before the lithe, long fingers of Andrew curled up and became so many bands of contracting steel, cutting into flesh and grinding sinews against bone. It was only a moment. Then their hands fell apart, and Lefty Gruger felt the life slowly return to his numbed muscles.

He maintained his smile for the benefit of those on the veranda. Then he shifted his position as to bring Andrew facing the veranda, while he kept his own back turned.

“I’m Gruger,” he said, continuing the introduction. “I’ve dropped out here on a little piece of business with you. A sort of private business, Lanning. I didn’t know how to tackle it, but I got a couple of hints from the birds on the veranda. They sure love you a lot in this burg, Lanning.”

“They seem to,” said Andy coldly. “What did they tell you about me?”

“Not much, but enough. Tipped me that you were a gunfighter and a fire-eater and that they were just sitting around waiting for you to bust loose, which played right into my hand. Gives me a chance to do what I want to do, right in public. It’s about the first time that I’ve ever had an audience. And say, bo, I sure love applause.”

“I don’t understand,” said Andrew, falling back a pace, the better to study the half-grinning, half-ugly face of Gruger.

“Why, kid,” continued Lefty, “I’ve come out here to bump you off, and I find that I can do the job and get a vote of thanks and my traveling expenses out of the town. That’s easy, ain’t it?”

Andrew blinked. It seemed that the chunky stranger must be either mad or jesting.

“I’m talking straight,” said Lefty, dropping his voice to an ominous purr. “Kid, go for your gat. I’ve showed the folks that I’ve met you peaceable and all that. Now you got to go for your gat, and I’ll do my best to drop you.”

“I understand,” said Andrew huskily. “They worked up the job, eh? Found a man killer to fit my case and now … but it won’t work, Gruger. I’ve made up my mind to see this thing through. I’m going to live without gunfights. One gunfight is ruin for me. One more gunfight makes me what you are.”

“You lie!” said Lefty, letting his voice ring out suddenly. “I tell you, you lie!” He added in a murmur: “Now get the gun, you fool. Get the gun, or I’ll shame you, so you won’t be able to show your face around this town again as long as you live.”

The voices on the veranda had ceased. Men had scattered to shelter. From shelter they watched and listened. If someone had offered $5 for the life of the stranger, the offer would have been received with ardent laughter. But still there was no gunplay, even after Andy Lanning had been given the lie. They could see, also, that his face was white.

“It doesn’t work,” he was saying huskily. “Gruger, I won’t fight.”

“Take this then!” said Lefty, and his sturdy arm flicked out. The clap of his open hand against the face of Lanning was plainly audible to the listeners and the watchers, and their muscles tightened against the coming report of the guns.

But a miracle happened. While Lefty shot his hand back into his pocket and twitched up the muzzle of his automatic, prepared to send out that spurt of fire and lead with the touch of his forefinger, the hand of Andy Lanning had darted down to the butt of his gun and stayed there. He maintained the struggle for an instant, fighting bitterly against himself, and then he conquered. He turned on his heel and strode back down the street, his cheek tingling where the fingers of Lefty had struck him.

Lefty went back to the hotel as one stunned. He was greeted with a clamor of frank awe and applause.

“By heaven,” said Si Hulan, “they all got a yaller streak, all these gunfighters, and it took this nervy little bulldog to bring it out. Son, come up to my room. I got a bottle to set out for you pronto, best in the land.”

Lefty Gruger accompanied him thoughtfully, saying not a word.

Dazed, sick with longing to turn back and find the man again, Andy Lanning fought his way home. All the wolf that Scottie had wakened in him the night before came back to him with redoubled force.

He hurried to the shop, and there he frantically smashed a big bar of iron into useless shapes with the blows of a twelve-pound sledge. All his rage went into that labor. When it was ended, he was weak, but his spirit was quieter, and he dragged himself slowly toward his home. He passed the open door of the rival smith’s shop and saw his competitor leaning there, filling a pipe at the end of a prosperous day. At sight of Andy, he nodded carelessly, and Andy suspected that the sudden frown with which the big, sooty fellow looked down at his fuming pipe was for the purpose of veiling a smile.

No doubt he had heard of the disgrace of Andrew Lanning earlier in the day. Now that he had once been braved, others would probably try it. How long could he endure? How long?

He was trembling with the mental struggle when he reached his shack and flung himself down on his bunk, his head in his hands. How long he remained there he could not tell, fighting always against that terrific impulse to rise and hunt out his persecutor. But, when a hand touched his shoulder, he lifted himself to a sitting posture. It was so dark that he could barely make out the face of Scottie.

“I’ve heard,” said Scottie, “and I’ve understood. But is it worth the gaff, Andy?”

The words fell like a blessing on Lanning. Scottie was more or less of a gentleman in training, more or less educated. His trained mind had understood. But how many more would?

“The rest of ’em,” said Scottie, “are saying that you’ve showed yellow … the fools.”

