THE DEVIL’S DEPUTY

Fate stood at the forks of the trail.

At least that is the only way by which I can explain why I took the turn to the left when the choice of either directions meant nothing to me.

For a mile we followed the left-hand trail, my black and myself, swinging forward at a fast trail-walk, the high chaparral shutting out all but occasional glimpses of the view. We were working down the side of a long ridge, approaching a valley. The main trail, from which I had turned, kept to the summit and went on. This left-hand fork was headed toward a plateau-like valley, where it probably ended.

A white signboard hung at an angle from a small tree, fastened by a rusty nail, bleached by sun and wind, cracked and checked, and yet it still bore its message “Caliente Flats 10 M.” It was a sign such as is used by the Forestry Service to mark mountain fire trails. Yet the printing was not that of a government stencil. It was crude hand-lettering.

Another mile and a rider approached, coming up the trail, pressing his horse.

I stopped, swung to one side, and waited, hands ready, poised over my pistols. In the mountains of the West, particularly in those communities where the main means of communication are over horseback trails, it is well to be prepared for trouble when one meets another on the trail.

He saw me, scowled, averted his glance and passed in sullen silence. That, of itself, was unusual. The code of the West calls for a brief exchange of courtesies when two riders meet. More, there was a blood-stained bandage on his shoulder, and the blood was a bright scarlet, not the rusty red of dried blood. The man had been wounded, and the wound was bleeding even as he urged his mount up that trail, away from Caliente Flats.

I shrugged my shoulders and rode on.

Then I came to other signs, signs announcing that the trail was closed by landslides, signs which gave detours up bare mountain sides, signs which were all in the crude lettering of uneducated hands. And past all these signs, straight down the trail, led the tracks of the horseman I had met.

I followed those tracks, followed them until I came within sight of a group of rough buildings huddled together at the head of a little valley. On the sides of the mountains which rimmed the valley showed the great scars of mining operations, the white piles of rock at the ore dumps. The setting sun glinted from galvanized iron roofs, shone redly on board shacks, cast long shadows from grazing cattle, showed a long line of rutted roadway running to the north, a roadway which would probably connect with the railroad.

The sun swung behind the mountains to the west; a chill of the high places swept subtly through the still air. Darkness came, and lights began to glow from the clump of buildings.

A ride up and down the main street of the town told me all that I needed to know.

There was no hotel, but one restaurant worthy of being called such, and any number of pool-halls, card-rooms, dance-halls and saloons. There are hundreds of such places scattered through the West, places where prohibition simply has not penetrated because the people do not wish it. Mining communities out in the desert, in the heart of the mountains, are a law unto themselves. Delving underground is a cheerless business, and men who work in the mines must have such enjoyment as the body craves if they are to be held in camps out in the wilds, out where there is none of the diversions of civilization.

I left my horse before the entrance of the restaurant and entered. It was a rather pretentious place for a mining camp feeding house. There was a long counter, a row of oilcloth-covered tables, and then a doorway leading to a corridor, from which opened booths. The lumber was all homemade, cut from slabs of the sugar pines which grew on the high mountains to the west.

Several men sat at the counter, and one or two were sprawled over the tables. They were a hard-looking lot, men who wolfed their food with shoulders hunched forward, knife and fork in constant motion, eyes fixed vacantly ahead, jaws working rapidly.

I sat at a table and looked past the line of oil lamps to the murky mystery of the corridor where were located the booths; booths from which came an occasional shrill of feminine laughter.

A Chinaman came shuffling through the curtained doorway. His beady eyes glanced about the place, spotted me as a newcomer, and he made his way toward me with a heavy tumbler filled with water, a knife and fork.

“H’lo. You likum eat?”

There was a steady impassivity about his stare, an impersonal something in his tone which seemed a mask, more of a mask than the Oriental habitually wears.

I gave him my order and he shuffled away.

A silence had fallen on the place, an ominous, tense silence. The men at the counter had quit chewing their food, had laid knife and fork to one side and were half turned, watching over their shoulders. The men at the other tables had somehow tensed, and one who had his back toward me seemed to have worked his feet under him, preparatory to a swift jump.

The Chink was engaged in flopping my steak on the greasy stove top, crooning some weird Chinese song to himself.

And then it happened.

The man, who had his back turned, flung out of his chair and abruptly faced me, his face working with some strong emotion. I had been ready, and my own hand held the butt of a forty-five, concealed beneath the table, the muzzle pointed on a line with his heart.

When he saw me, his face relaxed somewhat and his eyes narrowed. In that split second before I had registered on his mind, when he had nothing by which to identify me but the sound of my voice, I had sensed the emotion which gripped him. It had been a half fear, half hate.

As it was, his face became drawn, determined. He let his hand drop from the handle of his revolver, and strode purposefully to my table.

“Just got in the valley, eh?” he greeted.

“I have already given my order,” I said.

He was a big, burly individual, one who had played hard at the game of life, plunged over his head with Devil’s stakes, and was continuing the game at headlong pace. He was a creature of fierce emotions, an animal cunning being the only indication of intelligence on his face—a face that was scarred and seamed, warped by evil emotions. Cruelty and cowardice showed in the line of his quivering mouth, but his hands were steady.

“Order, hell! I ain’t runnin’ this joint. Are yuh lookin’ for work?”

“If I am I shall find it.”

His hand dropped again.

“Well, you needn’t be so damned fresh. Get this an’ get it straight. Yuh ain’t goin’ to like it here. It’s a powerful unhealthy climate for strangers, an’ we don’t want ’em around. Our graveyard ain’t big enough.”

“The climate and I will get along,” I said; “but I am sorry about your graveyard being so small. Perhaps it will be even more crowded when I leave.”

He sucked in his breath in a great gasp. I could see in his eyes the determination to reach for his guns, to have it out—and then he stiffened, tensed. His eyes had caught the significance of my hand which was under the table.

“I was just warnin’ yuh,” he said in a voice that had suddenly changed its tone. His eyes squirmed about; his mouth twitched and beads of perspiration came on his forehead. Slowly, he walked away, never turning his back to me, his fascinated eyes on the table cloth which masked the gun, the fingers of his hands working.

Arrived at his table, he sighed and sat down.

The men at the counter turned again to their food. The other diners clattered knife and fork. Life in the restaurant returned to normal—and then my ears caught the note of the Chinaman’s song. It had subtly changed from the weird undulations of Chinese music, such as a mother might croon to an infant, and contained a subtle note of triumph.

A few minutes more and he seemed to catch himself, looked sheepishly about him, lowered his voice, scooped up some potatoes, spread them on the hot platter, flopped on the steak and came shuffling along the board floor, his beady eyes darting over my face as though they would cover the minutest detail of my every feature. The face itself, however, was an impassive mask of yellow skin.

He set down the food, then took his way once more through the curtained doorway.

In a few moments he returned, glanced sharply at me once again, then came to my table, stooped, picked up my plate, swept knife and fork into his yellow talons, gathered bread, butter and water into his crooked arm, and started slowly toward the curtain.

“You eatum in here,” he said over his shoulder.

For the moment I was on the point of jerking him back by the slack of his blouse, and then, for the second time that day, I yielded to an inexplicable whim.

I followed him through the heavy, grimy curtain, into the dim hallway, past a few booths, and into a little compartment where, without another word, he spread out my food on the table.

It is as useless to puzzle over the ways of a Chinaman as it is to argue with the universe. The average man thinks of eternity as of something distant, to come into existence on his death. A Chinaman thinks of eternity as being present. He lives in cycles, lives in eons, and, once having made up his mind, becomes impervious to argument.

I resumed my eating, saying no word. If words would do no good I would not waste them. But one thing I had determined. No curtain would be drawn across that booth, no concealment behind which a man might come down the dim corridor and shoot me from ambush.

As though divining my thought, the Chinaman threw back the curtain over the top of the booth, leaving the doorway open ... and then I caught sight of the occupant of the opposite booth, caught the curve of her shoulder, the delicate line of her stocking. The rest was hidden by the curtain which dropped over the doorway.

I scooped up some greasy potatoes and cut at the steak, saw the curve of the shoulder heave, and caught the sound of a stifled sob. The woman was crying, crying not with the gentle helplessness which is the weapon of the sex, the last resort in times of stress, but crying with anger, a fierce, choking anger which was impotent.

I sat up, interested.

Shuffling steps again.

The Chink came with a cup of coffee, and his eyes intercepted mine as I stared with frank curiosity at the next booth. Ordinarily the eyes of a Chinaman are inexpressive, darting, furtive, subtle. Now, however, there came the swift gleam of an expression. He set down the coffee and hurried away, and there could be no doubting the triumph of his weird crooning, a fierce triumph which might have been a hymn of thanks to some war god.

From the booth opposite I heard the swift crumple of paper; a wadded note was thrust beneath the delicate, high-arched foot, and the shoe stamped down again and again. Then the curtain swept back and she saw me for the first time.

Her face was flushed, the cheeks stained with tears, but there was none of the washed-out look in her eyes. Rather they glowed with a fierce intensity, and about her mouth was a look of determination. Her eyes were weeping, but her mouth was indomitable as Gibraltar.

She saw me, caught the glance of my eyes, and her lip curled a trifle. Then she was gone, sweeping down the dim corridor with the carriage of a queen. Not like other women was she. There had been no effort to conceal her tears, no attempt to soften the ravages of crying by powder and rouge, but she faced the world defiantly, the tears streaming down her face, her mouth set in rage.

She was perhaps twenty-two or three, a girl who had blossomed into woman’s estate, rather small of bone, delicate of figure, yet firm of mouth and steady of eye, and there was a something in the poise of her head which spoke of self-reliance.

