Introductory material (continued 5)

"Well, look at it. Not a thing happened to hurt, did it? Lord, Sally Jane, men are the easiest things in the world to handle when you know how."

"You don't give them half enough credit," said Sally Jane dryly. "Scratch a man and you'll catch a savage every time. Beasts!"

"Rats!" remarked Hazel, and gave her head a toss and turned her attention to practical things. "Look at this clean floor! Look at the dirt they tracked in! Oh, the devil! I could swear!"

She fetched a fresh bucket of water and began to scrub the floor anew.

"I'm going," announced Sally Jane. "Once more, Hazel, won't you change your mind and visit with us for a while?"

Hazel shook her head. "I only wish I felt able to. But you don't have to go yet. Stay to supper, do. Let the male parent get his own supper for a change. It won't hurt him. And there'll be a fine old moon to-night about eight."

"I promised Dad French bread for to-night, or I would. I can't disappoint him. So long. Ride over first chance you get."

When Sally Jane was gone, Hazel hurried to finish the scrubbing of the floor. When she had wrung out the last mop rag and hung it to dry behind the stove, she fed the chickens and horses, took the ax and bucksaw, went out to the woodpile and sawed and split a man's size jag of stove wood and kindling.

In the red glory of the sunset she returned to the house with her arms piled high with wood. She made sufficient trips to fill the woodbox, then started a fire in the stove, put on the coffeepot and ground up enough coffee for four cupfuls. She liked coffee, did Hazel Walton.

Bacon and potatoes were sputtering in their respective pans on the stove before it was so dark that she was forced to light the lamp.

She had slipped back the chimney into the clamps and was waiting for it to heat so that she could turn up the wick when the faintest of creaks at the door made her look up.

She did not move, just stood there staring stupidly at the bareheaded man that blocked the open doorway. For the bareheaded man was Dan Slike, his harsh face rendered even less prepossessing than usual by a week's stubble of beard. A six-shooter was in Dan Slike's hand, and the barrel was pointing at her breast.

"Don't go makin' any move toward that rifle on the hooks back of you," said Dan Slike, slipping into the room and closing the door behind him. "If you do, I'll have to beef you. I don't wanna hurt you—I ain't in the habit of hurting women, but by Gawd, if it comes to me or you, why it'll just naturally have to be you. Dish up that grub a-frying there on the stove. I'm hungry. Get a move on."

At that she turned in a flash and reached for the Winchester. She had it barely off the hooks when Dan Slike was beside her. With his left hand he seized the gun barrel and shoved it upward. And as he did so, he smote her across the top of the head with his pistol barrel.

A rocketing sheaf of sparks danced before her eyes and her knees gave way. She sank to the floor in a dazed heap. He dragged the Winchester from her failing grasp as she fell.

He began to work the lever of the rifle with expert rapidity. A twinkling stream of cartridges twirled against his chest and fell to the floor. Carefully he gathered all the cartridges and dropped them into the side pocket of his coat. The unloaded rifle he leaned against the door jamb.

Hazel slowly raised her body to a sitting position. She clung to a leg of the table for support. She passed a hand very tenderly across the top of her head. She felt a little nauseated.

Dan Slike, watching her with hard, bright eyes, strode to the stove and poured himself out a cup of coffee. He spaded in a spoonful of sugar and stirred the mixture meditatively. But he did not cease to watch her.

"You'll be all right in about ten minutes," he said calmly. "I didn't hit you so awful hard. I didn't go to. Gawd, no! I figure always to be as gentle with a woman as I can. No sense in bein' rougher than you got to be, I say."

He drank the coffee slowly, with evident enjoyment.

"Nothing like coffee when your cork's pulled," he rambled on, sloshing round the last of the coffee in the bottom of the cup. "It beats whisky, but now that I've had the coffee I don't care if I do. Got a bottle tucked away somewhere, li'l girl?"

She was still unable to speak. Her mouth had an odd, cottony feeling. She shook her head in reply to his question.

"Is that so?" he said in the chatty tone he had been using. "I guess maybe you're mistaken."

He set the cup down on the table, reached down and twisted his fingers into her hair. With a yank that brought the tears springing to her eyes, he said:

"About that bottle now—ain't you a mite mistaken? What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?"

Again he pulled her hair, pulled it till the tears ran down her cheeks, and she moaned and cried in purest agony.

"C'mon!" directed Dan Slike. "Quit your bluffin', you triflin' hussy! You ain't hurt a-tall. And I can't stay here all night while you sit on the floor and beller. Stand up on your two legs and bring me that bottle. And no monkey business either. Say, have you got a six-shooter? Answer me, have you?"

"No! No! I haven't! I haven't another gun." She told him this lie in such a heart-breaking tone that he was constrained to believe her.

"I'll have to take your word for it," he grumbled. "But you remember, girl, the first false move you make with a knife or anything else, I'll blow you apart. Damn you, get up!"

With which he gave her hair such a terrific twist that the exquisite pain expelled all her initial fear of him, and she leaped at him like a wildcat, her nails curving at his eyes.

Dan Slike dodged backward, set himself and swung his right fist without mercy. He was no boxer. The accurate placing of blows was beyond him. So it was that the swing intended for her jaw landed on her cheekbone, a much less vulnerable spot. Nevertheless the smash was enough to send her spinning sidewise over a chair and piled her sicker and dizzier than before in a corner of the room.

She lay still and panted.

"You see how it is," he pointed out. "You ain't gainin' a thing by fighting me. Might as well be sensible first as last. But lemme tell you if you keep on a-fussin' at me thisaway, I'll sure have to be rough with you."

He sat down on the edge of the table and rolled a cigarette. Lighting it he drew in a slow luxurious lungful.

"One thing I gotta say for your sheriff," he observed behind a barrier of smoke, "he gimme plenty of tobacco while I was his guest. I can't say but he took right good care of me—for a sheriff."

His incarceration having deprived Dan Slike of conversational opportunities, he was now experiencing the natural reaction. He was talking too much.

"Fed me well too," he resumed. "Oh, I ain't complainin'. I—Hell, your grub's beginnin' to burn. I'll just move those frypans back. Feelin' any better, girl?"

He came and stood over her, hands on hips, and looked down at her grimly. She shrank away, her wide eyes fixed upon him in fright and loathing.

It was evident that he found his survey of her satisfactory, for he kicked her in the side. Not hard. Simply as an earnest of what lay in store for her in case she chose to continue contumacious. "Get up," he commanded.

The nausea and most of the dizzy feeling had evaporated. She was perfectly able to get up, but it was intolerable that she should do the bidding of her uncle's murderer. She continued to lie still.

"Get up!" he repeated, and kicked her again—harder.

She got up, gasping, a hand at her side. She felt as though one of her ribs was broken. His long fingers fastened on the tender flesh of her shoulder. He shoved her across the room. She brought up against the stove. Instinctively she thrust out a hand to save herself. Her bare palm smacked down upon the hottest stove lid.

She sprang back with a choked cry and clapped the burned hand to her mouth.

Dan Slike laughed merrily—for him. "Serve you right. You're too damn pernickety, anyway. Aw, whatcha blubberin' about, cry-baby? Dontcha know enough to put some bakin' soda on the burn and tie a rag round it? Ain't you got any brains a-tall? Pick up that kettle! Just pick it up!"

Her unburned hand fell away from the kettle. She had seen the six-shooter flash out at his last words. She knew now that this man meant what he said. He would kill her, even as he had killed her uncle.

With a shudder that began at her knees and ended at the nape of her neck she went to the cupboard and took out a carton of baking soda.

"Here," he said roughly, when he saw that she was making a poor job at bandaging, "here, you can't tie that one-handed. Lemme."

He bandaged the hand, made fast the bandage with a too-tight knot. He obviously lingered over the business, deriving pleasure from her state of terror.

It has been shown that Hazel was not lacking in courage. Indeed, she had more than the average woman's share of it. But this man staggered her mentally. She did not know what he would do next and was in a panic accordingly.

"Scared stiff," he remarked, as he twirled her about and headed her toward the stove. "You don't like me a-tall, do you? Nemmine. Lessee how your grub tastes."

She had set the table for herself before he came in. He sat down at her place, his eyes bright upon her. Fumblingly she filled a plate with bacon and fried potatoes. She brought him another cup of coffee and placed the condensed milk and the sugar within his reach.

"Spoon," he said shortly.

She took the one from the cup he had just drunk from and handed it to him. He caught her wrist. The spoon fell with a clatter.

"You're so scared of me, you can't hardly breathe," he said calmly. "I don't like li'l girls to be scared of me, so you can just get you another plate and cup and saucer and sit down there on the other side of the table and eat your supper with me."

To eat supper with her uncle's murderer! Here was a grotesque jape of fate. It was unthinkable. Absolutely. The man divined something of what was passing in her mind.

"All in the line of business, li'l girl," he said, with a backward jerk of his head toward the front room where he had killed her uncle. "I didn't have a thing against him—personally."

"There were dishes here on the table," she babbled hysterically. "They found them here after—after—showing how he'd fed you first, and——"

"Sure he fed me," he interrupted. "I was hungry, hungrier than I am now. Alla same, you gotta eat supper with me. I want you to, and I always get what I want."

He twisted her wrist to emphasize his wish. She uttered a little moan. "Don't! Oh, don't hurt me any more! I'll do what you want."

Beaten, body and soul, she went to the cupboard and got herself plate and cup and saucer, knife and fork and spoon. Her six-shooter was in the next room, hanging in a holster on the wall. A loaded shotgun stood at the head of her bed. But it is doubtful that even if the weapon had been within short reach, she would have dared attempt to use either. Dan Slike had scared her too much.