“La Roche and Clune are saying that?” asked Andrew, rising.

“They? Of course not! They saw you go down to face Hal Dozier. I mean the rest of the town. They’re laughing at you, Andy, and you’re a butt and a joke among ’em. Now, partner, the time has come. Sally is ready and waiting outside. Come on with me, Andy. The best of it is that our first job, after you come to us, is in this town, this night. They’ll curse themselves before the morning comes for having turned down Andrew Lanning.”

Andy went hastily to the door. Sally, from the shed, saw the outline of his form and neighed very softly.

“Ah, Sally girl,” exclaimed poor Andy, “are you asking me to go, too?”

“Because you’d be a fool not to go. It’s fate, Andy. You can’t get away from that.”

A child’s voice began singing down the street, a shrill, sweet, eager voice, breaking and trembling on the high notes. Little Judy was coming, singing “Annie Laurie” with all her heart.

“Hush,” said Andy, and raised his hand.

The outlaw remained silent, frowning in the gloom of the twilight. He knew that that child’s song was fighting against him and saving Andy from temptation. The voice passed and died away down the street.

“No,” declared Andy at last. “I thank you for trusting me and asking me to lead you, Scottie, but I can’t go.”

“If it’s for that girl,” broke out Scottie, “I can tell you that she’ll never think of …”

“That’ll hold you now,” said Andy warningly. “Leave her out of it.”

“Lanning,” began Scottie again, “if I go back without you, the boys will call me …”

“A fool,” said Andy, “and maybe you are. Besides, you’re a good deal of a snake, Scottie. I trusted you once, and you tried to get me. You’ll have no second chance. No matter how I throw in, if I leave Martindale with every man’s hand against me, I won’t throw in with you and the rest of ’em. You played me dirt once, and I know well you would do it again in a pinch. Now get out.”

Scottie, after hesitating through one moment of savage silence, turned and went.

Left to the darkness, Andy sank down on his bunk, his head between his hands. He had cut loose, it seemed, from every anchor. He had severed connections with the very outlaws who might have been his port of last refuge. Having already alienated the men of Martindale, he had also sacrificed the one thing that should have remained to him when all else was gone, his pride.

Scottie went hastily through the dark and, rounding the corner of Sally’s shed, found two figures drawn back so as to melt into the shadow under the projecting roof.

“Well?”

“Missed, curse him,” said Scottie.

A soft volley of invectives answered him.

“I knew you would,” said the hard, nasal voice of Larry la Roche. “Stubborn as rock once he’s made up his mind.”

“You know a pile after a thing’s done,” declared Clune.

“Shut up,” commanded Scottie. “The thing’s settled. No fighting about it.”

“But what’ll we do for the fourth man? That’s a four-man job we got on hand,” declared Larry la Roche. “The fourth man, that’s the first thing we got to get.”

“The first thing is to get back at Lanning,” said Scottie venomously. “He called us a lot of treacherous snakes. He cursed you, Larry la Roche. He said he might come back and lead us if it weren’t for your ugly face. He says he hates the thought of you. I told him if he didn’t want you, we didn’t want him.”

“Did he say that?” demanded la Roche, his tall body swaying back and forth in an ecstasy of repressed rage.

“And he said Clune was a cowardly fox, not worth having.”

“I’ll cut his throat to stop his gabble,” declared Clune. “How come you to stand for such talk?”

“Because I’m not a gunfighter,” said Scottie, writhing as he remembered the remarks that Andy had leveled at him in person. “But let’s forget Andy for a while and think about the job. We’ll get Lanning later on.”

“Do we have to have four men?”

“One to watch in front, one behind, two inside. Yep, we have to have four. Who’ll the fourth man be?”

“It just pops into my head,” said Scottie thoughtfully, “that the fellow who bluffed out Lanning today might be our man.”

“Did you see him?”

“Just from a distance. I’m not advertising my face around town. But he looks like a tough mug. He’s at the hotel. Suppose we nab him.”

“In the hotel?”

“No, you fool. Am I going to walk through the hotel and take a chance on being recognized?”

“Then where’ll we find him?”

“If he tried to get Lanning once, he’ll try again. Maybe he’s simply been waiting for the dark. I’ll wait down the street and stop him on the way. You stay here.”

They obeyed, and Scottie turned the corner of the shed and sauntered around to the front of the shack, taking his position leaning against a hitching post, a little distance down the street from the hotel.

His reasoning about Lefty had been simple enough, and being simple, it was also justified. He had not been waiting in the place for twenty minutes when he saw a burly, little figure come swaying through the twilight with short, choppy steps. Scottie stopped him with a soft hiss as he passed.

“One minute, partner.”

“Eh?”

“Gruger,” he said, “my name’s Scottie. I know where you’re going, and I’m here to stop you.”

“Oh,” murmured Lefty Gruger. “You think you’ll stop me?”