I glanced at the table in the opposite booth. A dinner had been brought, served with a delicacy of fancy dishes such as hardly seemed possible in this rude camp. Yet the dinner had not been touched. There was a small tenderloin steak, planked, ornamental potatoes bordering it. Radishes had been cut into delicate petaled roses. Deliciously browned biscuits sat in a little individual pan. That dinner was not one that might be selected from the bill of fare in this Chinese restaurant. The preparation of that meal had been a work of love, not a commercial enterprise.

Upon the floor of the restaurant there lay the crumpled paper which had been stamped beneath her foot; and down the corridor came the shuffle-slip, slip-shuffle, slap-slap of the straw slippers of the Chinaman.

“You likum pie. All light. I bling um one piecee pie.”

A wedge of restaurant pie was set before me, and the Chinaman turned to the other table. As he saw the untouched food he made queer, guttural sounds, and then, for a moment, his voice rose in some Cantonese exclamation of wrath, but soon he calmed down and began stolidly to remove the dishes.

At length the table was cleared, but the paper still remained crumpled on the floor. Also I had a peculiar sensation of dark, beady eyes glittering down the corridor, fastened on that crumpled sheet. Fool! Did he think that I would lean across the aisle and pick up that paper?

He waited while I finished my pie, and then came slippety-slapping along the rough boards.

“You likum check? Me catchum paper makum check.”

There followed a search through the folds of his blouse.

“No catchum paper.... All light. Me catchum.”

With the words he stooped as swiftly and accurately as the swoop of a hawk, and clutched the crumpled paper in his yellow talons, smoothed it out, spread it on my table, and scrawled the figure fifty on the back.

“All light. You pay um flifty cents you come cashier’s desk,” he sing-songed and was gone, this time pulling the cloth curtain over the entrance to the door. Beyond doubt he intended that I should read that paper.

I turned it over.

The words were scrawled rather than written, scrawled in indelible pencil, and there were purple blotches where tears had fallen on the penciled lines. However, it could still be easily deciphered.

“Your uncle is gone. You will be next. Beat it quick. U-No-Hoo.”

At the end of the counter I looked for the cashier. There was none, not even a cash register. The Oriental shuffled down the bar and held me with his beady eyes.

“You pay um flifty cents. You come back bleakfast?”

I threw him a half dollar and shrugged my shoulders by way of answer, then strolled to my black, took a nosebag from the saddle and gave him his grain. He had come far that day, and there was a strange feeling in the depths of my mind that he might have to go further that night.

The lights of a card-room blazed forth whitely into the night. The place was lit with a gasoline lantern, and the windows showed startlingly brilliant against the black of the night. I wandered aimlessly within, found a vacant chair at a draw poker game, and purchased a stack of chips.

The play was slow, and I was paying more attention to the men in the room than to the cards. I did not play to win, and I did not intend to lose. As a result I made many antes but few draws, looking, listening, thinking.

And then, suddenly, I caught my own name. It was in the middle of a sentence, and it came from behind me, where some man was leaning against the bar, drinking the deadly white mule and discoursing with a friend.

“... Black Barr; yeah, sure I know him. I throwed down on him once near Yuma, an’ he was a good dog with me ever after. Yeah, he may be quick, but he ain’t so all-fired quick as yuh hear about. I gave him an even break, an’ I had him covered before his own guns were half way out.

“What’d he do? He just histed his hands for the sky an’ grinned at me—not that deadly grin he gets when he’s killin’, but a sorta friendly, sociable grin. ‘You win,’ he says, an’ he says it so blame sociable an’ friendly like that I didn’t have the guts to pull the trigger.

“Yeah, he looks just like the way they describe him. He’s got black hair an’ eyes, an’ there’s a sombre somethin’ about his face. He wears a black hat an’ coat, an’ black angora chaps. When he’s gettin’ mad is the time to recognize him, though. Then his mouth commences to crawl an’ squirm over his face like a rattlesnake twistin’ around through a clump o’ cactus.”

Casually, I turned and surveyed the speaker. He was a loud-mouthed killer. One of the second-rate gunmen who circulate around wherever trouble is to be had, selling their services as paid murderers, enhancing their reputations by bar-room bragging. Yellow to the core, they shoot from ambush or when they have all the advantage, and seek to terrify honest cattlemen by tales of their exploits. I knew the type, but the man I had never seen before.

I shrugged my shoulders and fixed my attention on the card game. I am not a killer, although I have often killed; and therein is a vast difference.

I looked at my cards, and saw three queens. A player across the board pulled out a roll of bills. “I’m declarin’ these in the game,” he said before picking up his cards. “Any other player can do the same.”

I glanced casually at the faces of the men. Without exception my fellow players were looking at me. Evidently a deal had been framed up. I would be given four queens after the draw, and my opponent would have the hand beaten, the others dropping out after the betting was well under way. It was an old trap, but I would pretend to walk in it, would declare in a roll of bills and then throw the four queens into the discard with the money still in front of me. There is nothing which causes more irritation to a professional gambler who is trying to catch a “live one.”

I pulled out my own roll.

“This is in,” I said shortly. “Give me two cards.”

The other man drew two cards. The remaining players made various draws. I looked at my two cards, a queen and a ten. Four queens, and there was a subtle tension around the table.

“Betting fifty,” announced the man across from me, as he slid a stack of chips into the center of the table.

“Here, stranger, yuh dropped a paper.”

The voice came from behind me, and was the voice of the bragging killer who had boasted of getting the drop on Black Barr.

I looked over my shoulder.

The paper he had picked up was the paper I had secured in the restaurant, the tear-stained threat which the girl had trampled on, and he was holding it in such a way that the folded paper was slowly opening.

“Ah yes, thanks,” I said, reaching out my hand.

The fold straightened. The paper lay spread out before the gaze of all present, and the man who was holding it out jumped back with an oath.

“Hey, you, how did you get this?”

I disdained to answer the question, but reached out my hand.

The other jerked his own hand back, his eyes narrowing, his lips twitching.

“Havin’ this is just like havin’ a death warrant!” he snarled, his hands hovering around the butts of his guns, ready to drop the paper and reach for his weapons.

I knew the type. He would get into action while I was getting up from my chair. His kind didn’t believe in giving an even break. Safety first was his motto. Particularly when it came to a killing.

I glanced over the table.

Cold hostility was written upon the faces of the men who were about the green cloth. Evidently I had become unpopular. The man who was sitting across the table had lowered his cards slightly—sufficiently for me to see the corners of four kings.

That was the last straw.

I swept my hands to my guns even as I leapt from the chair. The cheap killer did as I anticipated. He had dropped the note and had started for his weapons as soon as he saw me start to get back from the table. Ordinarily a man would have got to his feet, and then started things. Then the killer would have had the advantage. As it was, I was having almost an even break with him.

Never had I been in better form. Never had my hands worked with smoother rhythm. My guns were out before the other’s hands had started from his holsters, and, suddenly, it flashed through my mind that here would be a good chance to show him in his true colors. I did not fire, but thrust the weapons into the pit of his stomach.

So wide a margin did I have on him at the draw that he had time to appreciate it, to take stock of the situation. His hands paused, the guns half out from his holsters, and his bulging eyes fastened on my face.

My mouth was writhing, twisting into that deadly smile which has made the name of Black Barr known from one end of the Border to the other, all over the West, wherever men of the outdoors gather about camp fires or carry braided ropes coiled on their saddles.

“BLACK BARR!” he yelled, his face turning a sickly yellow with sheer terror.

And then the lights went out.

How it had been arranged I do not know, probably by some clever arrangement for just such a purpose, as ordinarily a lantern of this sort is not quickly extinguished. At any rate the room plunged into darkness with no stage of transition, no slight afterglow. One moment I was standing there, weapons drawn, the yammering coward before me, slavering at the thought of death. The next instant and all was dark, and I had thrown myself forward.

Guns blazed in the dark, shots which came from the location of the card table. Bullets thudded into the wood of the bar over my head. But there were no flashes of light from where stood the man who had picked up the letter. He had learned his lesson.

As for the others—I had no quarrel with them other than the holding of those cards, four queens which would have been out against four kings. And then there was the matter of those flashing guns which had been directed toward the place where I had been standing when the lights went out. That matter could wait.

I rolled over, crawled under the card table, made for a corner of the room, ran into a mass of huddled humanity—non-combatants who were crowding away from the flying lead—felt a welcome breeze coming through an open side door, stepped out into the night, through a cluttered yard, into a narrow alley down to the street and up to my horse.

When the lights should again be turned on and the men look for the riddled body of Black Barr they would have a shock. I would have vanished into the night without so much as a trace behind. I had not fired a shot, had said no word. When there had been no answering flashes from my guns they would have felt certain I was dead. Their feelings when the lights came on could be readily imagined. Black Barr has a reputation, and these men who had sought to kill him would not be resting very easy, knowing that he was out in the night, a constant menace.

The black had finished his grain, and had worked off the nosebag, a trick of his, and stood regarding me with distended nostrils. He had heard the shooting and was wondering whether there would be the smell of blood in his delicate nose. I quieted him with a word, swung into the saddle and loped off into the night.

I usually sleep alone under the stars. Not for one who has a price on his head, who is the quarry of every gunman who shoots from ambush, can there be the luxury of a hotel bed. Too many gunmen would like to have the honor of having dispatched the notorious Black Barr.

I rode several miles away from the town. Of a sudden men had become obnoxious to me. I wanted the quiet of the night, the swinging stars, the noises of the desert, the rustling of sage, the whispering of drifting sand.