She sat down opposite the man and tried to eat. It required every atom of will power to induce her throat muscles to permit her to swallow. Dan Slike watched her with savage satisfaction. He found the situation intensely amusing. To murder her uncle and later eat a meal with the niece. What a joke!

"I haven't forgotten about that bottle," he remarked suddenly, pushing back his chair. "You thought it had slipped my mind, I guess, didn't you? I always have a drink after meals, or my victuals don't set good."

Without a word she went to the cupboard and brought back a bottle of whisky. He took it from her and held it up against the lamplight.

"This is only half full," he said severely. "You got another round somewhere?"

It was fright and not the lie that made her stammer. "Nun-no."

Oddly enough, he saw fit to believe her. Perhaps it was because he had just eaten and was at bodily ease with the world. She stood before him, arms limp, eyes on the floor. He drew the cork from the bottle and took a long pull.

"Good whisky," he vouchsafed between the third and fourth drags. "I'll take what's left with me—if you don't mind."

He was going then! Her poor terrified heart beat with a trifle more spirit. She looked up. Their eyes met.

"Don't look so happy!" he snarled. "Maybe I'll take you with me!"

He eyed her discomfiture with a sinister look. He uttered a short bark of a laugh. "Dontcha fret. I ain't got time to fuss with any female. Not that I would, even if I had time, so don't go flatterin' yourself any. Women ain't in my line. You're all a squalling bunch of Gawd's mistakes, every last one of you, and you can stick a pin in that. Women? Phutt!"

So saying, Dan Slike turned his head slightly and spat accurately through the open draft into the stove. An engaging gentleman, Mr. Slike!

"I saw two mules and a horse in the corral when I came by," he resumed, dandling the whisky bottle on his knee. "Looks like a good horse—better than the one I left up in the timber. I'll ride your horse and lead the other. Where do you keep your saddle and bridle? In the shed, huh? Aw right, you can show me when we go out. Listen, I expect to-morrow some time you'll have a few gents a-callin' on you. Yeah, to-morrow. It'll likely take those Golden Bar citizens till about then to pick up my trail. You needn't to look too hopeful. Those jiggers don't know they're alive. I saw 'em scatterin' off hell-bent the wrong way before I ever started this way, you bet. Why, hells bells, I even topped a horse behind a corral with the woman right in the house gettin' supper, and she never knowed it. Tell you, girl, I'm slick. And if I didn't have more sense in the tip of my finger than all those fellers and their li'l tin sheriff and his li'l tin deputies, I'd be a heap ashamed of myself. Say—about that sheriff; I heard folks talkin' in the street this afternoon and they said the sheriff had skedaddled because he'd murdered a sport named O'Gorman. A fi-ine sheriff he is, to slop around turnin' tricks like that. A fi-ine sheriff, and you can tell him I said so."

He drove in the cork with the heel of his hand and slipped the bottle into a side pocket of his coat. Standing up, he tapped her smartly on the shoulder. "Get me that hat over there on the hook. I left town in such a hurry I clean forgot to fetch mine along."

Silently she brought the hat.

"Why do you women always wear hats too big for you?" he grumbled, after trying it on. "I couldn't keep this thing on my head."

She had brought an Omaha newspaper from town that day. It lay outspread on the table. He tore off a half page, plaited it neatly and stuffed the thickened strip in behind the sweatband of the hat.

"It will fit me now," he said briskly, pulling on the hat. "Gimme those cantenas and saddle pockets hanging on the wall."

She obeyed stumblingly. Into the cantenas, from her store of provisions, he packed bacon, coffee, a sack of flour a third full, a tin can full of salt, another can filled with matches, a salt pack full of sugar, several cans of tomatoes and peaches, a frying-pan and a small can of lard. In the saddle pockets he stowed away the twelve boxes of rifle cartridges, the six boxes of revolver cartridges and a knife, fork and spoon. The long-bladed butcher knife he nonchalantly slipped down his boot-leg.

"I'll tie the coffee pot on the saddle," he said, buckling the billet of a cantena flap. "It's too wet to go in here. Can't take a chance on spoiling my flour. C'mon, le's go find the saddle."

CHAPTER NINETEEN

THE PERSISTENT SUITOR

"You see," said Dan Slike, as he topped his mount, "I ain't really been hard on you. I didn't ask you for a nickel. I only took what I needed. And if you hadn't fought me like you did, I wouldn't have laid a finger on you. Think of that and be happy."

He whirled the horse and rode away toward the lower ground behind the house, the coffeepot clacking rhythmically against the barrel of the Winchester Hazel had vainly hoped he would forget to take with him.

Hazel remained standing beside the corral gate. Suddenly she was conscious of a great weariness. She was as one who has traveled a day's journey without food. Her arms and legs were leaden. Her head ached, her body ached, her spirit ached.

With dragging steps she returned to the house. From the cupboard she brought forth the bottle of whisky she had lied to save and poured a stiff four fingers into a teacup. She drank off the liquor in three gulps. But she was so spent that, other than a fit of coughing, there was no effect.

The lamp was burning low and fitfully, filling the kitchen with a smell of burning wicking. She had forgotten to refill it that morning. She put away the whisky bottle, turned out the lamp and filled it by the faint light from an opened draft-chink. But in reaching for the chimney, she knocked it to the floor and broke it.

Apathetically, every movement mechanical, she found another chimney and adjusted it in the clamps. A smell of burned hair suddenly filled her nostrils. A lock of hair had fallen against the lamp chimney. She put her hand to her head. Her hair was in a slovenly tangle over one ear. She did it up any way and skewered it fast with a few pins.

Crunch! The remains of the lamp chimney crackled under foot. She brought out the dustpan and brushed and swept up the pieces. She carried the broken glass out to the trash pile. When she returned to the kitchen, there was a man standing in the middle of the room.

Nothing had the power to surprise her now. She would not have been amazed had the devil himself popped into the room. The man turned at her entry. He was Rafe Tuckleton. He glowered down at her. She shut the door and put away the dustpan and brush behind the wood-box.

"What do you want?" she asked lifelessly.

"Who's been here?" he demanded, pointing an accusing finger at the table. "Two plates, two cups, two saucers—who you been entertaining?"

Entertaining! Good Lord! Hazel sat down on the wood-box and laughed hysterically.

He was around the table and confronting her in three strides. "Who's been here?" he kept at her.

"Dan Slike," she said with a spasmodic giggle.

"You're a liar," he told her promptly. "Dan Slike didn't come this way. He—he went another way. There's a posse on his trail now. You've had Bill Wingo here, that's whatsamatter."

"I haven't," she denied, wagging her head at him. "Dan Slike was here, I tell you."

"The hell he was. You must think I'm a fool. Bill Wingo's been here, I tell you. Think I don't know, huh, you deceivin' hussy! Trying to make small of me, carryin' on with other men, huh?"

She said nothing. It is doubtful if she heard him, for all his roaring voice and gesturing fists. Billy Wingo! Her Billy—once. He had loved her too—once. What a queer, queer world it was. Everybody and everything at cross-purposes. Yet there was a reason for it all. Must be. Even a reason for Rafe. She looked up at Rafe. He was glaring down at her with a most villainous expression on his lean features.

"How long has Bill Wingo been gone?" he demanded.

"It wasn't Bill," she insisted doggedly. "It was Dan Slike, and he's been gone maybe half an hour."

"Say, whatsa use of lyin' to me? You're an odd number, by all accounts, but you ain't so odd you could sit here and eat and drink and carry on with your uncle's murderer. You can't tell me that."

She was regarding him with curious eyes. "I thought you always said Dan Slike didn't kill my uncle?"

"Well—uh—you see, everybody else seems to think he did. And—ah—maybe I was wrong. Anyway, say I was. For all I know to the contrary, he did kill your uncle. What's fairer than that, I'd like to know? You think he killed Tom Walton, don't you?"

She continued to stare at Rafe. "I know he did."

"Then how do you expect me to believe you ate supper with him? You're foolish. You had Bill Wingo here, and we'll settle this Wingo business right now. You see, don't you, how you can never marry the feller? This Tip O'Gorman murder has queered him round here for keeps. Sooner or later he'll hang for it. You'd look fine wouldn't you, the widow of a——"

"Don't say it," she cut him short. "Billy Wingo is no murderer. He fights fair, which is more than I can say for you. However, you can set your mind at rest. I'm not likely to marry Billy Wingo, or anybody else."

"Then what do you care whether I call him a murderer or not, if you don't love him?" he probed. "I thought a while back you had taken my advice and busted it off with Bill, but now after hearin' what you tried to do to Nate Samson, and all that ammunition and grub you bought to-day, the day after Tip was killed, why I began to think maybe you was startin' in to play the Jack again. I told you last fall I was gonna have you myself. You ain't forgot it, have you?"

His eyes, savage and mean, held hers steadily. "I come over here, to-night to get you. I'm taking you back with me to-night to my ranch. To-morrow you can marry me or not. It'll be just as you say."

"You're taking me to your ranch!" she gasped. "Me?"

He nodded. "You, nobody else."

She laughed harshly without a note of hysteria. "You're two hundred years behind the times. Men don't carry off their women any more."

"Here's one that will," he told her. "You're going with me, y'understand. And you needn't stop to wash your face or change into petticoats either. I'm not letting you out of my sight. If you wanna take any extra duds along, you can wrap 'em up. What's the answer—you going willing or will I have to tie you up in a bundle?"

"You idiot, even your friends wouldn't stand you turning such a trick as this! I'll bet you couldn't get your own men to help you. That's why you had to come alone."

His suddenly bloating features gave evidence that her shot had told. Bending down, he shook her shoulder roughly. And now for the first time she smelt his breath. It was rank with the raw odor of whisky. So that was what had given him the wild idea of carrying her off by force. The man was drunk. Sober, he was bad enough. Drunk, he was capable of anything.