“Because I hate to see a good man wasted. Gruger, he’ll kill you if you force him to make a gunplay.”

“Say,” asked Lefty, stepping close, “who are you, and what makes you think I’m going to force a gunplay on anybody? Where do you come in?”

“By needing you for another job that’ll pay more.”

“Hmm,” said Lefty Gruger, peering through the shadows, apparently more or less satisfied by what he saw.

“I’ll undertake,” said Scottie, “to prove that Lanning is a better man than you are with a gun. And then I’ll prove that my job is worth more than the Lanning job.”

“And suppose all this chatter meant something … suppose I was really after Lanning … how would doing your job help me to get rid of Lanning?”

“I have an idea,” said Scottie smoothly, “of a way we can ruin Lanning with my job.”

“Pal,” said Lefty, after an instant of thought, “I like the sound of your talk. Start in by showing me how good Lanning is with a gat.”

“Follow me,” said Scottie.

He led the redoubtable Lefty Gruger around behind the shed and presently introduced him with a wave of the hand to Clune and Larry la Roche. Scottie then asked Lefty to accompany the trio over the hill and into the valley beyond. Lefty followed willingly enough, for there was sufficient mystery about this proceeding to attract him. They halted a full mile away in a broad, moonlit ravine, paved with pale-gray stones that gave the valley the brightness of twilight.

“Now,” said Scottie to Larry la Roche, “I want you to get out your gun, Larry, and do a little shooting for us. You’re the best of us with a gun.”

“Thanks,” replied Larry la Roche, “but I guess that don’t make Clune none too happy. But what’s there to shoot at? I’m willing.”

“I’ll give him a mark,” suggested Lefty Gruger. He bent, picked up a piece of quartz, and shied it carelessly into the air. “Hit that.”

As he spoke the gun came into the hand of Larry, and the glitter of the falling quartz went out as though it had fallen out of the moonshine into shadow. Lefty Gruger remained staring where the quartz had last been seen, flashing dimly down through the air.

This was marksmanship indeed. But Lefty was not yet convinced. As a snap shot, he was a rare man himself.

“Turn your back,” he said to Larry huskily, almost angrily.

Larry shoved the weapon back in the holster and obediently turned his back.

Lefty picked up a smaller rock and threw it high in the air. Not until it had reached the crest of its rise and was beginning its glinting descent did he call: “Now nail her!”

Larry la Roche whirled, the gun conjured mysteriously into his hand before his long body was halfway writhed around. His eye wandered, and the muzzle of his gun wandered, also, as he searched for the target. Then he fired. The rock glanced down again and was dropping into the shadow of a boulder when Larry fired the second time, and the little rock puffed into dust, white and glittering with crystals in the moonlight.

“All right,” said Larry. “That was a hard one. What next?”

“What next?” asked Lefty Gruger. He passed his finger beneath his stiff collar, as if to make his breathing easier. “There ain’t any more.”

He continued to stare at Larry la Roche for a moment and then suddenly approached and held out his hand. He wrung the long fingers of Larry.

“Pal,” he said, “I’ve seen shooting, and I’ve done some, but you got me beat.”

It was the hardest speech that Lefty Gruger had ever compelled himself to make, but there was a basic honesty in the bottom of the soul of the killer, and it rang in his voice. He made a secret reservation, however, that shooting at a falling rock was far different from shooting at a human target. The latter might strike back at unknown speed. But it was not only the exquisite nicety of the marksmanship that stirred him. It was the careless grace with which the heavy gun had slipped into the bony fingers of the tall man; it was that lightning speed of mind that, having missed his elusive target once, enabled him to readjust to a new direction and fire again in the split part of a second later. The bullets had followed one second later, almost as swiftly as though they had spat from the muzzle of his automatic, and each had been a placed shot. No wonder that Lefty Gruger stepped back with a chilly feeling of awe descending upon him.

“Boys,” he said, continuing that frankness that only a truly formidable man can show, “I didn’t know they grew like you out in this part of the woods. I’m glad I bumped into you. But what’s this got to do with me and young Lanning? How does this prove that he’s a better man than I am?”

Scottie rubbed his chin, then he turned to Larry la Roche. “Larry, you tell him.”

Larry thought a moment, taking off his hat and turning it slowly in his hands, while his eyes wandered slowly along the back, sharp-cut line where the hills met the mysterious haze of the sky.

“I’ll tell you,” he said at length. “I been born and raised with a gun, and I took to it nacheral. It was a long time before I met a gent that was better’n me. But I met one. Yes, sir, he was sure a dandy with a gat. He could make a big gun talk to him like a pet. I can handle a gun pretty fair, but he didn’t handle his gun. It was just a part of him. It growed into his hand … it growed into his mind. He just thought, and there was a dead man. Seemed like it, anyways. He was so fast with a gun and so straight that he didn’t hardly ever shoot to kill. But he’d plug a gent in the arm or the leg and leave him behind.”

Larry sighed.