I unsaddled, turned the black loose where there seemed to be some feed, rolled out my blankets, and drifted off into warm drowsiness, lulled by the hushed noises of the outdoors, a great peace descending upon me.

It was some time later, how much later I had no means of knowing, that flooding consciousness came back to my brain. My mind was weary, my body warm and resting, and my senses rebelled against being awakened, but some mysterious force snapped open my eyes, and when the red blotch on the horizon registered upon my brain I sat upright, all thought of sleep gone from me.

It was a fire, not the scattered, diffused radiance of a brush fire, but the ugly, sullen glow of a house. Above the glow there showed a writhing, twisting column of smoke, smoke which twisted this way, writhed that, puffed up into great billows, then spread out into scattered wisps.

Somewhere over the little ridge which lay to the south, not over two miles from where I was laying, a house was going up in smoke.

I kicked out of my light blanket and whistled for my black. Out in the darkness he whinnied his response, waited for a second whistle, and then came cantering up, surprised at a start in the dead of night, but holding steady, nevertheless, while I threw the saddle blankets and cold saddle on his back. A few moments more and I was ready to travel; but, just as I swung into the saddle, I heard the thud-thud-thud of many hoofs, horses proceeding at a rapid pace, bunched, compact.

I ducked low in the saddle, insured the silence of my horse by a word, and waited.

Out of the darkness there came a vague, floating shadow, and then, for a brief instant, there showed against the red glare on the horizon some ten horsemen, riding in close formation. A moment only and then they were gone. For several seconds the sound of the horses came to my ears, and then that, too, faded away. Silence once more on the floor of the valley, a silence that was rimmed with mighty mountains and blazing stars. The glare over the ridge deepened. A tongue of flame writhed and twisted up in the smoke.

I turned the horse and we went at a swift gallop. As I rode, I thought of the dark mystery of the shadowy horsemen. During all of the time I had been able to hear them there had been no word spoken. The men had no elation over the outcome of their errand, had such a perfect understanding that words were idle. They had merely floated through the night like a black cloud gliding silently over the trackless heavens.

Once over the top of the ridge and I could see that both a house and barn were burning. They were within half a mile, and I pressed the black forward, but, even as I rode, I could see that it was too late to save anything from the flames.

A figure that seemed surrounded by a filmy halo dashed back and forth before the fire, and, as I rode closer, I could see that it was the figure of a girl, that the filmy halo was the diaphanous transparency of some thin night attire which floated about her in light folds. Her activity puzzled me. She was not attempting to save anything from the blazing inferno, but rather she seemed to be executing some strange dance, some weird incantation before the burning buildings, using them as a ceremonial fire about which she leapt.

The firelight outlined her shapely limbs, seemed to gild them with flickering flame, turned to ruddy gold the flowing locks of her hair, the fluttering silk of the night-dress. I could not make out the dance. It was like the dance of an Indian ceremonial, rhythmic, elemental, unmeasured, yet graceful, purposeful.

My black thundered on. The distance was shortened to yards, to feet. The girl turned, and I recognized the features of the girl I had seen in the restaurant.

And then suddenly she paused, stooped, and whirled with elbows elevated. For a moment I could not understand the posture, and then I flung myself sideways. She was aiming a rifle directly at me, and the raised elbows of the silhouette was all that the firelight showed me.

There was a flash, the whisper of a bullet as it skimmed through the air, the rapid motion of the girl’s arms as another shell was thrown into the gun.

“I am a friend!” I shouted.

The words served only to give her a more accurate conception of my whereabouts for her next shot. There was a flash, and the whipping impact of a bullet in my hat brim.

Bending low over the saddle, I swung out in a series of zigzags, and from the darkness somewhere to my right came the mocking sound of a taunting laugh, a laugh that was the laugh of a man. The girl, too, heard the laugh, for she shifted her position, the firelight glittered redly along the barrel of the rifle, and two shots crashed out in the direction of the laugh.

After that there was silence.

I went over the top of the ridge before I again unsaddled, stretched out my blanket and rolled within it. A moment more and I was asleep with the black crunching the short grass nearby. If our help was not wanted it would not be given. I had offered the girl assistance. My answer had been the deadly whisper of a bullet, the crash of a rifle. She could dance around the fire until doomsday so far as I was concerned.

I awoke in the soft hush which comes before dawn, when there is the faintest whisper of a mysterious wind sweeping over the plain, when the colors in the east run from brassy green to bright orange.

By sunup I was in the saddle, headed toward Caliente Flats, and, as I rode, I loosed my guns in their holsters. The action was purely instinctive, prompted perhaps by a subconscious recollection of the mysterious riders, the flaming building, the mocking laugh from the darkness.

I breakfasted in the restaurant of the Chinese.

He watched me enter with calm impassivity, but, when I would have seated myself at the counter, he crooked his finger and shuffled into the corridor leading to the booths.

I followed him.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Wing Lee.”

“Why you put me here?”

“Bling you bleakfast,” he said, and shuffled away.

A few minutes and he was back with oatmeal and coffee. I resumed the conversation.

“Why you no let me eat outside, Wing Lee? What for you bring me back here?”

The interrogation was couched in the pidgin-English which is the accepted method of communication with his kind, but he blinked his eyes vacantly.

“No sabbe,” he remarked. “I go bling ham ’n eggs. You likum ham ’n eggs?”

There is no use wasting breath on a Chinaman who holds his tongue, or resorts to the “no sabbe” game. When he brought the ham and eggs I remained silent, as though the matter were closed.

He hesitated, sucked in his breath as though to speak, and then slippety-slapped away.

Five minutes later and I heard his voice, crooning away a steady stream of sing-song English. It was as though he was talking to a horse he was trying to catch, seeking to distract its attention from the cold-bitted bridle.

“You no eatum out there. Him no good. I catchum you one piecee room. You eatum no catchum bothered. Me, I smart man, I heap sabbe. You likum eatum where nobody ’round. You come me, I fixum. I catchum ham ’n eggs. You heap likum nice flesh egg?”

Keeping up his perpetual wheedling conversation, he came shuffling along the rough boards leading some bulky figure to the adjoining booth.

Habit, which has taught me to trust no man, made me shift my eyes from the Chinaman to the figure which followed, and then I instantly stiffened. It was the cheap killer of the pool-hall; the man who had boasted of having had the drop on Black Barr, who had picked up the crumpled piece of paper which had fallen from my pocket.

“Look here, John....” he was saying, using the conventional name by which all Chinese are known in the mining and cattle camps of the West. “You likee make piecum money? You likee shagum powder one cup coffee make one hundred dollars? You sabbe big man, black hat, black shirt, black horse, black guns...”

The Chinaman moved to one side, moved just far enough so that there was no obstruction to my view, so that the other man could see me.

“No-o-o-o sabbe,” he intoned.

The man across the way caught the glitter of my eyes, realized that his conversation had been overheard, knew that the time for a showdown had come.

He thought quickly, that man. His hand did not swoop immediately to his guns, but paused long enough to flip the glass of water which was on the table in front of him, straight at my face. Then his hands went for his guns with all the speed they could command.

The shot from my right gun caught the hurtling water glass, smashed it in the air, into a thousand pieces. My second shot crashed through the forehead of the would-be poisoner.

There was the silent flitting of a shadow and the Chinaman was at my elbow.

“You come this way, quick!” he hissed.

I followed him, my hand on my gun, ready for a shot at the first sign of treachery.

“You climb out window,” he said in his sing-song voice. “You come in flont door, you eatum one more bleakfast. I say him first time you come this morning.”

There was much wisdom in what Wing Lee said, and but little time for meditation upon that wisdom or the reason back of it. Already, feet were rushing down the boards of the corridor; already men were piling in through the entrance of the restaurant.

I dived through the window, bent double, ran to the corner of the building, waited for a moment, and sauntered quietly and unobserved into the crowd which was packing the doorway.

A moment more and I had forced my way through, and sauntered to one of the oilcloth-covered tables.

“What’s all the excitement, John?” I asked, casually.

Several pairs of eyes turned at the sound of my voice.

“Somebody shootum,” remarked the Chinaman placidly as he drew a cup of coffee with a hand that was as steady as a graven image. “You likum bleakfast? Catchum nice flesh egg. You likum ploached egg?”

I nodded.

From the corridor came the awkward shuffle of many feet, and the body of the killer was borne past, borne by men who were cursing, masking their terror by rough talk.

“The back door’s locked,” said one. “Must’ve shot him through a window,” opined another. “Wing Lee says he was the only one back in the booth.”

I remembered that the restaurant had been deserted when I entered, and chuckled, but the chuckle was short-lived. My thought turned to the Chinaman. Had he heard of the trouble the night before? Why had he escorted me to the booth? Why had he brought the killer to the other booth? Why had he so nimbly skipped to one side just before the shooting commenced? Was he friend or foe—and who was the girl who had occupied that same booth the night before?

That Chink was playing a deep game, and he would bear watching.

However, his ruse worked, and no one thought of connecting me with the shooting. I nibbled through my second breakfast, and then strolled to my horse. A piece of paper dangled from the saddlehorn, and a closer inspection showed that it was an envelope, twisting and spinning at the end of a string.

With narrowed, watchful eyes, I tore open the envelope and read the message within.

“Come to the Half Box Ranch at once,” it said, and it was unsigned. There was a hundred-dollar bank note accompanying the missive.

I could see no one taking an undue interest in my movements. There were people on the street, loungers in front of the restaurant, still talking of the shooting, an occasional horseman going past, a few men grouped before one of the combination saloons and pool-halls, but no one that I could spot as being particularly interested in me. However, I had no doubt but what there was a hidden pair of eyes watching to see how I took the message.