She reached stoveward for the lid lifter. Rafe seized her wrist and jerked her sidewise.

"None of that!" he snarled. "Gonna get your clothes or not?"

"I'll get them," she said calmly. "Let go of my wrist."

If she could win into the next room where the six-shooter was hanging on the wall, it might be possible to—but he did not release her wrist.

"I'll go with you," he told her with a leer. "You're too slippery a customer to trust alone."

As he turned with her, the lamplight fell full on his face, and she saw that his eyes were bloodshot! He also saw something that had hitherto escaped his notice. He saw the whisky bottle on the shelf in the cupboard. She had neglected to close the cupboard door.

"I'll have a short drink first," he said, and dragged her to the cupboard.

He was holding her left-handed. She was on the wrong side to reach his gun. Nevertheless she swung her body in front of him and snatched wildly at the pistol butt.

He did not divine her intention but thought she was trying to keep him away from the whisky. The result was the same, for he wrenched her back with a twist that started the tears in her eyes.

Holding the bottle in one hand, he drew the cork with his teeth, spat it out and applied his lips to the bottle neck. He swallowed long and generously. Hazel saw his Adam's apple slide up and down a dozen times. At such a rate the man would be a fiend in no time.

"Let me get my clothes," she begged.

Anything to get him away from the liquor. But Rafe was not so easily separated from his old friend.

"Wait a minute," he said peevishly, lowering the bottle and fixing her with his bloodshot gaze. "Don't be in such a hurry. Here, have one yourself."

He thrust the bottle toward her. She took it from him, held it to her mouth and then the bottle seemed to slip from her fingers. She snatched at it, juggled it a split second and—the bottle smashed in bits on a corner of the stove.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" she cried, quite as if she had not contrived the catastrophe on purpose.

"I'll make you sorrier!" Rafe exclaimed and without more ado cast both arms around her.

He was striving to kiss her and she, face crushed against his rough shirt, fought him like the primeval female every woman becomes in like circumstances. Her right hand clawed upward at his face. Her left arm, doubled between their two bodies, she strove to work free so that she could grab his gun.

Rafe received three distinct clawings that considerably altered the appearance of one side of his face, before he was able to confine those active fingers.

"Here!" he bawled in a fury. "I'll fix you!"

He tried to seize her by the throat and his thumb slipped by mistake into her mouth. She promptly clamped down hard on the thumb. With a yell, Rafe released his grip on her body and worked a thumb and ring finger into her cheeks in a frantic effort to force open her locked jaws.

Suddenly she opened her mouth. Rafe sprang back a yard, shaking a bleeding thumb and swearing, and as he sprang she dragged the six-shooter from his holster.

Her palm swept down to cock the gun. But Rafe was as quick to see his danger as Dan Slike had been. He made a long arm as he hurled himself at her and knocked the barrel to one side at the moment of the shot. Before she could fire again, he had torn the weapon from her grasp and flung it across the room.

"You tried to murder me!" he panted. "You tried to murder me!"

She dived headlong beneath his arm, but he caught the slack of her overalls as she went by and dragged her to a standstill. She immediately butted him in the stomach with her head. He stumbled back but caught her arm. Her head flashed down and her teeth fastened on his wrist. Again he broke the grip of her teeth by the application of ring finger and thumb to her cheeks, and then he reached purposefully for her throat and began to strangle her in dead earnest.

She kicked and thrashed about like a wild thing in a trap,—as indeed she was. Her nails scratched desperately at his arms. She might as well have been petting him. Tighter and tighter became the choking grasp of those long fingers. She could not breathe. Her temples were bursting. Her head felt like a balloon. With her last flare-up of failing strength, she kicked him on the knee-cap.

He jumped back against the wall, dragging her with him, and began to shake her as a dog does a rat. And then the old Terry clock did that for which it surely must have been originally made. For, as his shoulders struck the wall, his head knocked away the support of the bracket that held the clock. Involuntarily he ducked his head. It was the worst thing he could have done, giving, as it did, the clock an extra foot to fall. It fell. One corner struck him fairly on the temple and knocked him cold as a wedge.

When Hazel's reeling senses had reëstablished their equilibrium, she found herself on the floor, lying across the inert legs of Rafe Tuckleton. She raised herself on her two arms and looked at him. He was breathing very lightly. It occurred to her that it would not worry her overmuch if he breathed not at all.

She dragged herself on hands and knees to where he had thrown his six-shooter. She picked it up and threw out the cylinder. Evidently Rafe was accustomed to carry his hammer on an empty chamber, for there were four cartridges and a spent shell in the cylinder. She ejected the spent shell, crawled back to the senseless Rafe and plucked two cartridges from his belt.

She loaded those two empty chambers and cocked the gun. Then she pulled herself up into a chair at the table, and leaning across the cloth, trained the six-shooter on Rafe's stomach.

And as she sat there watching a senseless man through the gunsights, it suddenly seemed to her that she was not one person, but two,—herself and a stranger. And the Hazel Walton that had gone through the evening's adventures was the stranger. She herself apparently stood at one side observing. But she saw the room and its contents with new eyes, the eyes of the stranger. It was a most amazing feeling, and she was oddly frightened while it lasted.

Slowly the feeling passed as her muscles renewed their strength, and her jangled nerves steadied and quieted. She came back to herself with a jerk as Rafe Tuckleton stirred and put his hand to his head. She saw the hand come away covered with blood. That side of Rafe's head being in the shadow she had not previously noted that it had sustained a shrewd cut.

Rafe groaned a little. He rolled over and sat up, his chin sagging forward on his chest. He moved his head and looked at her vacantly. The blood ran down his cheek and dripped slowly off his chin.

The light of reason glared of a sudden in Rafe's eyes. She could see that he was absorbing the situation from every angle.

"I'll give you five minutes to pull yourself together and get out," she announced clearly. "If you're still here by the time I've counted three hundred I'll begin to shoot."

Rafe started to go by the time she reached sixty. With the six-shooter pointing at the small of his back, her finger on the trigger, step by step she drove him out of the house to where he had left his horse.

Hazel watched him ride away and after a little become at one with the moonlit landscape. She walked back to the house. She felt that she was taking enormous strides. In reality she was stepping short and staggering badly. She went into the kitchen. She closed the door, dropped the bar into place and fell into the nearest chair.

"My God!" she said aloud, "I wonder what will happen next?"

CHAPTER TWENTY

A DISCOVERY

"I tell you I ain't satisfied," nagged the district attorney.

"Say something new," growled that amiable person, Felix Craft.

"If you fellers weren't blinded by a pretty face, you'd see it like I do."

"The girl said those cartridges were for her own personal use," pointed out Sam Larder, scratching a plump ear. "I believe that girl."

"You can't believe any girl most of the time," denied the district attorney.

"And where a girl's feller is concerned, you can't believe her any of the time. Sam, can't you understand a girl will lie just for the fun of it, if she hasn't any other reason. It's female nature to act that way. You've got to take it into consideration and make allowances accordingly, when dealing with a woman. You can't trust 'em, damn 'em, one li'l short inch."

Sam grinned at Felix. "Ain't he got a pleasant nature."

"Milk of human kindness has curdled in him complete," declared Felix.

"Never you mind about any milk of human kindness. I ain't got a smidgin of it with a girl like Hazel Walton, the lying hussy."

"Do you know, Arthur," said Sam solemnly, "I don't believe you like that lady."

"I don't," admitted the district attorney, and wondered why both men laughed.

"Be a Scotchman," advised Sam Larder, "and give her the benefit of the doubt."

"I'd like to give her a good swift week or two in jail," snarled the district attorney. "That would bring her to her senses. That would make her talk."

"Well, you can't do it," said Felix, weary of the argument. "So why waste your breath?"

"Tell you what I can do," said the district attorney, brightening with hope. "I can go out to Walton's and question her some more."

"Good Gawd, ain't you had enough ridin' for one day?" said Sam.

"I'm good for a li'l bit more."

Felix laughed. "I had to laugh to-day. First time you ever went out with a posse, I guess. Guess they must have thought you were crazy."

"I know damwell Shotgun and Riley Tyler thought so," declared Sam. "They kept a-looking at you almighty hard."

The district attorney nodded. "They're a suspicious pair, those two. I'll give you fellers credit. If it hadn't been for you, I'd never have been able to bluff it through! I don't think anybody suspects anything out of the way."

"Only that you're a damfool, Arthur. And they don't suspect that. They're absolutely sure of it."

"Alla same," said Felix, "it's a good thing Sam Prescott wasn't along. It would have been just like him to make out those tracks we followed were a day old instead of one hour."

"I was worried some," admitted the district attorney, "when Shotgun Shillman said they were too old to be the marks of Dan Slike's horse."

"That didn't bother me," declared Felix. "I knew it would be all right if we could contradict him fast enough and loud enough before anybody else could agree with him. Folks are like sheep thataway. They'll most always believe the boys makin' the most noise. No, Shotgun didn't bother me any. What made me feel like scratching my head was where the tracks crossed the stage trail. There were the hoof-marks and wheeltracks of the stage overlying the horse-tracks we were following. I drew a long breath when I had 'em blotted out, you can gamble on that."

"Was that why you rode ahead and twisted your horse round and round on the trail so funny?"

"Sure that was why. Why else do you suppose?"

"I never thought of the stage passing," said the district attorney.

"No, you wouldn't, of course not. I don't see, Arthur, when you made those tracks so careful in the first place you couldn't have kept off the stage trail. It wasn't necessary, and it mighty near put the kibosh on the whole deal."

"I wanted to end the trail in the west fork of the Wagonjack," defended the district attorney. "It seemed like a good place."