“Say,” said Lefty Gruger, tremendously impressed, “I’d have give ten years out of my life to seen him. I guess there never was a better’n him, eh?”

“There was,” said Larry la Roche calmly. “Yep, there was a better man than Allister. We never thought his equal would come along, but he came, and the man that beat him and killed him was Hal Dozier. He wasn’t so fancy as Allister. He wasn’t so smooth. Allister was fast as a cat’s paw, but Hal Dozier is like the strike of a snake. He just explodes powder all the time, and when he fights, they’s a spark added, and he blows up. Well, he was faster than Allister and straighter with his gun, and he beat him fair and square.”

“Boys,” said Lefty Gruger, laughing uneasily, “I figure this ain’t any country for me. This Hal Dozier is the champion of champions, eh? I’d hate to have him soft footing after me.”

“He ain’t the champion,” said Larry la Roche, “not by a long sight he ain’t. They’s a gent that beat Hal bad. Met him clean, man to man, and dropped him, shooting in moonlight dimmer’n this. A snake strikes plumb fast, but the end of a whip when it cracks is a pile faster. And that’s the way with this other gent. He beat Hal Dozier.”

“And who’s he?”

“Andy Lanning.”

Lefty Gruger took off his hat. He had become suffocatingly hot, and the perspiration was stinging his eyes.

“You get me now,” murmured Scottie. “You see why I called you off him? Pal, you’ll quit Lanning’s trail?”

“I can’t,” said Lefty doggedly. “I give my word, and I stick to my word. I drop Lanning, or he drops me.”

“But suppose,” suggested Scottie softly, “that I show you how you make a barrel of loose coin and tie up Lanning at the same time. How would that suit you?”

“We’ll talk about it, pal.” He reverted to the last fascinating subject. “But this Lanning, how could he be so fast?”

“Listen,” said Scottie, “and I’ll tip you off. Allister and Hal Dozier are brave, you see? At least, Allister was, and Dozier is. They’re afraid of nothing. They’re plumb confident every time they fight. So’s Larry la Roche, there. So’s almost every gent who has a record as a gunman. But Lanning is different. He isn’t hard as steel. He’s all of a tremble when it comes to fight. I’ve seen him turn white as a girl and shake like a leaf before he went into danger. And he’s always sure the other fellow will get him. He thinks it all out. He feels that he’s as slow as a wagon wheel turning. He feels the other fellow’s slug tearing through his body. He goes through agony before he fights, but when the time comes for the pull of the gun, he’s a bundle of nerves, and every nerve is like loaded electricity. Well, partner, there’s one thing faster than anything else, and that’s the jump of an electric spark. That’s what Lanning is when he fights.”

“But he’s a coward?”

“Don’t fool yourself. He’s just enough of a coward to get a thrill out of every time he pulls a gun. What booze is to some and cards to others and money to the rest, that’s what gunfighting is to Lanning. It’s the lion, and he’s the trainer. It’s fear that brings the trainer into the cage every day, and it’s fear that brings Lanning into trouble.”

“But me and him …”

“He says he’s trying to go straight, curse him. He wouldn’t fight because of that. Because, no matter how the trouble started, he knew that he’d be blamed for it. But you’ve crossed him, Lefty, and sooner or later, you lay to this, he’ll get you and fill you full of lead unless you get him first. And the rest of us, the three of us, we all crossed him, too. We made this play tonight to try to get him back on our side. He wouldn’t come. So we know he’s going to try to get us, and our scheme is just to get him first.”

“How?”

“By standing all together and using the law. Sit down, and I’ll tell you how.”

While he talked, the moon slid high and higher and slipped into a cloud, and still the chief of the gang was outlining his plan. But, whatever that plan was, it did not develop that night. Martindale did not waken the next morning with the shudder that Scottie had planned for it the day before. It wakened calm and tired with the heat of the night and drifted into another blazing-hot day as peacefully as ever.

The night had been terrible for Andrew Lanning, and the day was more awful still, for he came to it physically exhausted, ragged nerves on edge. Sally came and put her head in at the window as he washed his breakfast things, and afterward she glided at his side as he went to the shop. But aside from Sally, there seemed no cheering note in all the universe, and the dark sense of defeat gathered more and more thickly in the corners of his brain.

That day dragged out, and another, with every waking hour filled with the suspicion of the men of Martindale and by Andrew’s fear of himself. He had to fight to keep himself from hating these people for once that hate took him by the throat, he knew that the killing would swiftly follow. It was in the very late afternoon of the second day that Hal Dozier came hurriedly to his shop, Hal Dozier with a drawn face of excitement.

“I got a surprise for you, Andy,” he said. “Come along.”

Andrew followed sluggishly to the door of the marshal’s office. The marshal here bent to do something to his right spur.

“Go on in, Andy. I’ll follow right on as soon as I get this spur fixed.”