I twisted the bill and the note up into a spiral, touched a match to both and used them to light the end of a cigar. Black Barr did not accept orders, even when they were accompanied with bank notes. Whoever had delivered his letter could have his answer in my actions.

Two minutes later and a big, burly figure elbowed its way from the pool-hall, and heaved into a saddle which was on the back of a spirited horse that had been tied to the hitching rack, and loped to the edge of the town, then struck into a gallop and vanished into the heat haze in a cloud of dust.

I recognized him as the man who had approached me in the restaurant, the man with the crafty eyes, the one who had warned me of the climate and the small graveyard.

I fancied that I knew where he was going, fancied that I could tell the report he was taking with him.

I spent an hour mingling with the men of Caliente Flats, joining the crowds of gossips, taking a great delight in the way conversation languished whenever I came within earshot, noticing the way men found occasion to leave a group as soon as I joined it. They were, then, talking about me. More than that, I was considered a dangerous companion. Men did not want to be seen talking with me, did not wish to appear intimate. I was an outcast, a marked man. I might have been carrying the plague and still have been made more welcome.

I grinned to myself. That would mean a quick showdown. There were events impending, and their coming was presaged in the very atmosphere of the place.

I determined to ride out to the scene of the fire. I owned a curiosity concerning the girl who stamped on threatening letters and who executed a war dance in the light of burning buildings. I went for my horse and the animal was gone, had been led away.

I knew he had been led away because he would permit no one but me to ride him; knew that it had taken main force to drag him from the place where he awaited the return of his master. A cold rage swept me. My mouth began its strange writhing. Whoever it was who had taken that horse would hear from me, and that soon. A wanderer makes but few friends. My horse was my companion, my only close friend.

A flicker of white caught my eye. Another of those envelopes had been fastened to the hitching rack near where my black had stood.

I ripped it open.

“Black Barr. Your horse is at the Half Box.”

The message was unsigned.

I looked about. Nearby was the animal I had earlier seen the burly individual mount and on which he had recently returned. He was lathered from a long gallop, but still had plenty of strength and wind. I became conscious of the eyes of the loungers fastened upon me. Without appreciable hesitation I picked up the reins of the lathered mount.

“Hey, what yuh doin’ with that bronc?”

It was the voice of the heavy, burly fellow with the cunning eyes.

“I’m just taking him as a guide,” I said. “I want to find the Half Box ranch and I want to find it in a hurry.”

He disclosed a long row of yellow, fanglike teeth.

“Give’m his head an’ he’ll show it to yuh.”

The words were all I needed to connect up the information I had with the surmises I conjectured. He and I would have an accounting, this man with the fanglike teeth and the cunning eyes; but that could wait.

The horse set his own pace and took his own trail. He was a splendid animal. Too good an animal for the ordinary cowhand to ride. Whoever that fellow was, he held some important position; foreman perhaps, perhaps manager.

It was twenty minutes to the Half Box. I spotted the brand on some pastured cattle, and the horse turned in at a rutted road, into a yard where buildings, low, unpainted, ugly, squatted about in a rude half square. There was a bunkhouse, a stable, a harness house, blacksmith shop, and a big, rambling ranch-house with broad verandas. My black was in the yard, tied snugly to a post, and he whinnied his welcome.

I untied him, then strode to the ranch-house.

A cowpuncher came to the door, a gun on either hip, a broad smile on his face, and jerked his thumb to a side door.

“You’ll find ’m in there.”

I went through the side door, and my hands swung low as I entered the spacious room.

A figure was seated before a desk, a figure that was almost unbelievably fat. Fat seemed to ooze through his skin, to collect in greasy globules on his forehead, to have formed in a rancid coating over the hairy hands. His thick, sensuous lips were wreathed in a smile and his eye glittered with hoggish self-satisfaction.

“Black Barr, I believe,” and his voice was thin, piping, high like the squeal of a pig when he first plants his forefeet in a food trough. “I had to get you out here some way. I can’t ride, and I wanted to talk with you.”

On either side of him was a bodyguard, and he needed it. Thin, rat-like individuals they were, with shifty glances and hands that rested on their belts.

“Black Barr, I need you. My enemies, the Flying M, are on the warpath, my men are being killed and my homesteads are being burned.”

I glared at him.

“When you want to talk with me after this use a long-distance telephone. Don’t ever let anyone lay hands on my horse again. You hear?”

The piggish eyes glittered again. This time a steely glitter. His hands were folded upon his huge stomach, and there was nothing that moved about him except the lids of his eyes, but somehow he contrived to give an impression of deadly menace, like a fat spider, sitting in its web, waiting for the fly to entangle itself a trifle deeper.

“My name is Ed Boswell,” he piped, in his thin voice, “and you’ll hear more of it if you stay hereabouts. I do what I want to do, and what I can’t do myself I have others do for me. I’m not used to being threatened.”

I laughed.

“Was it your homestead that burned last night?”

His small eyes searched my face, and he shifted slightly. The muscles moved under the great layer of fat, but the body gave only a shimmying shiver.

“It was my homestead, although the Flying M claim it, and although a girl claims it.”

“Who built the buildings?”

Another shimmy that would be a squirm, and the pale tongue flecked the heavy lips.

“The girl’s uncle built ’em, but they were built on my land.”

I turned.

“Next time you have anything to say to me write me a note.”

My eyes were on the two guards. Would they go into action?

“You burnt up one note,” he complained.

“And I intend to burn up the rest,” I said, and slammed the door.

“Ten thousand dollars,” he piped after me. “Ten thousand dollars for possession of that homestead for thirty days.”

Abruptly, I turned and came back. I could see that he thought the money tempted me and an oily smile smirked over his flabby face. He had opened a drawer, and his thick fingers were plucking forth one-hundred-dollar bank notes, stacking them up before my eyes.

“There was one thing I overlooked telling you,” I said. “I’m getting tired of someone around here. If it’s you, this is your warning.”

His eyes grew vacant, puzzled.

I slammed the door, this time for good. He had had his warning. The future was up to him.

I mounted the black and swung out in a wide circle, riding so that I would go past the place where I had seen the burning buildings. That homestead commenced to interest me.

The charred buildings still gave forth little wisps of white smoke. The fire had been complete and there was not so much as a cornerpost left standing. A clump of horses were fastened to a fence, and the horses bore the brand of the Half Box. I sneered. Whatever the fat man might have said, the fire had served to put him in possession— Yet he had offered ten thousand for possession for the next thirty days. Evidently he feared an attack, feared an attack that his men would not be able to repel.

A figure waddled to the group of ponies, and presently a horse cut out from the bunch. The mounted figure swung in a half-circle to intercept me.

“I wouldn’t go no closer,” he said pleasantly. “There’s been a fire and we’re trying to keep whatever evidence there may be intact so we can show the sheriff what happened.”

I grinned at him.

“Who’s we?”

“The owners—the Half Box,” he said.

I stared at him. “You look sleepy,” I said.

He lowered his eyes. “I ain’t.”

I kept my eyes boring into his.

“That’s a lie.”

His face snapped up, and his shoulders lowered, and then his wide, startled eyes took me in from head to foot, caught the writhing smile that was commencing to twist my mouth.

“God in heaven! It’s Black Barr!” he exclaimed, whirled his horse, elevated his hands, and went on a gallop for his companions.

I had learned what I sought to know. I rode slowly back to town.

In front of the pool-hall the man with the cunning eyes and seamed countenance was waiting for me with outstretched, pudgy hand and evil leer.

“I’m Bob Carstairs of the Half Box. Didja see the main squeeze?”

I nodded, slowly, hostilely, not noticing the outstretched hand.

The meaning of my attitude dawned upon him as I swung from my horse.

“Say, what’d yuh do with my bronc?”

I walked close to him, took in the unpleasant reek of his dirty body, the odor of stale tobacco on his breath, the sudden enmity of his snarling face.

“I left him where you left mine—at the Half Box, and if you want him real bad, you’re at liberty to walk out for him—and let me tell you another thing. The next man to lay a hand on this horse passes in his chips. Get that?”

His face paled somewhat. He was a blusterer, this man, a fourflusher who sought to save his face, but who struck through other hands and in the dark. Yet he tried to bluster, to avoid the appearance of being mastered.

“Say, where d’yuh get that stuff? I’m good-natured, but yuh can’t pull no blazer like that on me. I’m Carstairs, an’ I’m the manager of the whole blamed Half Box an’ I got half a hundred cowpunchers at my back. I’m tellin’ yuh....”

He never finished what he had to say. I stepped forward and thrust my empty glove between his yellow teeth, thrust it well back, down his throat.

“Chew on that for a while,” I said, and walked casually toward the pool-room.

His hands seemed undecided whether to reach for the glove or his gun, and hovered in the air, doing neither. In the meantime the glove refused to be spat out, and wiggled and flopped in his mouth as his chin quivered and his vocal organs vainly tried to formulate words.

The crowd on the porch of the pool-hall grinned silently, watching me with a new respect, a certain touch of awe. I made no salutation and acknowledged none, but strode into the pool-hall.

There I instantly became aware that something unusual was in progress. A crowd was beginning to pack about a card table, and I could hear the tones of a woman’s voice.

I stepped forward, raised my head, the better to see, and recognized the features of the girl of the restaurant. Her hair was singed in places, but, aside from that, she was unchanged, in as perfect control of herself as though she had not been burned out of house and home, as though she were sitting in a drawing room, sipping weak tea.

“I’m offering to cut the cards for myself against your claim to the homestead,” she said. “Surely you can’t misunderstand me. If you win you have—me. If you lose you give me a quitclaim to the ranch.”