"It was—only for the stage trail being in the way," said Felix warmly. "If that infernal Wildcat Simms had come up half-a-minute earlier he'd seen how those horse tracks lay, same as I did. Oh, lovely! Wouldn't it have been a joke?"

"Well, it ended all right, anyway," offered the district attorney pacifically.

"I didn't like to have that Slike jigger get off that-away," grumbled Sam Larder. "I'd like to see him hung, the lousy murderer! I wish we could have worked it some other way."

"There wasn't any other way," the district attorney hastened to assure him. "We couldn't risk having Slike tried. He'd have snitched on Rafe Tuckleton, sure as fate. It was the only thing for us to do, and you know it."

Sam nodded. "I know, but——" He left the sentence unfinished.

"Now that we've got Dan out of the way," the district attorney pattered on, "we've got to glom onto Bill Wingo, and the sooner the quicker. Me, I'm going out to Walton's to-night and question Hazel some more. You boys don't have to go, you know. I can get hold of somebody, I guess."

"We'll go," said Sam Larder decidedly. "I ain't a heap attracted by your methods with the ladies, and I intend to see the girl gets a square deal."

"Me too," chimed in Felix Craft.

The district attorney was none too well pleased and showed it. "I'll get two other jiggers then," he grumbled.

"Why not another posse?" suggested the sarcastic Mr. Larder. "Us three might not be able to handle her by ourselves."

"Suppose Bill Wingo is there, then what? We took a big bunch before and——"

"And got damwell laughed at by the whole town for our trouble," snapped Sam. "Serves us right. Wild goose chase, anyway, and to-night will be another. C'mon, if you're goin'."

The moon was high in the heavens when the three men came to the mouth of the draw leading to the Walton ranch. A quarter-mile up this draw they came upon a man standing beside a horse. This man they surrounded immediately. He proved to be the town marshal, Red Herring, engaged in the prosaic business of tightening a slipped cinch.

"What are you doing here," demanded the district attorney.

"Same thing you're doing," the marshal returned sulkily.

"It ain't necessary for you to be watching the Walton ranch," said the crotchety district attorney.

"I got as much right to the reward as the next one, I guess," flared the marshal. "If I wanna watch the ranch, I guess I got a right to do that too. You don't want to cherish any idea that you own the earth and me too, Artie Rale!"

"Well, you can ride along with us if you want to," condescended the district attorney.

"Thanks," said the marshal, with sarcasm, "I kind of thought I would, anyway."

Two hundred yards short of the bend in the draw that concealed the ranchhouse from view the district attorney's horse which was leading, snorted at something that lay across his path, and shied with great vigor, coming within a red hair of throwing the district attorney off on his ear.

The district attorney swore and jerked the animal back. Then he dismounted hurriedly and ran forward to view at close range the object that had startled the horse.

The three others pulled up and followed his example.

"My Gawd!" shrilled the district attorney. "It's Rafe Tuckleton!"

It was indeed Rafe Tuckleton. There he lay on his back, his legs and arms spread-eagled abroad, his body displaying the flattened appearance a corpse assumes for the first few hours after death. Rafe's throat had been slit from ear to ear. His head was cut open and lay in a pool of blood. His face was scored with scratches. There was blood on his coat and vest and shirt, they found on examination. The district attorney ripped open the shirt and found four distinct stab wounds in the region of Rafe's heart. From one of these wounds protruded the broken end of a broad-bladed knife.

"Pull it out," urged Sam Larder, with a slight shudder, his fat face so white that it showed green in the moonlight.

"I can't," said the district attorney. "Jammed in between his ribs, I guess. That's what busted her. See if you can find the handle, Red."

"There it is," pointed out the marshal. "Right by his elbow."

"Oh, yeah," said the district attorney, picking up the knife handle. From force of habit he fitted the broken part of the knife remaining attached to the handle to the part protruding from the wound. Of course they fitted perfectly.

The marshal ran his hand along Rafe's naked waist. Then he lifted one of Rafe's arms and let it go. The arm snapped stiffly back into position.

"Been dead about two hours," proffered the marshal.

"About that," agreed Felix. "What you lookin' at, Arthur?"

"This," replied the district attorney, holding up the handle of the butcher knife.

With his fingers he traced two initials on the wood. The initials were T.W.

"You can't tell me," said the district attorney belligerently, "that this butcher knife didn't come from the Walton ranch."

Sam Larder stated his belief at once. "She couldn't have done it, Arthur. Why Rafe's carved up like an issue steer. She——"

"She's a woman," interrupted the district attorney. "And a woman will do anything when her dander is up. And we know what this particular woman will do when she's mad. Didn't she try to split open Nate Samson's head when he was hardly more than joking with her? Didn't she throw down on us with a rifle without any excuse a-tall? I tell you this Hazel Walton is a murderess, and I'm going to see her hung."

"Are you?" said Felix Craft. "Seems to me you've overlooked a bet. Didn't we run across Red Herring at the end of the draw?"

"Now look here, Craft," cried the marshal. "You can't hook this killing up with me! I can prove I was in Golden Bar an hour ago. I can get people to swear I was."

The district attorney nodded. "Red's innocent of this, all right. He couldn't have done it. It wouldn't be reasonable. He always was friendly with Rafe, and this was a grudge killing. It couldn't have been robbery, because nothing of Rafe's was stolen; watch, money, it's all here. It's Hazel Walton, and you can stick a pin in that. C'mon, let's go."

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S NIGHTMARE

Behind the corral of Guerilla Melody, at the tip end of Golden Bar, Main Street, a small spring bubbled to life amid rocks. It was the custom of Guerilla Melody to slip out to this spring for a long cool drink of fresh water each night before going to bed.

On the night of the first of April, Guerilla, having spent a short but profitable poker evening with several friends in a saloon, reached the spring at eleven o'clock.

"I thought you were never coming," announced a peevish voice from the black shadow of a large rock. "I've been waiting here since nine o'clock."

"You talk much louder, Bill," said Guerilla calmly, "and you'll wait here a while longer—say about twenty years longer or fifteen, if the judge feels good-natured. Man alive, ain't you got any sense?"

"I was lonesome," Billy excused himself. "I've got to talk to somebody. And anyway, a feller hardly ever gets more'n ten years for a hold-up where nobody's killed."

"But where somebody is killed the penalty is worth considerin'," pointed out Guerilla Melody. "And Tip O'Gorman was found yesterday morning lying on the floor of his front room dead as Julius Cæsar, with your quirt beside him, and your snakeskin hatband inside the door."

"Tip killed! Tip!"

"Yes, Tip, and on account of the quirt and the hatband there's a warrant issued for you for the murder, and two posses are out looking for you."

"I saw them," said Billy placidly. "I thought it was on account of the stage hold-up. And they think I downed Tip?"

"Half the town's sure you did, and half is sure you didn't, and the other half is straddlin' the fence."

"That makes three halves," Billy said dryly. "Golden Bar must have considerably increased in population since I left."

"You know what I mean," snapped Guerilla, irritated at what he chose to consider callous flippancy on the part of his friend. "And Tip ain't the only one cashed. Rafe Tuckleton passed out last night."

"How?"

"Throat cut, head cut, and three knife cuts through his heart. Hazel Walton is in jail charged with the job."

Billy Wingo stiffened where he sat. Hazel Walton in jail! For an instant he couldn't realize it. His fingers closed on Guerilla's forearm.

Guerilla jerked away the arm. "You don't need to cut my arm in two," he remonstrated, tenderly fingering the member in question. "I didn't have nothing to do with it. Lord A'mighty, Bill, I'll bet you squeezed a muscle out of place."

"My mistake," apologized Billy. "I forgot myself for a minute."

"Then I don't want to be around when you remember yourself. I——"

"What evidence is there against Hazel?" Billy cut in sharply.

"In the first place there's the knife that killed Rafe," said Guerilla, seating himself beside his friend in the shadow of the rock. "Butcher knife with T.W. on the handle that Hazel admitted was hers when they showed it to her. But she said Dan Slike had taken the knife—stuck it in his boot when he left. Then there was Rafe's own gun which Hazel had lying on her kitchen table, showing he'd been there. She admitted that too, but said he'd attacked her, and she'd managed to get hold of his gun after the clock fell on him, and drive him out."

"Rafe attacked her, huh? And she drove him out?" Billy leaned back against the rock in order to steady his shaking body. When he spoke, he found some difficulty in keeping his voice down. "He attacked her and she drove him out! Then what in hell is she arrested for—defending herself?"

"Now, listen, Bill, you know me. I believe anything that girl says, no matter what. But there are some other people harder to convince. The district attorney, and he's got a good many others stringing their chips with his, says how this story of Rafe's attacking her ain't true. That Rafe wouldn't hurt her on a bet, because he liked her too much. And to back that up, here's Rafe's foreman, Jonesy, steps up and swears Rafe told him he was going to see Hazel last night and ask her to marry him. Hazel says Rafe was drunk when he came to see her, and Jonesy says he wasn't. So there's that."

"Weren't there any tracks round Rafe's body to show——"

"You know yourself there was a li'l freeze last night and the ground stiffened up some, and I guess the district attorney and the three others who found Rafe were so flustered they walked all over the ground round Rafe and wiped out every sign there was."

"Who was with the district attorney?"

Guerilla told him and resumed the thread of his discourse. "When the district attorney and the other witnesses examined the Walton premises, they found plenty of evidence that there'd been a fight, and they found a lot of supplies gone, cartridges, grub and such, Hazel had bought in town the morning before."

"Is that all?" asked Billy when Guerilla paused.

"Lemme get my breath," Guerilla begged indignantly. "The whole business is so tangled and mixed up it's hard to tell it straight. No, it ain't all. The district attorney says those supplies were bought for you and they were taken by you. Hazel's ridin' horse, the one used to be her uncle's, that's gone too—with you."