Andy mechanically opened the office door and stood slouched against the wall. A full moment elapsed before he sensed another presence in the room and came suddenly erect, his nerves twitching. He turned, fighting himself to make the motion slow, and then he saw her. She was rising from her chair, big -eyed, as if she doubted her reception, half smiling, as if she hoped for happiness. She was more flower-like than ever, he thought, and her beauty struck him with a soul-stirring surprise, as something remembered, and yet with all the exquisite details forgotten. The difference between Anne Withero remembered and Anne Withero present was the difference between a dream and reality.

His eyes went down to the slender hand and the bending fingers that rested on the table. He found nothing to say, but he shut the door, always keeping his hungry eyes on her. And now Anne grew afraid, for she was looking at a new man, not the smooth-cheeked, careless, fire-eyed youth she remembered, but a man stamped with a starved look of suffering and dull, melancholy eyes.

At last she managed to say: “You wouldn’t come to me, you know, and so I had to come to you, Andrew.”

“Oh, Anne,” he whispered, “are you real? Is it you?”

“Of course. But, Andy, you’ve been terribly sick.”

“That’s all past, and …”

They seemed to fumble their way around the table, as if they were walking in sleep.

“You’ve kept one touch of belief in me, Anne?”

“Kept it? Ah, don’t you see that I’ve never doubted you even?”

This much the marshal heard, for he had stayed guiltily near the door, but at this point, he was mastered by a decent respect for the rights of lovers and walked reluctantly away. It was still terribly hot, but the sheriff took off his hat to the full blaze of the slant sun and smiled, as if a cool breeze were playing on his face.

Dozier came back, after what he thought was a painfully long time, and found them sitting close together, their dim, frightened eyes avoiding each other. The marshal was one of those lucky men who keep close to their youth, and his heart jumped at what he saw. He even understood when Andy Lanning rose and strode out of the room without a word to either of them.

The marshal closed the door after him and stood fanning himself with his hat and grinning shamelessly at Anne Withero. He liked her blush, and he liked her dignity, and he admired a poise that enabled her to smile back at him, as if she knew that he understood.

“If you knew,” he said at last, “what it means to me. That kid has been a load that’s nearly busted my back. And now it’s settled.”

“But it isn’t, you know,” said Anne Withero, growing anxious again.

“You mean to say that, after you’ve come, he doesn’t know that he has to go straight?”

“You see,” she explained, fully as worried as the marshal, but determined to make Andrew logical and plausible, “he feels that he hasn’t gone through a sufficient test. There is a bit of wildness in him, you know, Mister Dozier.”

“Not much more than there is in a hawk,” said the marshal dryly. “But what mischief is he up to now?”

“I tried to make him feel that he has been tested sufficiently. I told him that I knew about his meeting with the terrible man who struck him, and what a glorious thing I thought it was that he had endured it, and he wouldn’t agree. He says that he came within an inch of doing something terrible. And he wants a little time still, you see, to make these stupid people accept him. He says that if he could do something that would make half a dozen of these men about the village come to him and shake hands with him, then he’d feel that he had restored himself, and then he would be willing to go anywhere.”

“Even East with you?” asked the marshal still dryly. “And do you agree with this infernal nonsense?”

“I think Andrew knows best,” said Anne gravely.

The existence of Martindale was peaceful enough, but it contained citizens who habitually slept with only one eye closed. Some of these men were wakened in the middle of the night by a dull, muffled noise, as if a vast volume of tightly compressed air had suddenly expanded to its full limits. The sound was strange enough to bring them out of bed, and among them was Hal Dozier, buckling on his gun as he ran. Other figures scurried down the street, and presently an outcry guided him through the moonlight to the bank.

The door was open, and a dozen people were gathered in the room around the wrecked safe. The empty steel drawers were scattered here and there. The marshal cast one glance at it.

“Neat work,” he murmured. “If it weren’t for facts, I’d say Allister had a hand there. What’ve you found, boys?”

“This!” They threw a coat to him. “We found this in the corner.”

The marshal looked it over carelessly, then stiffened. “This!” he exclaimed chokingly.

“That’s Andy Lanning’s coat,” said Si Hulan importantly. “Murder will out, Hal. We’ve got your fine bird at last.”

“Go look in his shack,” said the marshal, sick at heart.

He could not understand it. More than once he had seen the impulse to break the law, dammed up in a man like water swelling in the banks of a stream, burst forth at the most unlooked-for moment. But Andrew Lanning had nothing in common with the criminally inclined lawbreaker. All the man’s impulses were for honesty, and the marshal knew that Anne Withero alone, in any case, should have been a sufficient motive to have held the boy to his self-imposed discipline of moral regeneration. He shook his head in sad perplexity.

Two or three in the crowd had run down the street toward the Lanning house. The marshal trotted across to his office, firing orders that sent the rest of the crowd in haste for saddles and horses. It was the newly installed telephone that brought the marshal to his office, but with his hand on the receiver, he was stopped by a shouting farther up the street. The outcries shot down on the far side of the town and then veered up the valley.