A couple of the men in front, feeling the pressure of my elbows, turned around with a scowl, and, as soon as they saw who it was, melted to one side, leaving the way open for me to approach the table.

Then, for the first time, I noticed that there must be a faint trace of Indian blood in the girl. There was that about the corners of her eyes, now that she was excited, that spoke of Indian ancestry somewhere in the family, and that expressionless set to the lips I had seen on the face of an Indian chieftain as he was being led to the gallows for the shooting of a white man who had defrauded him.

The man at the other end of the table was handsome in a selfish sort of way, and there were devils of passion in his eyes.

“Mattie, you can’t do a thing like this; you simply can’t!” he said. “It cheapens you.”

Her eyes bored into his with a tinge of scorn.

“You with your talk of cheapening myself. You didn’t hesitate to try and steal the homestead from Uncle. You didn’t hesitate to plunge the property into a lawsuit, to prevent him from borrowing any money with the notice you filed in the recorder’s office. You did all this to force me to give in—to marry you. Well and good. Here’s your chance, and it’s the only one you’ll ever have. If you cut high, you may have me. If you cut low, you lose the homestead and give me a quitclaim for it.”

His tongue caressed his lips.

“And if I win, you’ll come, you’ll deliver the merchandise.”

In the flush which came to her skin I could catch the faint tinge of coppery color.

“You have my word for that,” she said.

A crowd had gathered. The word had passed with lightning rapidity, and men jostled and shoved about the card table.

“You’ll have to take care of the other outfit—the Half Box, if you win,” he said. “I won’t guarantee to deliver possession. Just a quitclaim to all of my interest is all I’m offering if I lose.”

She nodded.

“Go ahead and shuffle the cards. You talk too easily, and it makes you talk too damned much.”

He shuffled the cards, attempting to ignore the snicker which ran through the crowd that ringed the table.

“Go ahead and cut,” he said. “The ace is low.”

With a hand that trembled not in the slightest, the girl cut the pack, looked at her card and flipped it over on the table. It was the deuce of hearts.

With a bound he was up from his chair.

“Mattie! Mattie! You’re mine, mine!”

She waved him back, her face cast into a mould of impersonal impassivity. “You haven’t cut yet,” she said in an expressionless tone.

Carelessly he leaned back and flipped over the first card, hardly pausing to look at it. And then a laugh struck his attention. He paused at that laugh and at something he saw in the eyes of the girl, and looked at the card. It was the ace of spades.

The man stood rooted to the spot, the color draining from his handsome, sensuous face. The girl had drawn herself proudly erect, a barrier between them that had become as permanent as death.

“I’m waiting for the deed,” she remarked.

He dashed a hand across his eyes.

“That wasn’t a fair cut. I turned my back on the deck for a second, and someone slipped that ace on top. You’ll have to cut again—to give me one more chance. Anyway, it was the best two out of three. You didn’t specify, and that’s the way it always goes. Horse and horse, anyhow.”

Bah! The fourflusher. I dropped my hand to my hip and leaned forward.

She spared me the trouble. Her hand came from a fold of her shawl, and an ugly automatic peeped forth.

“That’s the reason I never could care very much for you,” she said. “You always were such a grandstander, such a fourflusher. Make out that deed, and if you lay a hand on me, I’ll shoot you.”

He sighed, glanced helplessly around him, then sank at the table and began to scribble out a deed. I made for the open air. Nine times out of ten a handsome man is yellow underneath, and this bird had the features of a statue.... Bah!

And, as I made for the door, I caught a glimpse of a furtive movement at my side. Wing Lee, the Chink of the restaurant was slipping a long knife up his sleeve. Evidently the girl had another string to her bow, even if she hadn’t known it. I had not seen the Chinaman in the circle of spectators, but I recognized the gesture with which that knife was sheathed.

I laughed, and he glanced up at the laugh, but his face was as expressionless as the countenance of an idol.

“You come supper?” he inquired.

“Sure, Wing Lee, I come supper,” I told him. I was beginning to have a great liking for this Chink.

The girl took her quitclaim, walked past the crowd of men that hung around the pool-room, with head up and eyes flashing, climbed on her horse and galloped away. I knew that the homestead was in the actual possession of the Half Box outfit, and wondered whether she was headed for an interview with the fat bird.

I strolled into Wing Lee’s for an early supper. He glittered his beady eyes at me and crooked his finger, leading the way into that back corridor where the booths were located. Pausing before the entrance to one of them he flipped back the curtain and bowed.

Watching him, I stepped inside, and then a rustle of motion told me that the booth was occupied. In an instant I was on the defensive, my hands racing to my guns.

A feminine laugh interrupted the motion.

“Wing Lee insists that you are a friend.”

It was the girl of the homestead, the war dance, the cut cards, and there was a lazy amusement in her voice, almost a note of superiority.

I bowed.

“He allee time makum heap tlouble Half Box,” explained Wing Lee to the girl, the words rushing out in a burst of sing-song eloquence, as though to justify his action to her. “He no ’flaid. No matter big man, little man, quick man, slow man, allee same, he fixum. One man already he shootum, one man stickum glove in mouth no talkum. He heap smart man. He allee samee one piecee fliend.”

With which introduction he dropped the curtain and was gone.

“Sit down, Black Barr,” said the girl. “I am Mattie Bevans. I take it that we’re both pleased to meet each other, so we can eliminate all those preliminary formalities. I also take it that you’re not overly pleased at having Wing Lee catapult you into the mess that I’m in, so we’ll just forget that. With Wing Lee a man who is unfriendly to the Half Box or the Flying M must be a friend of mine since I’m fighting both of them.”

I watched her closely. She had received the benefit of a college education somewhere. Her poise, the diction of her words, her easy manner showed her training, her education. Now that there was no trace of emotion on her face, it was almost impossible to detect the slight strain of Indian blood which had become noticeable when she was excited, had become apparent through her very immobility of expression.

“When I last sought to have words with you, you sent a few rifle shots at me,” I remarked, exhibiting the brim of my hat.

Instantly her eyes hardened, and the lips seemed to take on that peculiar, expressionless set.

“You were there at the burning?” and the coppery tint showed once more in her skin, while one hand dropped below the level of the table.

“I was there shortly afterward. I was awakened by the red glow and came to see if I could be of any assistance. In my position one does not sleep within buildings, but out in the open, and at a different place each night. I saw you while you were ... er ... dancing.”

Her hand came up from under the table, and her mouth softened slightly although the coppery tinge deepened.

“And you were shocked to find a girl with hardly any clothes on dancing around the burning building?”

There was something hostile in the tone.

“Miss Bevans, I have lived much. I have hated much, and I have fought much. There are times when rage requires some physical outlet. The more overwhelming the odds, the more necessity for deferred action, the more need there is for physical expression of rage. And then again, it was a ceremonial dance. I have seen it before—once.”

Her hand abruptly came across the table and rested on my own.

“Black Barr, thank you. Thank you for understanding. I am part Indian, and I am proud of it. That was the dance of revenge, and I needed to dance it or go mad. My uncle and I located that homestead. It was ours, our title never questioned, until we sunk a well. Then it appeared that a narrow belt of artesian water ran along the place, down from the canyon. Artesian water is more precious than gold in this country. Immediately both of the big cattle camps claimed that the homestead was within the lines of their survey. They took us into court, hired crooked surveyors, bribed witnesses, and finally, tried to run us out of the country, to burn the place, to obtain possession. My uncle was killed two nights ago, and then they thought they had me, but I stuck it out, put up the best fight I could.

“This afternoon I disposed of the Flying M. The Half Box is another matter. Ed Boswell has built up his land holdings by dirty work. He is a land grabber, a ranch pirate, and he knows no mercy. He keeps himself surrounded by gunfighters. Let a man get a reputation for being a killer, and immediately Ed Boswell hears of it, searches him out, gives him a bonus to come to work for the Half Box.”

The curtain was thrust back and Wing Lee began to deposit platters containing such viands as I hardly believed could exist in this remote section. He had evidently been cooking all afternoon.

The girl rewarded him with a swift smile. I said nothing, realizing that I was merely an incidental guest.

“Wing Lee has been a jewel,” she said. “He was our cook at one time, and he has the loyalty of the Chinese, a loyalty that cannot be purchased or destroyed.”

I nodded.

“To return to the subject,” I said as soon as Wing Lee’s shuffling footsteps had receded down the rough board hallway. “I saw you cutting cards this afternoon, but I didn’t see you after that.”

She looked at me steadily.

“I went to Ed Boswell with the same proposition,” she said. “That homestead was all we had. I cannot carry on litigation for it. I haven’t the money.”

“And you wanted it that bad!” I exclaimed incredulously.

“Certainly not!” she snapped, her eyes blazing into mine. “What do you think I am?” And then, her fury subsiding, she went on. “Pardon me, I forgot that you could not know. My uncle and I owned each a half interest. My own interest I care nothing about, but there was a girl, a child of my uncle’s who is East in school. She is a helpless, lovable little kitten, impractical—perhaps weak. The homestead has been paying a good income, and will pay much more now that the water has been discovered. I am fighting for that girl. To have her income stopped will mean ... well it will mean much to her. She is easily influenced.”

I thought for a moment.

“And did you cut cards with Ed Boswell?” I asked.

Her mouth set again. “He said there was no use gambling for the possession of that which providence had already given to him.”

“Meaning the ranch?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Meaning me.”

“What!”

She nodded and dropped her eyes. “He ordered his men to see that I did not leave the ranch, shut me in a room, sought to hold me a prisoner, to have myself as well as the homestead.... They forgot to search me. One of the guards I shot—not seriously, unfortunately. They tried to recapture me, but my horse was fast.”