"If Rale thinks I was at Hazel's, it's reasonable to assume I might have had a hand in killin' Rafe my own self. That goes double for Dan Slike, seeing he had the knife last."

"It's reasonable all right enough, but then you and Dan Slike ain't noways available, and Hazel is right handy. Rale admits you might have done it, and he keeps yawpin' the evidence is strong against Hazel, and he would be false to his oath of office if he didn't put her in jail."

"False to his oath of office! Rale!"

"Yeah, ain't it a joke?" contemptuously.

"But how did Slike get hold of the butcher knife, that's what I want to know? He didn't have it on him when I arrested him last January."

"That's the damndest part of the whole deal, Bill. Hazel says Dan Slike came to her place before Rafe did, and it was him took the supplies and her horse and her hat and that very same butcher knife which gave Rafe his come-uppance. Slike beat her almost senseless too, she said."

Billy Wingo looked up at the stars. His lips moved. But no sound issued. After a moment he said, in an oddly dead tone of voice, "How did Slike escape?"

"Far as anybody can tell, he made him a key somehow and unlocked the jail door and walked out. Anyway, Riley Tyler found the door open yesterday afternoon and Dan's cell empty. And the district attorney lost a horse and saddle."

"The district attorney, huh?"

"The district attorney."

"It was to some people's interests to have Dan Slike escape," Billy said musingly.

"You bet it was, and I'm gamblin' somebody let him out all right, but—well, I dunno. Anyway, Rale, he led the posse that trailed Slike, him and Felix Craft. Nobody could have been more energetic than those two."

"If they were so energetic and there was any kind of a trail, which there should have been, because it was a warm afternoon, it's queer they didn't run up on Slike at Hazel's."

"That's the funny part of it. The trail led in the opposite direction toward Jacksboro. The posse followed it clear to the West Fork of the Wagonjack, where they lost it on the rocky ground on the other side."

"Slike might have doubled back."

Guerilla Melody shook his head. "Not without gettin' caught—if he rode to the West Fork first. Besides, Hazel says he came to her house a li'l after sunset, and he escaped, near as we can figure out, between three and four. So you see he'd never have had time to make it to Walton's from the West Fork by sunset."

"Did Hazel say how long he stayed?"

"About an hour."

"An hour! Then Slike knew he wasn't being followed. He never went to the West Fork a-tall."

Guerilla nodded a grave head. "I never was sure he did, especially after Shotgun Shillman told me when he got back that the tracks they followed to the West Fork looked a damsight older than they had a right to, always supposin' they were made that afternoon. Oh, you can't blame Shotgun, Bill, or Riley either. The district attorney was in charge of the posse, and him and Felix and the rest of his friends said it was the wind a-blowing so hard made the tracks look old. And there was a tearin' breeze, worse luck."

"Do you know somethin', Guerilla? It wouldn't surprise me a whole lot to find out the district attorney his own self made that trail to the Wagonjack."

"It would surprise me if you found it out. You ain't catchin' him so easy. Not that feller."

"Leave it to me. And he provided Slike with the horse too. You'll see."

"I'm sure hoping I do. I'd like nothing better than to see Art Rale stretching the kinks out of a new rope."

"Stranger things have happened. I guess I'd better go see the district attorney."

Guerilla Melody chuckled as one does at a pleasantry.

"I mean it," pronounced Billy. "He needs a li'l straight talk, and he's going to get it prompt and soon. Luckily he likes fresh air."

"Fresh air?" puzzled Guerilla.

"Leaves his window partly open at night," explained Billy. "Which being so, I'll be out of luck if I can't creep in and give him the surprise of his life."

"He may not have gone to sleep yet. I'll find out."

Before Billy could stay him, Guerilla was gone. Fifteen minutes later he returned.

"He's abed, snoring like a circular saw working on a knotty log," Guerilla informed him. "But there's a light in the kitchen."

"That means his housekeeper's up—probably settin' bread for to-morrow. Ain't she quite a friend of yours, Guerilla?"

The darkness veiled Guerilla's blush. "I see her now and then."

"Then go see her now," urged Billy. "It's kind of late for an evening call, but you can tell her some kind of a lie. If she likes you, she'll believe it. You go see her and keep her in the kitchen for the next thirty minutes. Then meet me here."

The district attorney, lying on the broad of his back in bed, suddenly snored his way into a nightmare. He dreamed that he was in the woods, that he had lain down upon an inviting bank and that a ninety-foot pine had fallen upon his chest, to the prejudice of his breathing. He squirmed and wriggled but the tree was immovable. It was slowly crushing the walls of his chest. The district attorney gasped—awoke, and discovered to his horror that his bad dream was partly true. There was something roosting on his chest. If not a tree, it was at least confoundedly heavy. Furthermore, adding as it were to the interest of the occasion, a something chilly and hard was rooting into the angle of his chin and neck.

The something on his chest spoke in a carefully restrained whisper. "Keep very quiet."

The district attorney would have shivered had he been able to move that much. He knew that voice. It belonged to Billy Wingo.

"You shouldn't have left your window open," pointed out Billy. "Your insane love for fresh air will be the death of you yet."

The district attorney did nothing but gasp faintly.

"Would it be more comfortable if I sat on your stomach instead?" asked the oppressor prodding the other man in the throat with his gun muzzle.

"I—I—cuc-can't breathe!" the district attorney choked out.

"Just a minute," said Billy, feeling beneath the pillows, but finding no weapon, he slid from the district attorney's chest to the side of the bed. "You didn't expect to see me so soon, did you, Arthur?"

"No," was the truthful reply, "I didn't."

"I was counting on that. I hear you arrested Miss Walton."

"I—er—I had to," explained the district attorney, beginning to feel that, in the matter of Miss Walton, he had perhaps been a trifle hasty.

"Fool mistake. You didn't have any evidence against her a-tall."

"But—" began the district attorney.

Billy cut him short. "No evidence a-tall. Not a smidgin. No. You were too previous, Arthur, with your duty and your oath of office. Damn your duty, damn your oath of office. I've got a sneaking idea, old settler, that you are cluttering up the face of the earth. Be reasonable now, don't you think so yourself?"

But this was more than the district attorney was willing to admit. "I'll tell you what I think," he grunted. "I think if Hazel Walton didn't kill Rafe Tuckleton then you did."

"About Miss Walton there ain't any ifs, nary an if. She didn't do it. There is a reasonable doubt that I did, several reasonable doubts, in fact. Anyway, Arthur, try keeping your suspicions to yourself to oblige me, will you? Lord knows one murder and a stage hold-up are enough crimes to be charged with at one time."

"You thought you were very clever," sneered the district attorney, "getting that girl to pack your supplies out from town for you. Didn't have nerve enough to do it yourself. Had to hide behind a woman's skirts and get her in trouble, didn't you?"

"You mean about the horse and cartridges and grub that Slike took from Walton's?"

"I mean about the horse and cartridges and grub that you took from Walton's. Slike had nothing to do with that. Slike didn't go to Walton's. He went north to the West Fork, where we lost his trail."

"You're sure of this?"

"Sure? Of course I'm sure. Didn't I trail him to the river myself. Didn't— Say, where'd you get your information?"

"A li'l bird told me. But he asked me not to mention his name. Sorry."

The district stared helplessly into the shadowy features of the man at his bedside. The moonlight shone in at the open window through which Billy had entered. The rays touched a corner of the bed, turning the bedpost to shiny ebony and the counterpane to dull silver. The district attorney could hear the murmur of his housekeeper's voice in the kitchen. Some man then, was in the kitchen with her. Lord! if he dared yell for help!

As though sensing what was passing in the mind of the district attorney, Billy jabbed the gunsight up under the man's chin. "Don't gamble with me, Arthur. Think how your friends would miss you."

But Arthur had already decided against doing any gambling. "What do you want?" he whispered.

"I've been hoping you'd ask me that. It gives me an opening and shows you're willing to be reasonable. Yeah. Arthur, I want you to set Miss Walton free."

"You go to hell," was the sharp return.

"You don't understand," said Billy, in his lightsome whisper. "You're thinking because I'm talking to you so bright and merry that I don't mean what I say. Listen—" the whisper lost its airness and became a ruthless, snarling growl—"listen to me. Because of what you've done to her, it's all I can do to keep from strangling the breath out of you here and now. If I talked to you the way I feel like talking to you, I'd lose my temper and you'd lose your life. I'm trying to hang on to both—for now. Don't make it any harder for me than you have to." He paused. "About Miss Walton," he continued in his former tone. "I'll give you your choice. Let her go, and I won't down you by Sunday night."

"Huh?"

"Sunday night. If she isn't out of jail and the warrant against her withdrawn by noon to-morrow, I give you my word that I'll down you on or before midnight Sunday. And I have a habit of keeping my promises."

The district attorney knew this to be true. But he was a wriggler by nature. "I—" he began.

"You can do it," interrupted Billy. "You have the power."

"I can't," denied the wretched man in the bed, now more than ever aware that he had made a mistake in arresting Hazel, yet not at all clear in his mind how to set matters right without being ridiculed into political extinction. Yet if he didn't set matters right, he would lose his life. Metaphorically speaking, he eased himself down between the horns of the dilemma and considered. "I can't," he repeated after a moment of silence. "I can't let her go after arresting her. Judge Donelson wouldn't understand it. The Governor would remove me from office."

"You're a liar. Judge Donelson would understand it all right if you explained it carefully. So would the Governor. They are human beings, even if you aren't."

"Well," bumbled the district attorney, "maybe I could manage it. But look here, what's the use of me letting her go? You couldn't run away with her. You'd be caught, sure as fate, and then where would you be?"