Hal Dozier ran to his door to be met there by half a dozen excited men.

“We found him sitting on his bunk, pretending he’d just heard the noise and was dressing to go out to see what was the matter. Cool, eh? Hulan shoved a gun under his nose, and he put up his hands and looked dazed. Good actor, he is. Then we told him what had happened … that we’d found his coat, and that we had him dead to rights. He looks over at a chair by the window, as if he’d just missed the coat that minute.

“‘That’s what they’ve done to get even,’ he says.

“We told him to lead us to the money first.

“‘All right,’” he said. “‘Right outside.’”

“Looked as though he was going along easy and peaceable. Then, as he turned for the door, he made a flick of his hand and knocked the gun out of Hulan’s hand and dived into the rest of us. He went through us like an eel through water. I got my hands on him, but he busted loose, strong as steel.

“He ran out, and we jumped our hosses and started after. Looked easy to run him down while he was on foot, but he let out a whistle, and that mare of his come tearing out of the shed and run alongside of him. Up he jumps on her back, as easy as you please, and away down the valley. Two or three of the boys headed after him.”

Dozier heard this with the pain slowly dying out of his face and a red rage coming in its place.

“Boys,” he said at the conclusion of the tale, “this is the end of the great Andrew Lanning. He’s taken the valley road with the fastest horse that ever ran in the mountains, but they’s one thing faster than horseflesh.” He tapped the shoulder of Si Hulan. “Hulan, you’ve got sense. Use it now. Get onto that telephone and ring Long Bridge. Tell them what’s happened. Tell them that I’m chasing Lanning with a half dozen men. I want Long Bridge to send me men if they please. Above all, I want good horses, and I want them ready and waiting before the morning, on the other side of the hills. They’ll have lots of time to get them together. I want horses more’n I want men. You make sure you tell them that. I’m going to run Lanning down with relays.

“After we get the fresh horses from Long Bridge, we’ll send a man with the played-out horses back to Long Bridge to wire on to Glenwood. He can tell them where the hunt is heading and where to meet us with a second relay. Sally is a great horse, but she can’t outlast three sets of horses. We’ll catch her this side of the Cumberlands. Now, the rest of you that want to follow, come along. We got to ride tonight as we never rode before, and the end of our trail is the end of Lanning.”

The marshal had spoken the truth when he said that there was no horse in the mountains that could pace with Sally, and it was never shown so clearly as on this night. With her master riding bareback and without bridle, guided only by the touch of his hand on one side of her neck or the other, she went down the only easy way out of Martindale, the long, narrow gorge that shot north into the mountains. She flew along well within her strength, but it was a dizzy pace for the three staunch little cow ponies that followed, and they dropped rapidly to the rear. Lanning became a flickering shape in the moon haze ahead, and finally that shape went out.

After that, they drew their horses back to a canter to wait for the main body of the pursuit to overtake them. They were courageous men enough, but three-to-one was not sufficient odds when one man was Andrew Lanning.

The clatter of many hoofs down the ravine announced the coming of the marshal. The thick of the posse overtook the forerunners on a rise in the floor of the valley, and they told briefly of what they had seen and done.

The marshal cursed briefly and effectively. They should have pressed boldly on, for the respite they gave Lanning would enable him to pause at the first ranch house for a saddle and bridle and, worst of all, a rifle. When the first house loomed out of the night, Dozier urged his men on ahead and dropped back himself to exchange a word with the people of the house. He was well enough mounted to overtake the rest.

He had hardly tapped at the door without dismounting, when the rancher appeared, revolver in hand.

“And who now?” he asked furiously.

“Dozier,” said the marshal. “Who’s passed this way?”

“Lanning and four men ahead of him.”

“Four men ahead of him! Who were they?”

“Don’t know. They didn’t stop, and they rode as if they was careless about what become of the horseflesh. But Lanning stopped long enough to grab my best saddle. Stuck me up with a gun and stood over me while I done the saddling for him, and then he got my rifle.”

The marshal waited to hear no more, but rode on with a groan. Mounted on Sally bareback, with a revolver strapped to his hip, Lanning was formidable enough, but with a rifle in addition and a comfortable saddle beneath him, the difficulties of the task were doubled and redoubled.

Who the four men might be, he had no idea. It was not common for four men to be riding furiously through the night and the mountains, but he had no time to juggle ideas. Lanning rode ahead, and Lanning was his goal.

When he regained the posse, Lanning had still not been sighted. The mountains on either side of the ravine now dwindled away and grew small, and it was possible that Andrew might have turned aside at almost any place. But something told Dozier that the fugitive would hold on due north. That was the easiest way, and in that direction Sally’s dazzling speed would most avail the rider. Accordingly the marshal urged his men to the fullest speed of their horses.