I sought her gaze.

“Suppose you had lost in that card cutting?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Either man would have given me enough to keep the girl in school. You don’t understand. I am desperate. Our house has been destroyed, our barn, our hay. Our stock has been run off. I’m out of possession of the property, and have no money to pay the lawyers—and I am fighting unlimited capital.”

There was nothing in her tone which suggested a plea for sympathy. Merely she reported facts.

“And can I be of some assistance?” I asked, more to see what her reply would be than otherwise. My own mind was already made up. From what I had seen and heard of some of the actors in this land piracy, Fate was, indeed, tired of many of the residents of Caliente Valley.

She shook her head emphatically. “I have nothing to offer by way of pay, and I would not neither ask for, nor accept your aid otherwise. Now let’s talk of something else; one would think that mine were the only troubles in the world.”

With that she commenced to talk of books, seeking with almost childish eagerness to learn what I knew of them. As it happens, books are my one source of recreation, one friend that I can confide in and take with me. In my saddlebag I always have one or more books, sent me by mail, carried with me to read on the long trails, about my camp fires on the desert. An education is at once a privilege and a curse. I, too, have been through the best of the Eastern colleges, and my mind cannot remain inactive, cannot hibernate within a shell. On my travels I must have something with which to occupy my mind.

For an hour the girl talked, and in her eagerness actually forgot her troubles. It was not until she mentioned the wonderful collection of books in her library that her eyes suddenly clouded and her mouth took on that woodenish, expressionless look—and then I knew that her library had been destroyed in the fire.

She had been eating as she talked, and Wing Lee’s face beamed approval as he brought in a dessert.

“Thing be allee light now,” he said, confidently; and, even as he spoke, my ears caught the stealthy creak of footsteps along the floor behind him.

I was on my feet, my hands ready to drop to my guns by the time the huge figure hulked in the doorway. It was the heavy-set man with the seamed face and cunning eyes, and there was an oily smirk upon his evil countenance.

“Yuh craved some action with the card cuttin’ out at the ranch, Miss Bevans, an’ the boss has decided to give it to yuh. He’s squeezed himself into a buckboard, an’ come in. He’ll meet yuh at the Green Leaf.”

I held no love for Bob Carstairs, and I felt that I would have something to say to him shortly, so I advanced slightly, getting my eyes where he could not avoid them. A shapely hand pressed my arm, however, and the words which were on my lips never came.

“Never mind, Mr. Barr. It is the best way after all. I will get it over with, one way or another. Let’s go.”

And, hearing those words, Bob Carstairs stood not upon the order of his departure, but shambled swiftly and awkwardly out of the place, like a great bear shuffling down the side of a mountain. It was that very haste, that cunning leer of his face which gave me concern, but there was no chance to talk to the girl. She was tripping out of the room with the lithe grace of a panther. I followed.

Without, there could be discerned the vague form of a buckboard, illuminated by the light of the stars and the reddish gleam which came from the window of the restaurant. Within the buckboard, pressing it down until the springs seemed entirely flattened, the huge bulk that sat in the driver’s seat leered out at us with oily triumph. Ed Boswell seemed even fatter than when I had seen him at the ranch. His hairy hands held the reins; his great weight careened the buckboard well to one side, and his greasy countenance essayed a lardy smile as he chirped to the horses and started slowly toward the Green Leaf, one of the popular gambling halls of the little place.

On either side was his bodyguard, splendidly mounted on spirited horses. Their hands fluttered about the butts of their guns, and their eyes were ever on me. Half a block behind, there bulked the dark forms of many horsemen. It had all the earmarks of a fight, and I swung to the saddle of my black and followed down to the Green Leaf with the corners of my mouth commencing to twitch with nervous rage.

Somehow word seemed to have reached the gambling place of the event that was to take place, for men were gathered on either side of the door, forming a living lane down which the principal actors in the drama went their way.

The girl stepped quickly, gracefully, with impassive face, dainty ankles and easy carriage. Five men helped the huge bulk of Ed Boswell, owner of the Half Box, from the buckboard, and he wheezed and waddled into the room, his face wreathed with exultation. Bob Carstairs shambled along behind, seeming almost dwarfed behind the huge carcass of his master.

Then the others hung slightly back, and I was the next to enter the room, my guns swinging, and my eyes continually watching the gunmen who escorted me on either side, the bodyguard of Ed Boswell, paid killers, who had been instructed as to their duties, and there could be but little doubt as to what those instructions had been. They never took their eyes from my hands, or their own hands from their guns. They were watching, waiting.

The girl and Boswell sat at a vacant card table, and Boswell’s thick, puffy fingers shuffled a deck of cards, while his eyes rested hungrily on the girl’s face. At one side there reposed a long, legal-looking document.

“Here’s the cards, and here’s a quitclaim deed to the homestead,” he wheezed, his eyes fixed intently upon the girl. “We cut the cards. If I’m low you take the deed. If I’m high I take you.”

The girl nodded, her face coppery in its impassivity, her eyes fixed on the fat hands that shuffled the cards.

I could not see more. I dared not let these paid killers get at my back, and it was necessary for me to work back against the wall. Here I stood on a chair and could catch glimpses of the tables, the cards, the faces of the two players. Before me, their eyes continually upon me, watching every motion, were the two killers, and several of the cowpunchers loitered about in significant attitudes, their hands on their guns, their eyes and attention only half occupied by the action at the table. They outnumbered me fifteen to one, and they were ready for me.

The oily, hairy hands fumbled with the cards, picking one from the very top of the deck. It was the ten of clubs.

A tense sigh ran around that room like a breath of wind rustling through dry sage; and then the slender arm of the girl came into view. Her well-formed fingers spread out the other cards in the deck and picked one from well toward the bottom.

She pulled the card back, away from the deck, face down, and hesitated a moment before she turned it.

“If it is lower than the ten you get me. If it is higher I get the deed,” she said, as though she feared some trickery.

Boswell wrinkled his fat neck in what was meant for a nod, but his eyes never left the girl’s face.

There was something uncanny about the power of the man. It was his eyes that gave the impression. They were as steady as a rock, as keen as an eagle’s, as remorseless as a cat’s, and they surmounted great puffs of baggy flesh which seemed somehow out of place beneath the piercing immobility of those steady eyes.

The girl slowly flipped the card—A nine of diamonds!

Instantly there became apparent a swift tension about the room. Men seemed frozen into rigid suspense. Only at the back of the table was there a commotion. A commotion where a yellow face with beady, glittering eyes swirled through a sea of faces.

It was the voice of the girl, calm, steady, self-contained which stopped him, which held me.

“Wing Lee, stop!” she commanded. “You and Barr will both remain quiet. I have gambled and I have lost.”

I thrilled to think that she had mentioned my name, that she had known me well enough, even in the brief time of our acquaintance, to be sure that I stood ready to help her, to back whatever play she might make.

But she would have none of it.

“I have lost, and I will pay,” she repeated, standing as a queen might stand. “If I am not given a chance to pay my honest debt, if you seek to thwart me, I will kill myself. Rather death than the feeling that I gambled in a one-sided game where I might win but could not lose.”

She meant it, this girl who had descended from the most ancient race in America. In her veins flowed the blood of proud chieftans, men who had unflinchingly stood at the stake and watched burning splinters of pine eat into their bleeding flesh. Not one whimper would ever escape her. She had staked her all on a cut of the cards and had lost—and she would play the game.

Swiftly, she made for the door, climbed into the buckboard and called to Boswell. “I am ready. Hurry!”

He could not hurry, but he appreciated the danger of the moment, knew the necessity for getting away with his prize, and he did the best he could. The floor bent and sagged beneath the great weight of the man as his fat legs took short steps, his weight balanced by an arm on the shoulder of a cowpuncher who stood on either side.

All of the time the killers stood, watching me, tense, ready; and my hand was stayed, stayed by the words of the girl.

There came a great commotion from without, the creaking of springs, the grunts of laboring men, and Ed Boswell was in the buckboard with his prize. There came the sound of a spoken command to the horses, the rattle of wheels, and they drove off into the night, escorted by a half-circle of cowpunchers, an armed guard that protected the rear.

I sighed, got down from my chair and walked past the two killers who still watched me, walked to the card table, and reached for the deck of cards that still remained scattered over the green cloth, all but two of the cards face down, the winning ten and the fatal nine showing with faces up.

“Don’t touch those cards.”

The words were those of Bob Carstairs, and there was a certain tension in his tone which convinced me he had remained behind for a purpose—probably to pick a fight with me, a fight in which his two killers could effectively dispose of me. Very well, it would be a showdown.

I straightened, my hands dropping, my mouth commencing to writhe and twist in its deadly smile.

“And why not?”

“Boswell wants ’em. He told me to bring them out to the ranch. He wants ’em for a souvenir.”

“Tell Ed Boswell that I also desired them as a souvenir, and that I got them,” I said, and again reached for the pack, but this time I reached with my left hand. My right remained near my holster.

There was a tense silence, a moment of hesitating uncertainty. The killers flickered their eyes anxiously at Bob Carstairs, waiting for orders, and Bob Carstairs flecked his lips with his tongue, and refrained from giving the signal that would have turned the gambling room into a shambles.

It is not often that I am surprised, but this was one of the times. I had confidently expected that the men would start shooting as I reached for the cards. I knew that Ed Boswell had left his bodyguard of killers behind for but one purpose, to finish me. Why then didn’t they do it? Why overlook such an opportunity?

I could not reason out the answer, but put the deck of cards in my coat pocket, and backed to the crude bar which ran the length of the room on one side, my hands still ready, mouth still twitching.