"I don't intend to run away with her or without her. Only a fool runs away. A man of sense stays comfortably in the background waiting for the cat to jump."

"You ran away," pointed out the district attorney.

"Not at all. I'm staying comfortably in the background, waiting for the cat to jump."

"But—" The district attorney stopped abruptly at the word.

Billy Wingo smiled. The district attorney saw his white teeth gleam in the darkness. "But you can't understand if I stayed in the vicinity why I haven't been caught," he completed the sentence for the other man. "I realize your posses have been very active."

"Shotgun Shillman and Riley Tyler are in league with you! They led the posses astray on purpose. I'll get their hides for this!"

Billy quieted the district attorney with a gesture that drove the man's head almost through the pillow.

"There goes your snap judgment again," complained Billy. "Shotgun and Riley are doing their duty. They've done their damndest to catch me. You hurt my feelings when you hint that I may be tampering with them. You don't really think I have, do you, Arthur? Both Shotgun and Riley are straight as strings, aren't they, Arthur?"

The gun muzzle pressed ever so gently upon Arthur's Adam's apple. "They are," he apologized. "Both of 'em."

"And you'll free the girl to-night?"

"To-night? Why not to-morrow?"

"To-night. I don't like her having to sleep in that calaboose. You let her out and tell Shotgun Shillman to take her to Sam Prescott's right away—right away, to-night, y'understand?"

"All right," capitulated the district attorney. "I'll do it if I lose my job. But you needn't go swarmin' off with any idea that you'll cheat the gallows. You'll swing, my bold boy, for that O'Gorman murder. There's nothing you can do to me that will fix up that business for you—not if you were to kill me here and now. Judge Donelson wouldn't allow me to withdraw that warrant, even I wanted to. The evidence is too strong."

"So you really think I downed Tip?" Billy asked curiously.

"I know it."

"And held up the stage? Unofficially, Arthur, are you holding that against me, too?"

"You held up the stage. Jerry Fern saw your horse. So did all the passengers. Your clothes were identified, too. Jerry told the passengers to pay particular attention to your clothes and the brass guard on your gun and be able to describe 'em later. They did, and everbody in town recognized 'em. Oh, we've got you."

"So clever of you—and cleverer of Jerry Fern. He told the passengers to remember what I wore, did he?"

"Naturally," said the district attorney hastily. "It was the obvious thing to do."

Billy nodded. "Of course it was. Bright man, Jerry. Tell you, Arthur, suppose I bring back Dan Slike, would that help me in—my trouble?"

"How do you mean?"

"You want Dan Slike caught, don't you?"

"Of course I do."

"Liar," Billy said to himself. Aloud he remarked. "You've come around, I see. You really believe now that Dan Slike killed Tom Walton and Judge Driver?"

"Certainly, he killed them," avowed the district attorney. "And when he's caught we'll hang him."

"That's the proper spirit, Arthur. I have a theory that, since it seems certain that Dan Slike didn't go to Walton's after he escaped, he went north to the Medicine Mountains."

"Why?"

"You followed his trail north to where the West Fork swings due west and there you lost it, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"Well, then, it's certain Slike didn't follow the Fork down. That would bring him to the country east of here, and Tom Read County is no place for a murderer. Now, what he did was ride the rocky ground along the Fork till it swung north again, when he'd either swing north with it straight for the Medicine Mountains, or else ride a li'l west of north and hit the Medicines away to the westward of Jacksboro. And in the Medicines you might as well look for a needle in a bale of hay. He'll lie low there for a spell, probably during spring and summer. You may depend on it, that's what he's done."

"I believe you're right," agreed the district attorney, striving to inject a note of excitement in his whisper. "I'll have a posse riding that way to-morrow."

"Not a posse. Too many men in a posse. He'd be able to keep out of their way, Slike's no ordinary murderer, Rale. Remember that. He's a killer from Killersville, and he probable knows more about keeping out of sight than a grizzly bear. But one man would have a chance to get him. He wouldn't be expecting one man, do you see?"

"I don't see what you're driving at."

"I mean I'll make a bargain with you, Rale. I'll trade you Slike for myself. You will prosecute these cases against me, if I'm caught. It lies with you whether I get a chance for my alley or not."

"How?"

"You could fail to take advantage of points as they come up. You could. You're clever enough, Gawd knows. Now, in the O'Gorman deal I'd plead not guilty. I killed Tip in self-defense, see? Well, you could let me prove I did mighty easy. Same with the hold-up. I'll get me a clever lawyer who'd take advantage of some flaw in the indictment. You would draw up that indictment. I don't believe we could risk flaws in both indictments, could we?"

The district attorney could hardly believe his wicked ears. It simply was not possible that Bill Wingo could be such a simpleton as to believe that. "Flaws in both indictments would be a li'l too raw," said the district attorney, almost suffocating in the effort to dissemble his glee.

"Yes, well, all right. In the O'Gorman murder trial, you'll let me prove my case, and in the other you'll stick in a flaw. The Tuckleton case you can't do a thing with. There's not enough evidence, so you'll have to let it drop. What do you think of the proposition, Dan Slike for Bill Wingo? You can make a record with Dan Slike too. He hasn't a friend in the county. Another thing. That last bribe of yours I mentioned a while ago. I'll throw in what I know about that for good measure with Slike."

"But why stand your trial at all?" fenced the district attorney. "Why not try to escape?"

"You forget that not ten minutes ago you told me I couldn't possibly escape. You were wrong, naturally. But I don't want to escape. If I did, I'd have these things hanging over me the rest of my life. No matter where I went, I'd always be looking for a warrant waiting for me at every bend in the trail. No, the only sensible way out is to get this thing over with and settled as soon as possible. I don't want to leave Crocker County. I like it here."

"Oh," murmured the district attorney, believing that he knew the reason why Billy Wingo did not care to leave the county. It was a good and sufficient reason, and he expected to release it from jail that very night.

"But you'd have to get supplies from time to time," he said leadingly. "Your description is in every town by now."

"I'll only go to Jacksboro when I have to buy anything," explained Billy, "and as it happens, I never was there but once and that was five years ago. If I let my beard and hair grow, who'd know me? It would take somebody from Golden Bar to recognize my voice, and I'll take care to keep out of the way of anybody from Golden Bar. Oh, it'll be safe enough. I'll make my camp somewhere on Coldstream Creek and work all through the Medicines from there. I'll get Dan and bring him back. How about it now—willing to make it easy for me at the trial?"

The district attorney could hardly control his voice. At last the devil had delivered his enemy into his hands. Now he could pay him back for kicking him out into the snow. You bet he could. "I'll do as you suggest," he said, "and drop the Tuckleton case in so far as you and Miss Walton are concerned, and I'll let you win on the other two counts—provided you bring back Dan Slike."

"Fair enough. In the meantime I want a free hand. You'll have to call off the posses that are out after me. You can do that without exciting suspicion. Look how long they've been out."

"I'll manage it," declared the district attorney. "You think the Coldstream is a good place to camp?"

"Sure it is. I've been there before."

"Don't risk going to any other town than Jacksboro."

"I won't," said Billy. "Be sure of that. Well, I guess I'd better be draggin' it. You'll be wanting to let Miss Walton out. By the way, don't forget that I'm not leaving the neighborhood till I hear that Miss Walton is safe at Prescott's and the warrant against her withdrawn. Just bear that in mind, Arthur."

"I will," Arthur said warmly. "Shall I suggest to Miss Walton that a letter would be sure to reach you at Jacksboro—under an assumed name, of course?"

"It would be hardly worth while," replied Billy. "Unless I catch Dan Slike sooner, I don't expect to be in Jacksboro under a month. Yeah, a month, anyway."

"A month, huh? Here's wishing you luck."

Billy failed to observe the brazenly outstretched hand. "Thanks," he drawled. "So long."

But in spite of the agreement it was noticeable that he kept the district attorney covered till his bootsoles touched the ground beneath the window.

"Are you crazy?" demanded Guerilla Melody when he had heard all, or thought he had, rather. "You don't actually sure-enough trust him, do you?"

"Certainly not," Billy replied calmly, flicking the ash from his cigarette. "Certainly I don't trust him. That's why I told him what I did."

Guerilla Melody screwed a forefinger into the side of his head. "Wheels, wheels, wheels, hear 'em buzz."

"You don't understand, Guerilla. You're all right lots of ways, and I'm your friend, and don't let anybody tell you different, but you haven't any brains, not a brain."

"Now, look here," began indignant Guerilla, "if you——"

"Shut up and listen," Billy cut him short. "I ain't going to the Medicine Mountains a-tall."

"Where are you going?"

"South—after Dan Slike. Don't you see, this fool district attorney won't think of skirmishing after me south of Golden Bar. But I'll bet he'll have posses combin' the Medicines within seven days. And if I haven't read him wrong, he'll have a warrant for the Tuckleton murder issued for me, too."

Guerilla nodded a grave head. "With Miss Walton out of it, he'll have to cinch it on to somebody else. But I don't see yet how finding Dan Slike, always supposin' you do find him, is going to help you any. You'll still have to stand your own trial. And you ain't thinkin' that Arthur Rale——"

"Oh, angels ever bright and fair! The man doesn't see it yet! I intend to bring in the murderer of Tip O'Gorman and the man who held up the stage, too, while I'm at it. In words of one syllable that is my plan."

The expression on the face of Guerilla Melody was one of awe diluted with doubt. "All by your lonesome?"

"Why not?"

"Maybe I'd better go with you?" offered Guerilla.

"No," said Bill decidedly, "I'd rather you were here in Golden Bar. Then you can tell me the news now and then. Outside of you and Shotgun and Riley, there ain't a soul in town I can trust, and for official reasons I can't go near the deputies. So I guess you're elected, Guerilla."