One thing at least was in his favor if he had guessed the route of Lanning. The fugitive would hold Sally back for a long chase, not thinking that the marshal would run his horses out in the first twenty miles, but that was exactly what Dozier would do. At the end of the twenty miles, the fresh mounts from Long Bridge would be waiting for his men.

The first light of dawn came when they labored over the crest of the range, and as they pitched down toward the plain below, he picked out his men with shrewd glances. No one had joined who was not sure of his endurance or of his ability with weapons, for men knew that the trail of Andrew Lanning would not be child’s play, no matter what the odds. Dozier gauged them carefully and nodded his content.

A strange happiness rose in him. This was the continuation, after so long a gap, of the pursuit in which he had ridden Gray Peter to death in the chase of Sally and the outlaw. And this second time he could not fail. It was not man against man, or horse against horse, but the law against a criminal who must die.

If only he had been right in his guess as to Lanning’s direction! When the dawn brightened, he saw, far away across the plain, a solitary dark spot. He fastened his glasses on the moving object and made sure. Then he swept the lower slopes of the hills and found the huddling group of fresh horses that had been sent out from Long Bridge.

The marshal communicated his tidings to the men, and with a yell, they spurred on the last of the first relay.

They changed horses and saddles swiftly, eager to be off on the fresh run. The marshal sent back to Long Bridge a message to telephone ahead to Glenwood to send out a fresh relay that must wait anywhere under the foot of the Cumberlands. Then he spurred on after his men.

Freshly mounted, they were urging their horses on at a killing pace, and presently the small form of Lanning began to come back to them slowly and surely. Twenty weary miles were behind Sally, and she could not stand against this new challenge. Yet stand she did! A fabulous tale at which he had often laughed came back to the marshal’s mind, a tale of some half-bred Arabian pony that had done a hundred miles through mountains between twilight and dawn. But the endurance of Sally seemed to make the tale possible.

By the time the day was bright and the light could be seen flashing on the silken flanks of Sally, they had drawn perilously close to her, but from that point on she began to increase her lead. Once or twice in the morning, the marshal stopped his own mount for a breath, and when he trained his glasses on the great mare, he could see her running smoothly, evenly, with none of the roll and lurch in her stride that tells of the weary horse. And then he called to his men and urged them to save the strength of their mounts. The greatest speed over the greatest distance, between that point and the first hills of the Cumberlands, that was what was wanted. There the second relay, which would surely run Lanning into the ground, would be waiting. That was fifteen miles away, and the blue Cumberlands were rolling vast and beautiful into the middle of the sky.

Toward the end of the stretch they had to send their ponies on at a killing pace, for Sally was slowly and surely drawing away. A sturdy gray dropped with a broken heart before that run was over, and still Sally went on to a greater lead and disappeared into the first hills of the Cumberlands.

But five minutes later the posse, weary, drawn-faced, ferociously determined, was on the fresh horses from Glenwood. They scattered out in a long line and charged the hills where Lanning had disappeared. Presently someone on the far left caught sight and drew in the others with a yell. That was the beginning of the hottest part of the struggle.

Nearly forty miles of running lay behind her, but Sally drew now on some mysterious reserve of strength that only those who know the generous hearts of fine horses can vaguely understand. The hilly country, too, was in her favor, and she took short cuts as nimbly as a goat. In spite of that, they pressed closer and closer. Before the middle of the morning came the crisis. Hal Dozier came in distant range, halted his horse, pitched his rifle to his shoulder, and tried three shots.

They fell wide of the mark. After half an hour more of riding, he called for a volley. It was given with a will. Dozier, watching through his glass like a general directing artillery fire, saw the hat jump and fall lopsided on the head of Lanning, and yet he did not fall, but turned in his saddle. Three times his rifle spoke in quick succession, and three little puffs of rock dust jumped before three of the men of the posse. Dozier cursed in admiration.

“It’s his way of telling us that he could have potted the three of you if he had wanted,” he said. “Now spread out and ride like the wind.”

They spread out and spurred obediently, fighting their horses up the slopes, which increased in difficulty, for they were nearing the heart of the Cumberlands. Sally still drifted just outside of close rifle fire. And eventually, about noon, she began to gain again. Hal Dozier shook his head in despair. Plainly the gallant mare must be traveling on her nerve strength alone, but how long it would last no one could tell.

He called his men back to a steady pace. They could only hope to get at Lanning now by wearing him down and reaching him by night. Certainly Sally would not last so long as that.

The afternoon came unendurably hot, with the men drooping and drowsy in their saddles from the long ride. It was at this time that they were jerked erect by the clang of three rapid shots, echoing a little distance ahead of them. They rounded the shoulder of the next hill hastily and saw the glistening form of Sally disappearing over a crest beyond, but in the hollow beneath them stood a horse with empty saddle, and the rider was lying prone beside it, his face exposed to the burning of the sun. Hal Dozier headed the rush into the hollow and dismounted.