Slowly, a bit at a time, by imperceptible degrees, the tension relaxed. Spectators left their places along the walls to advance cautiously toward the center of the room. A cowpuncher ordered a drink. Somewhere a chair scraped. There came the rattle of chips, and a poker game started, slowly, stiffly at first, but gradually getting more into the swing of accustomed usage.

Carstairs and his killers still remained in the room, gravitating toward each other, getting sufficiently close so that the gunmen could hear the whisper which came from Carstairs’s lips. I could see the thick lips move, but could not catch the words, even though I knew their import. Those words were my death warrant, some instructions which would have to do with concerted action, with a swift rush for guns when I was off my guard.... Bah! The man was obvious, as transparent as a window pane, and yet—why did he not do something? Why had he let me get that deck of cards? Why had he not started to shoot it out when I had one hand busy gathering up the pasteboards?

Half an hour passed, a tense half hour while the killers watched and I waited. Perhaps it was their intention to wait until all of the witnesses would have their eyes elsewhere; perhaps they were seeking to have me relax, to catch me off my guard. Perhaps, after all, they had been instructed not to start things, but merely to watch and make sure I did not follow the buckboard.

And then, suddenly, a suspicion crossed my mind. Were they afraid to shoot while I was gathering those cards because they dared not let the spectators see those cards? If I were shot, or if I killed them, either way, there would be a rush of spectators and the cards would be still on the table. Mentally, I kicked myself for not having thought of it sooner.

That would answer everything. It would even explain their present inactivity. They were afraid to pick a fight, to kill me, knowing that the deck of cards would be found on my body.

I kept my eyes on them, dropped one hand to my coat pocket, took out the cards, and riffled through the corners of the deck while the pack was still half in my coat.

I should have known. Fat Ed Boswell gambled only with certainties, took no chances. The deck was a phony one. There was only one high card in it, the ten. The rest of the cards were nines, eights, sevens, sixes, on down to deuces. The girl had walked into a trap. In the tension of that moment no one had thought of the cards. The demeanor of the actors of the drama, the momentous possibilities of the occasion had engrossed the attention of every one. Boswell had managed to keep his high card on the top of the deck throughout his shuffle, and the girl had stood no chance.

Cold rage flowed through my veins, and my mouth felt like a snake crawling over my face. Bob Carstairs’s horrified eyes read the expression rightly, knew that I had peeked at the deck, had solved the mystery of the cut cards.

He coughed, a wheezy, spasmodic cough—and that cough was a signal.

They were quick, those gunmen, but I had little attention for them. My own moves had already been planned. They swept into action with absolute unison, the swift rhythm which is the criterion of gunfighters the West over, but they were too slow. In the first place I had read decision in the eyes of Bob Carstairs even before the sound of that cough had penetrated to the consciousness of the killers.

My guns were coming from their holsters before the first sputter of that cough had emanated from the thick lips of the plotter, and my shots went, not for the paid gunmen, but for the lights.

There were two lanterns, burning with a filament, and they were placed on either wall. My first two bullets made dead center shots and plunged the place in total darkness; but even as I pulled the triggers I could see the guns of the killers coming out, could see even Bob Carstairs himself tugging at a gun which he carried in a holster, back of his fat hip. He was unbelievably awkward as he sought to twist his huge body about and get at that weapon.

However, I had no time to waste on revenge. Somewhere in the night the proud girl had gone forth to ally herself to the slimy beast who had tricked her into submission. My first work was to be done there, and I must escape from that gambling hall, from the watchful eyes of the two guards if I were going to be of any assistance to the girl.

With the darkness came the flashing of guns, the crash of bullets, the acrid fumes of powder, nor was I at any pains this time not to return the fire. I shot at the flashes as well as I was able, kept my guns blazing so that the innocent bystanders would fall back, hug the floor and keep out of my way.

I gained the welcome freshness of the star-studded night, vaulted into the saddle of my snorting black, and reloaded my guns as I galloped away into the darkness, following the trail to the Half Box ranch.

Behind me came a thundering mass of horseflesh, a jumble of pursuing men. I could hear hoarse shouts, curses, the rattle of pistols, the whizzing of bullets.

I bent low and spoke to the black. We would be at the ranch well in advance of those who pursued. The black had never failed me, nor would he now. I could feel the bunching of his muscles beneath the creaking saddle, the snap of his stride, the ripple of smooth action, and the desert beneath me swept past in a white blur.

I wasted no time firing at my pursuers, but helped my horse by sitting low, quietly, balanced in the saddle. At high speed the faintest suggestion of motion of the rider will throw the horse out of balance just enough to interfere slightly with his stride, and I was measuring my plan for future activity in seconds, in fractions of seconds.

Slowly, I drew away from my pursuers. The firing behind me ceased, and there was no sound to reach my ears save the drumming of the hoofs of the black as he thundered his way across the floor of the elevated valley. Ahead there flickered a faint light—a light which showed redly for a minute and then was gone. Again it showed, then glowed steadily, becoming momentarily brighter. Other lights appeared—the Half Box outfit.

I checked the horse I was riding, checked him to a trot, a swift, silent walk, led him from the main trail to the shelter of a barn, left him in the dark shadows, the reins twisted over the horn of the saddle. He understood, this black horse, and he would wait there for my whistle, and then come to me.

Perhaps it was instinct which led me to the dark window at the rear of the ranch-house, perhaps it was sheer luck. It might have been either.

I slipped through the dark oblong, into the musty mystery of a strange room. The house seemed strangely silent, a silence which suddenly savored of a trap, a trap which was baited, set, ready to spring. My hands dropped to my sides, ready to jerk out my guns, and I stood, poised, tense, balanced on the balls of my feet, waiting.

Still there was no sound. The velvety blackness of the house seemed something tangible, a cloak that could be touched, that closed in upon me, oppressive, heavy, stifling. There was none of those faint creaks which come to deserted houses at night, none of those settling noises which, while at first startling the senses, nevertheless lend a comforting feeling of physical contact with the walls and floors.

I tiptoed across the room, toward the faintest possible thread of light which seemed to indicate a door. My hand groped along the wall, the rasping of the fingertips seeming magnified a thousand-fold, and then my fingers closed on the knob of the door.

From without came the sound of galloping hoofs. There was a shout, a welcoming hail, a medley of excited questions and answers, and then the rhythmic pulsations of the thundering hoofbeats of running horses broke up into a series of irregular ruddy-tud-thuds as horses were drawn up and riders leapt to the ground. There was no time to be lost if I would be of any service to the girl, and I threw open the door.

A surprise awaited me. My senses had not been in error after all. That intuitive warning which had mentioned a trap to my unheeding mind had been no idle worry of strained nerves. They were waiting for me, and there was a smile upon the flabby lips of Ed Boswell as he looked at the door, his eyes gleaming as cold and compassionless as ever, his hands folded in his lap, the flesh billowing in greasy folds over his immobile face. On either side of him stood his bodyguard, and their hands were on their guns, their eyes also on the door.

They had left that window open as a trap, and I had walked into it.

Mattie Bevans stood to one side, her hand at her breast, her eyes wide, but there was none of the helpless doll about her. Her lips were firm, her chin up in the air and her eyes steady.

“Ah, yes, Black Barr, himself,” piped Boswell. “You have just broken and entered, and I shall be compelled to turn you over to the authorities for imprisonment. I thought that perhaps you would take advantage of that open window. It leads directly into the outer room of my study, you see. And, of course, I would not want any visitor to call and find me remiss in my duties as host.”

In a strained, detached, impersonal tone, the girl spoke to me.

“Mr. Barr, you apparently do not understand that I have made a choice of my own free will. You have mentioned Fate. Surely Fate has willed that I should solve my problems in this way—and I have given my word to Mr. Boswell.”

I noticed then that the big man was fingering the quitclaim deed, that he had taken it from his pocket and was twirling it in his fingers. It was as though he tried to impress upon the girl that she had gambled, that she had cut cards with Fate, and that she had lost.

I had need of my hands near my guns at that moment, but I risked a bullet to make a spectacular play. My hand pulled the cards from my pocket and spread them, face upward, on the table.

“Perhaps before you question the wisdom of Fate you should see just how far her decision had been anticipated,” I said, shortly. “This is the deck which Boswell shuffled and gave you to cut.”

Her eyes looked at the cards, and the coppery tinge of her cheeks became more pronounced. Her face remained firm, calm, expressionless, but her eyes seemed to be covered with a film of black fire. Quick as a panther, as accurately as a hawk, she swooped forward, and her hand darted toward the bosom of her dress.

As though the motion had been a signal, the guards stiffened, and, at that moment, there came the sounds of heavy feet on the wooden porch, a clamoring of many voices as the front door swung open.

They started for their guns at the same time, those guards. They had caught, and correctly interpreted, the twisting, writhing smile which distorted my features.

They were quick, these men, but not quick enough. My hands seemed literally to fly through the air, and I could feel the jarring recoil of my heavy weapons even before I fully realized that my wrists had jerked the muzzles free from the holsters. In my draw I never pause for aim, never seek to raise my arms. My hands drop to my guns, and I am pulling back the hammers even as I pull the guns. The trigger is held against the guard, and such aiming as I do is done in that infinitesimal, split fraction of a heartbeat during which the hammer is descending upon the firing cap of the shell. It is merely a flip of the wrist.

Four guns thundered, and to the ears of the uninitiated it would have seemed that they roared their messages of death in unison; but the two killers were dead when they fired. Two bullets had torn their black hearts asunder, and they were falling as they discharged their weapons. The girl, swift though she had been, still had her hand groping in the bosom of her dress. The action she had seen had been the action of trained men, killers against a killer, the pick of the Border ruffians against one who had need of his skill for others besides himself.