"Aw right," said his friend. "You're the doctor. Have another drink?"

"Not to-night. Look at the time. Here we've been gassin' a solid hour. I didn't have any business coming into your house anyway. Never can tell who might walk in on us."

"You better wait till I find out from Riley if Rale kept his word about Hazel Walton."

"I won't have to wait here for that. When you come back from talking to Riley, if everything is O.K. and Hazel has started with Shotgun for Prescott's, you set a lamp on your kitchen table and open and close your kitchen door four times. If Rale hasn't moved, open your kitchen door and stand in the door-way for half a minute. I'll be watchin' from the ridge— Huh? Sure, I've got field glasses. Borrowed a pair from Sam Prescott same time I borrowed a horse. So long, Guerilla!"

Guerilla Melody blocked off the light of the lamp with his hat while Billy opened the door and vanished into outer darkness.

Twenty minutes later, Billy, sitting his horse on the crest of the aforementioned ridge, saw a rectangle of light at the tip end of town, show and go out four distinct times. He clucked to his horse and moved quartering down the slope in the direction of the Hillsville trail. His goal was Prescott's, his intention to obtain from Hazel a detailed account of what had happened at the ranch the night of the Tuckleton murder.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

THE HUNCH

The time was an evening in the first week in May; the place was the Arkansas Saloon in Willow Bend, Redstone County, the man was Billy Wingo, wearing a sevenweeks' beard and an air of preoccupation. He was draped against the bar, making rings on the bar top with the wet bottom of his whisky glass.

The weather was unseasonably warm, and the big double-burner reflector lamps in the saloon raised the bar-room temperature at least fifteen degrees. Billy felt the salty moisture running down into his eyes. He pushed back his hat and with a fillip of his fingers slatted off the perspiration.

He did not see a man at the other end of the bar look up at his sudden movement. Nor, when he departed after his second glass, did he know that the other man was following until he had passed out into the street. Then, with that sixth sense men who carry their lives in their holsters so frequently develop, he knew it. Hence, quite naturally, instead of going directly to the hotel hitching-rail where his horse was tied, he sauntered with apparent aimlessness round the corner of the saloon, along the blank side wall and round the next corner.

In the darkness behind this corner, gun in hand, he waited. The other man slid round the corner in his wake and ran plump into the muzzle of the Wingo six-shooter.

"Were you looking for me?" Bill asked in a low tone.

The man, having shown that he was no shorthorn by promptly throwing up his hands, laughed low. "I was looking for you," he said, still chuckling, "but not the way you mean."

"Your voice sounds familiar," said the sceptical Billy. "Suppose you step over here into the light from this window. Keep your hands up."

"Glad to—both ways," agreed the man, obeying instantly. "Satisfied now?"

"You can put 'em down," said Billy sliding his gun back into the holster as soon as the light fell on the man's face. "I thought you went up to Jacksboro to visit your uncle."

"I did," said John Dawson. "But I thought I'd drift back for the Cross T round-up. On my way south I stopped at Golden Bar."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I was looking for a gent name of Tuckleton. I saw where he was buried."

"I guess you heard something while you were there, huh?"

"I heard something in Jacksboro, too. That's why I followed you. Let's go where we can talk private."

On a log, in the darkness, behind the dance hall, they sat down to talk "private."

"What did you hear in Jacksboro?" Billy asked.

"I heard a posse talk—six men. I met 'em over on Coldstream Creek three-four times."

Billy uttered a light laugh. "I figured it would be that way."

"They seemed to think you'd oughta been camping on Coldstream."

"What kind of a warrant did they have?"

"All kinds. Two murders and a stage hold up."

"Was one of 'em on account of Tuckleton?"

"Yep. I didn't know whether to hold it against you or not."

"You needn't. It wasn't me."

Dawson grinned his appreciation. "I'm glad. If you had it would have always been between us. I had figured on playing even-Steven with Tuckleton myself."

"I'm looking for the man who killed him. If I don't find him I needn't go back to Golden Bar."

"I heard you'd been suspended from office," said Dawson bluntly.

"I hadn't heard it yet, but I expected it. Anybody else appointed?"

"Shotgun Shillman, pro tem."

"I almost wish it was somebody else," he said whimsically. "Shotgun is a friend of mine, and energetic as a bear with a bee tree. He'll maybe dump me before I do what I want."

"If he's a friend of yours——" hinted Dawson.

"He'd arrest his own brother, if there was a warrant issued against him. He's that kind."

"A conscience is a heavy load to pack," said the cynical Dawson. "Me, I believe the end justifies the means. It don't matter much what trail you follow, so you get there. Can I help you any?"

"How?"

"I dunno—any old way. You did me one good turn, and I'm not forgetting it. Anything I got you can have any time anywhere."

"Now, that's right clever of you," said Billy, somewhat embarrassed at the other's gratitude. "But I don't guess you can help me any."

"Try me," urged Dawson.

"The man who killed Tuckleton is a man named Dan Slike, who broke out of jail just before he was going to be tried for another murder. The only way you can help me is by telling me where he is, and I expect you can't do that."

"Not right off the reel," admitted Dawson. "Ain't you picked up any trail of this sport?"

"I've cut his trail five different places, Bow Bells, Gunsight, Dragoon, Shadyside, and the Rafter L. I figured he'd come here after leavin' the Rafter L—it's only thirty miles. But I guess he didn't. Leastwise nobody seems to have noticed anybody of his description."

"You haven't described him to me yet," pointed out Dawson.

Billy began. "—and maybe a black beard by now," he concluded.

"Bow Bells, Gunsight, Dragoon, Shadyside and the Rafter L," repeated Dawson, rasping a hand across his stubbly chin.

"South, y'understand, till he reached Shadyside, and then he headed northeast to the Rafter L. What I'd like to know is what made him change direction thataway?"

"He ain't in any hurry to leave the territory, that's a cinch."

"Not after he left Shadyside, anyway."

"Something happened there to head him."

"Sure. But whatever it was it wasn't visible to the naked eye. Rafter L, the same way. He stopped there for dinner and rode away without spending the night."

"He may have gone to Marquis."

Billy nodded. "He may. But Marquis is more north than east. That's why I came here first. Anyway, to-morrow morning I'm riding to Marquis, and if he ain't there I'll sift through the country between Marquis and Dorothy. There are several ranches in between those two towns."

"I'll go with you," announced Dawson.

Billy surveyed his neighbor in surprise. "You. What for?"

"For him—exercise—any old thing you like, that is, if it ain't a private party."

"You can sit in if you want to," said Billy slowly, more glad to accept an ally than he cared to admit. "But you've got a job."

"The job can wait. Round up's over, so it won't hurt the ranch to lose my valuable services for a spell. To-morrow we go to Marquis, huh?"

By mid-afternoon the following day Billy Wingo was riding into Marquis from one direction and Dawson was riding in from another. As apparent strangers they believed they could do better work. Before six o'clock Billy had judiciously canvassed every saloon in the place and had learned absolutely nothing. Either Slike had not entered Marquis, or else he was wearing a disguise. In the twilight, in the brush beyond the far-flung skirmishline of empty tin cans and bottles that surrounds every cow-country town, he met his friend Dawson. The latter had worked the stores and the dance hall, but he had nothing to report. The following day Billy journeyed by the one road to Dorothy, while Dawson traveled by a more circuitous route that would take him past two ranch houses where there might be information to be picked up. Billy Wingo, without pushing his horse, reached Dorothy too late for the regular dinner at the hotel. Adjoining the Carnation Saloon was a two-by-four restaurant. He entered the place, sat down at the oilcloth-covered table and gave his order to the good-looking young woman who was evidently cook, hasher and washer combined.

In one corner of the restaurant an eight-year-old girl was squatting on the floor and bathing two wooden dollies in a tin wash-basin. A small dog waggled in from the street, sniffed respectfully at Billy's boots, then hunted along a crack in the floor with his nose till he came within reach of the eight-year-old, who promptly seized him by his short tail and dragged him, ki-yiing his protests, to her bosom.

"You need a bath," said the eight-year-old. "I'll wash you."

Gripping her victim firmly by one ear and his tail she plumped him splash into the washbasin. To the dog's eternal credit he made no attempt to bite her, but he wriggled and squirmed and threw his body about, and ever he lamented loudly.

The good-looking young woman poked her head in from the kitchen. "Winnie, you leave Towler be. You know he doesn't like to be teased. Why don't you go on giving Emmaline and Sally Jane their baths. There! Now, see what's happened—basin upset and water all over the floor. That's the third time to-day I've had to mop up after you."

Little Winnie was a damsel of parts. "I'm sorry, auntie. I'll mop up. Towler, you git."

Towler got. Winnie began to sop up the water with a floor rag which she wrung out in the washbasin.

"I'll finish giving you your bath, Sally Jane, soon as I get fresh water. Emmaline is nice and clean, but you're a dirty, dirty girl, Sally Jane."

Sally Jane! There it was again. Merely a coincidence, of course, but it was odd to run across this combination of proper names. Billy began to take more than a passing interest in the eight-year-old.

The little girl resumed her animated monologue. "I tell you what, Sally Jane, if you don't keep yourself cleaner, I'm gonna go back to calling you Maria again."

Then it was that the hunch came to Billy Wingo.

"Winnie," he said, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and wearing his most engaging smile, "Winnie, that Sally Jane dolly is sure one fine-looking lady."

Winnie regarded him with an indulgent eye. "She's my favorite, Sally Jane is."

"Sally Jane is a pretty name too."

"I like it."

"You haven't always called her Sally Jane, have you?"

"Not always. I used to call her Mariar. My auntie says Mariar sounds like a cat talking, but I liked it till I heard Sally Jane, then I liked Sally Jane best."