It was Scottie who lay there, and Scottie had ridden his last ride. He begged for water feebly, but after it was given to him, he spoke more clearly, and they made a futile pretext of binding his wounds. One bullet had smashed his right shoulder. The other had pierced his body below the lungs, and he was in agony from it, but he made no complaint. Death was coming quickly on him. Hal Dozier hurried the posse on and remained holding the head of the dying man.

“It was Lanning,” murmured Scottie. “We blew the safe, Hal, and we planted Lanning’s coat there to fix the blame on him. Then we started out.”

“You were the four men on horses,” said the marshal. “But how did you keep ahead of Sally? And why did Lanning take after you?”

“We used Allister’s old gag,” said Scottie. “We planted relays before we turned the trick. Then we lit out in a semicircle. But Lanning … he must have known that we turned that trick and threw the blame on him … remembered that we had an old meeting place up yonder in the Cumberlands. And while we rode in an arc, he cut across in a straight line from Martindale, and Sally brought him up to us.

“We saw him following. We could see you following Andy. A game of tag, eh? The devil played against us, however. I cursed Sally till my throat was dry. There’s no wear -out to that mare. She kept coming on at us. Finally we drew up and gave our nags a breath and drew straws to see who should go back and try to pot Lanning. I got the short straw, and I went back. Well, it was a game of tag, and I’m it.” He added after a moment: “But while it lasted … a great game. S’long, Hal.”

He died without a murmur of pain, without a convulsion of face or body, and to the very end, he kept an iron grip on himself.

Hal Dozier rode like mad to the posse and communicated his tidings. The real criminals rode far beyond. The man they chased was acting the part of a skirmisher. They must ride now, not to kill Lanning, but to keep him from being overpowered by the numbers.

It was a singular goal for that posse, but they were sharpened by the phrase: “The last of old Allister’s gang.”

They rode hard, using the last strength of their horses. Two hours wore on, but there was no sight of Sally again. It was a strange predicament. The more they pressed on Lanning, the more he would struggle to escape and close on the real criminals. And yet they could not desist and leave odds of three-to-one against him.

At last they were riding over gravel and hard rock that gave no trail to follow. Suddenly a second fusillade made them spur their horses on. The crackling of guns had been far away, only a gust of wind had blown the sound to them, showing how hopelessly they had been distanced. They urged their sweating horses on in the ominous silence that followed the firing. Then the neighing of a horse guided them.

They climbed to a ridge, and on the shoulder below them, in a natural theater rimmed by great rocks, they saw the picture. The gaunt, horrible body of Larry la Roche lay propped against the rocks, his long arms spread out beside him. Clune was curled up on his side nearby, with the gravel scuffed away where he had struggled in the death agony. In the center of the terrible little stage lay no less a person than Lefty Gruger, gaping at the sky, and across him lay the body of him who had worked all this death, Andrew Lanning. Above him, trembling with weariness, stood beautiful Sally, neighing for help till the mountainside reechoed.

Not a man spoke as they went down the slope.

The whole thing was perfectly clear. The gang, hard pressed by their terrible antagonist, had turned back and waylaid him, taking ambush behind these rocks. When he came down, they had shot him from his horse. It was while he was falling, perhaps, and while he lay on the ground that they had rushed him, but the revolver of Lanning had come out, and this was its work. The first bullet had slain the grim la Roche, and the second had curled up Clune. The head of Lefty Gruger had been smashed with a stroke of the butt as he came running to close quarters.

They lifted the form of the conqueror from the body of Lefty Gruger, and the marshal, with his face pressed to the breast of Andy, caught the faint flutter of the heart.

Only then they set about the work of first aid, and they started with a sort of fierce determination, hard- eyed and drawn- lipped. The marshal cursed them as they worked, telling them briefly the true story of Andrew Lanning, which they would never believe before. And now, it seemed, he had given his life for them.

It was a dubious matter indeed. The bullet that had knocked him from his horse had whipped through his thigh. Another had broken his left arm, and a third—and this was the dangerous one—had plowed straight through his body. When his breathing became perceptible, a red bubble rose to his lips. Somewhere that bullet had touched the lungs, and now the matter of life or death was as uncertain as the flip of a coin.

They could not dream of removing him. He must be brought back to life or die on the spot, and they worked like madmen, throwing a shelter against sun and wind above him, bedding him soft in saddle blankets and fir boughs, washing the wounds and bandaging them.

“Get the doctor from Glenwood,” said Hal Dozier to his messengers, “and get Anne Withero … she’s in Martindale. Let the doc come as fast as he can, but make Anne Withero come like the wind.”

The doctor was there before dark, and he shook his head.

Anne Withero was there before midnight, and she set her teeth.

At dawn the doctor admitted there was a ghost of a hope. At noon he declared for a fighting chance. In the twilight Andy Lanning parted his stained lips and whispered into the ear of Anne Withero: “The bad strain, dear … I think they’ve let it out.”