"And when did you hear the name Sally Jane?"

"Long, long ago."

"Oh!" Disappointment on the part of Billy Wingo. Farewell, hunch. Nevertheless he essayed a forlorn hope. "How long?"

"Most a week."

Most a week! Billy had forgotten that child-time runs faster than grown-up time. The hunch pricked up its little ears and began to return. "Where did you hear that name?"

"Man in the Carnation. He was drunk, and he went round talking to God in the saloon. I heard him through the window. Lots of men do that. My Auntie says they'll frizzle when they die."

"They ought to," pronounced the righteously indignant Bill. "Did this man say anything, about Sally Jane?"

"Lots."

"In the saloon?"

"At the woodpile out back. I was making a li'l doll-house behind it, and he came and lay down beside the woodpile to sleep it off."

Oh, the wisdom of the frontier child.

"Weren't you afraid?" probed Billy.

"Nah. Why, you needn't ever be afraid of a drunk man. They can't hurt you if you keep out of their way. I've seen lots of drunk men, I have, in my time."

Billy was somewhat overwhelmed. "That's fine," he said lamely. "Did you run away when the drunk man came out to the woodpile to sleep it off?"

"Nah. Ain't I said I ain't scared of drunks? I didn't run away. I stayed right there on the other side of the woodpile listening to the drunk man."

"I thought you said he went to sleep."

"He talked in his sleep," patiently explained the amazing Winnie.

"What did he say?"

"Lots."

"Did he say anything about Sally Jane?"

"He said he loved her."

"Anything else?"

"He said he was gonna marry Sally Jane, by Gawd, and nobody else was gonna do it but him."

"Did he talk about any men?"

"He talked about Bill."

"Bill who?"

"Bill Wingo."

"Now, we're gettin' there. Did he say anything particular about Bill Wingo?"

"He said he was gonna shoot him."

"What for?"

"For being sheriff, or something. I don't remember that exactly."

"You've remembered enough. What kind of a looking man was this drunk?"

"Oh, he was an old, old man."

"Old, huh? How old?"

"Oh, about your age."

Billy began to feel like Methuselah. "What did he look like in the face?"

The winsome Winnie looked at him critically. "Something like you in the face. Sort of scrubby-looking and dirty—except maybe his whiskers wasn't so long as yours."

"What color were the whiskers?"

"Oh, black."

"Was his hair black?"

"Yop, his hair was black."

"Was he a li'l, short, runty feller?"

"Nope, he was a big, tall feller, skinny sort of."

"Did you hear his name?"

"His friend called him Damn-your-soul sometimes and Jack sometimes."

So Jack Murray had gathered unto himself a friend. This was interesting, especially as Jack was apparently still cherishing plans for revenge. If Jack and the anonymous friend were in the vicinity of Dorothy, it behooved a man in Billy's position to look to himself.

Billy had no illusions about Jack Murray. The man was perfectly capable of making another try at him from ambush. He did not believe that Jack would "snitch." Such procedure would indubitably attract too much public attention to Jack. He couldn't afford that. Not with three thousand dollars on his head.

"Is the drunk with the black hair and whiskers around town?" he asked.

"They ate dinner here yesterday."

"They—oh, he and his friend?"

"Yep, him and his friend."

Billy got up and went to the door of the kitchen. "Excuse me, ma'am, do you remember a tall, black-haired feller and a friend with him who ate in here yesterday noon?"

Oh, yes, the good-looking girl remembered perfectly both men. Billy thought that it would be as well to have a description of the friend. Would she describe him. She would and did. The description was that of Slike, Slike with a short beard. The man's eyes, she said, seemed to bore right through her. They gave her the creeps.

Billy believed he had heard enough for the time being.

After dinner Billy went up and down Main Street, scraping acquaintance with storekeepers, saloon keepers, the hotel proprietor and the town marshall. By five o'clock he had established the fact that two ranches of the neighborhood, the TU and the Horseshoe were at loggerheads, and that the Horseshoe was hiring gunfighters; that the black-haired man called Jack and his friend, whose name no one knew, had been engaged in conversation with the Horseshoe foreman; that the following day they had told a bartender that they had offers of good jobs at one hundred a month apiece; and that finally, a wolfer had met them on the range riding in the direction of the Horseshoe ranch.

That night Billy and Dawson disappeared from Dorothy.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

THE GUNFIGHTERS

Crack! Crack! Crack! the voices of the Winchesters drifted faintly down wind to the ears of Billy and Dawson. Billy, fearful that some one else had seen their quarry first, swore frankly.

"Cheer up," said Dawson. "It may be just the chance we're lookin' for. They've stopped shootin'."

Billy remained pessimistic. He had been disappointed so often. But it was the chance they were looking for, after all.

Five minutes later from the edge of a flat-topped hill, they were looking down upon a scene that has had many counterparts in the history of the West.

Below the flat-topped hill a wide stretch of rolling ground reached away to a semi-circle of low hills. A quarter-mile out from the base of the hills a tiny fire smoked fitfully. Beyond the fire lay a hog-tied calf. Beyond the calf, a man sprawled behind the body of a pony. He was aiming a rifle at another man ensconced below a cutbank bordering a small creek that meandered with many windings across the rolling country. This second man was not blatantly visible. Even with the glasses it was difficult to make him out. For cottonwoods grew above the cutbank and the man lay in deep shadow.

Between this man and the man behind the pony were three hundred yards of ground as flat as a floor. Billy swept the background of the cutbank man with his glasses. "There are two horses tied behind a windfall alongside those rocks. Where's the other man?"

"There's the other man," said Dawson, pointing toward a gap in the cottonwoods alongside the creek fifty yards down stream from the cutbank. "What's he doing—drinking?"

Billy turned his glasses on the spot indicated. "He ain't drinking," he said soberly. "His head's under water."

"I'm sure hoping he ain't Dan Slike," Dawson said matter-of-factly.

"Me too. What——"

For the man behind the cutbank was climbing up among the cottonwoods—climbing up and walking out into plain sight of the man behind the pony. Not only that, but, the rifle across the crook of his elbow, nursing the butt with his right hand, he began to walk directly toward him. Still the man behind the pony did not fire.

"He's cashed all right," Billy remarked suddenly. "He looked so natural he fooled me for a minute. Let's go down across the creek. We're in luck to-day."

They ran down the reverse slope of the flat-topped hill, cut across the creek and approached the horses tied behind the windfall.

"I'm afraid we'll just naturally have to kill Dan, after all," grieved Billy. "He won't ever surrender. I——"

"Tell you," said Dawson, "loosen the cinches; then no matter which horse he tops he'll jerk himself down. Then maybe while he's all tangled up with himself and the saddle——"

"Catchem-alivoes ourselves," said Billy, with a hard grin, and tossed up the near fender of one of the saddles.

When both saddles had been carefully doctored, Billy and his friend retired modestly behind some red willows.

Soon they heard a scramble and a splash in the creek. Dan Slike was coming back. Through the screen of leaves they watched him coming toward them. They heard his voice. He was swearing a great string of oaths. Billy crouched a trifle lower. His six-shooter was out, but not cocked. Dawson had followed his example.

Slike jammed his Winchester into one of the empty scabbards and untied the bridle reins of the horses. Holding the reins in one hand, he gripped a saddle horn and simultaneously stuck toe in stirrup. Ensued then a mighty creak of saddle leather, a snort, a plunge, and Slike found himself on his back on the ground with one foot higher than his head. A gun barrel appeared from nowhere and smote him smartly over the ear. Oh, ye sun, moon and stars! Total darkness.

Billy sprang to the heads of the capering horses. "Take his hat off, Johnny!" he cried. "See what you find under the sweatband!"

When Slike emerged into the full possession of his senses, he was the most disgusted man in the territory.

"You gave us quite a run," Billy observed smilelessly.

Slike damned everybody. "You needn't have tied my hands too," he added.

"We can't afford to take chances. Do you feel like admitting that the district attorney helped you break jail?"

Slike glared defiantly. "Nothin' to say," declared Dan Slike, the unrepentant.

"That's your privilege. Suppose now we heave him up on his horse and go see what happened."

They freed his feet, mounted him on the horse that was not packing the rifle and proceeded. Behind the gap in the cottonwoods, fifty yards below the spot under the cutbank where Slike had lain, they found the body of the man with his face in the water. Billy dragged out the body and turned it on its back.

"What you cussin' for?" inquired Dawson.

"This feller ain't Jack Murray," cried the perplexed Mr. Wingo. "It's Skinny Shindle."

"Looks like we must have missed a bet somewhere," said Dawson. "Plugged him plumb center, didn't he?" he added, alluding to the red-and-blue bullet hole squarely between the staring eyes.

"I got the other sport," snarled Slike.

"Where's Jack Murray?" demanded Billy.

"What difference does that make?" flung back Dan Slike.

It was evident that Slike was not in a confiding mood.

Nobody said anything further. They left Skinny Shindle lying beside the little creek and went on to where the other dead man lay beside the embers of the branding fire.

"That's a TU horse," said Dawson, glancing at the brand on the pony's hip.

Billy turned the dead man face upward. He whistled. "Here's an odd number, Johnny. This feller is Simon Reelfoot's foreman. You've heard me speak of that low-lived persimmon, Simon Reelfoot. This boy is named Conley. Been with Reelfoot for years. I'd sure like to know why he's riding for the T.U."

Came then a puncher riding on his occasions. At sight of the three men and the calf and the fire, he spurred toward them. A hundred yards away he suddenly pulled up and slipped to the far side of his horse.

"I know him," said Dawson. "Used to ride for Tasker once. C'mon, Tommy, what you scared of? It's me, Johnny Dawson."