And then there came a shout from the hallway.

The door stood open behind me, that door through which I had made my way, and back of which I knew was an open window leading into the night.

I had no time to enjoy the expression of utter incredulity which pushed its way to the surface of Ed Boswell’s face, fighting upward through the folds of fat as a swimmer fights to the surface; had no time even to estimate the strength of the force at the door. It was a time for action, and quick action at that. I swept Mattie Bevans back into the darkness of that room and slammed the door, nor was I a second too soon.

The warm, velvety darkness of the room closed about us, and then the silence of the night was shattered by a burst of firing. Light trickled into the room through jagged, splintered holes which appeared in the door as by some magic.

Nor did I need to explain matters to the girl. She rushed for the oblong of darkness which marked the star-studded location of the open window as direct as though she had been a homing pigeon seeking the air. Together we went through the opening, seemingly almost at the same instant, so close was I upon her heels. Behind us came the pack. The door banged open, and there sounded the shouts of men, the rattle of pistols, the foul-mouthed curses of ruffians who saw their prey escaping; and, through the open door, in that brief instant while I looked back, I could catch a glimpse of Ed Boswell, sitting in that chair, held in one position by the great billows of flesh which enveloped him, motionless by his very weight, almost helpless, incapable of quick action.

Only for a second was the sight burnt in on my vision, and then I had jerked my head down and to one side, and the darkness above was punctuated by ruddy spurts of stabbing flame.

We made the corner of the porch, and the girl would have made a run for it through the darkness, straight for the open, but I held her back. There was no time for words, nor would I have wasted them on her. Ed Boswell had held a quitclaim deed in his hairy, oily hand when the action started, and I did not propose that he be left with it.

And, even at that, it was the best move. Twenty cowpunchers were on my trail, were determined on having my life, and to rush out into the open would have been to give them a certain, unbeatable advantage. By rushing around the corner of the house, half doubling on our tracks, we were able to baffle them, to start them running in several directions, calling out in their confusion.

The girl was dressed in a dark suit, and never have I had occasion to be more thankful for the dark garments which I habitually wear. There was nothing to give them a clue, no fluttering, filmy veil to wave at them as we rounded the corner, no billowy skirts to have revealed a flash of white petticoat. Dark, silent, swift, we skirted the corner of the house, my hand holding the arm of the girl in an iron grip.

Another spurt and another corner. The front steps loomed before us, and they were deserted. All of the cowpunchers, like so many banded sheep, had stampeded through the front door at the sound of the firing, had gone into the room from which we had made our escape, had stumbled over each other in making for the window.

To the surprise of the girl, I guided her up those steps and into the house we had so lately quitted. Breathless, hurried, but determined, we thrust our way into the study, and paused before the figure which hulked in the chair.

On either side there lay the killers, the paid bodyguard who had escorted the big man wherever he went, who had worked in shifts, two on and two off. Two of the killers had accompanied him to town and been left behind to account for me; these two had remained, to watch their master when he returned with his prize, and these two had paid the penalty for their part in the affair. They sprawled in the awkward postures of men who have met death suddenly and unexpectedly.

Ed Boswell hulked in his chair, absolutely immobile, his eyes wide and staring straight ahead, his hands resting on his lap.

“The deed!” I ordered, turning one of my guns toward his fat stomach.

He neither moved nor answered, but sat rigid, ignoring my presence and my summons, his putty-like face a sickly hue, his lips slightly blued, his eyes seemingly somewhat filmed, but steady.

And then something caught my attention. It was a trickle of red, and it drew my eye at the same time my forehead puckered in bewilderment over his strange calm, his placid self-possession.

I bent forward and looked again. The handle of a knife protruded from his chest, over the heart, and the handle was almost buried in the sagging folds of fat. A long knife it was, and it had penetrated neatly and cleanly at the first thrust. The man was stone dead.

I glanced at his hands, and his hands were empty.

And then I caught a quick sound, a gasping of breath, a slight wheezing sigh.

Bob Carstairs stood in the doorway, his face mottled, his eyes protruding, his chest heaving, and his hands resting on the guns at his side. Beside him, and slightly to one side, were the two killers who had escorted Ed Boswell to town, who had remained behind at the gambling hall. Their faces were working and twisting with the excitement of the moment, in an effort to lend speed to their flying hands.

But I was ready. My own guns were out. They would have drawn and fired without compunction while I had my back to them, but now that I had seen them, now that the laboring lungs of Bob Carstairs had given me a warning, they hesitated.

Bob Carstairs squirmed slightly, his face paling, the big bulk shifting to one foot then the other, his hands working, ever nearer to his guns, indecision in his eyes, fear in his heart, and treachery in his mind. He would mask the moves of the two men behind him with the bulk of his body, would throw himself to one side at the proper time and leave me to face the blazing guns of the other killers.

And he did just that, but his body moved slowly, clumsily. The guns of the killers blazed, but mine as well, and I have noticed that it is hard for men to shoot straight when they are face to face with a man who is known for straight, cool shooting.

Their craven natures told. Nights of carousal, days of indolent laziness, years of dissipation, all had left their marks in a nervous system which could not properly co-ordinate at the critical time, in spirits which lacked the moral courage to go down into the valley of the shadow in equal combat.

One bullet hit me in the flesh of the arm, one tore through my coat, but my own bullets crashed forth with deadly accuracy.

Ten seconds later and we were in the yard. A whistle and my black was with me, and I speedily located another horse. The pursuing cowpunchers had rushed to the scene of the latest burst of firing, and there was something in what they saw there which gave them a check. Ed Boswell was dead. The four killers whom he had kept in his service as a bodyguard, as hired murderers, reputed to be the swiftest and most accurate shots on the Border, had been sprawled face down upon the floor. Bob Carstairs was lying on his back, his glazed eyes staring upward in startled incredulity, his black heart stilled forever, and, out in the darkness, Black Barr waited with loaded guns. It was not a situation which made these hired land-grabbers feel any too enthusiastic about pursuit. They hesitated, held back, leaderless, each waiting for the other, and each questioning in his own mind whether there remained any incentive for him to risk his life against the death which lurked in the darkness.

Oh, yes, they came, but it was a half-hearted pursuit, and the scattering volleys which rattled forth upon the still night air were more for the sake of keeping up their own spirits than for the purpose of actually accomplishing any damage.

By common consent we swung in a great half circle, headed toward the homestead. We were cleaning things up, paying off old scores, righting wrongs, and I wanted the girl to have possession of that homestead.

To myself I was grateful for the trace of Indian blood in the girl. She rode proudly, swiftly, with none of the hysterical thanks or babbling comment which might have characterized another girl.

And so we rode, stirrup to stirrup, the floor of the valley slipping beneath the hoofs of our mounts, the sand and gravel rattling on the sage and cacti, while the pursuit dropped behind, and, finally, turned back.

Out in the darkness there gleamed a flickering light. Even as we watched, the light took on new body and a tongue of flame licked greedily upward against the dark background of silhouetted hills. It was the camp fire of the watchers who guarded the homestead, seeking to retain possession at all costs.

“You will stay back here until I call,” I told the girl, the first words I had spoken since leaving the Half Box outfit.

Her face was a white blur in the starlight, and I could not see the expression, but I could and did see the sudden uptilting of the chin, the set of the shoulders. She swung her horse even closer and came on, running stride for stride, her stirrup leather actually touching mine at times. Useless to argue with such a girl. The veneer of civilization had given to her merely a feeling of independence, a will to do as she wished, a sex emancipation. At heart she was a savage.

Together we pounded up to the barbed wire barrier which had been erected. There were shadowy forms to receive us, men rolling out of blankets at a whispered summons, the watchers who had been doing sentry duty, tending the fire.

From the confidence of the man who came forward to meet us, I was satisfied that riflemen were concealed in the darkness, ready to shoot us down at the first sign of trouble. I wasted no time.

“I am Black Barr, and I have with me the owner of this homestead. I want possession.”

The very crispness of the message puzzled the man for a moment. He parried for time.

“You’ll have to see Ed Boswell. We’re taking our orders from him.”

“I have seen Ed Boswell,” I said slowly, evenly.

“What did he say?” asked the guard.

“He is dead,” I retorted gravely.

From the darkness there came a slight stirring, no motion which could be sensed, but a vague feeling of psychic unrest as when invisible men shift their positions uncomfortably, peer doubtfully at each other.

I gathered that the force had been somewhat reduced to take part in the visit to the card-room at the Green Leaf. The very fact of my presence there with the girl at my side told them much. They were rapidly losing heart.

“You’ll have to see Bob Carstairs, then.”

I kept my tone low, steady, deadly. “I have seen Bob Carstairs.”

There was a pause while I could hear a rasping in the other’s throat as he swallowed, gulped, sought to keep his voice steady.

“What did he say?”

“He is dead.”

The man fidgeted, mumbled something about “seeing the boys,” and stepped slightly to one side.

It was a time for action, for complete assurance, a chance to dominate the situation by sheer force of personality. I swung from my horse with calm, deliberate manner, and approached the barrier. “Where’s the gate in this thing?” I asked.

“Ov—over this way,” said the watcher, and himself pulled back the twisted wire gate.

I entered, and the girl was at my heels. The man fell back, undecided. I knew the type, recognized the symptoms. I would have no trouble with him. He was licked. It was those men who were scattered through the darkness who worried me.

“Here, you fellows, come on up here to the fire,” I said.

There was a silence, and then suddenly, that silence was broken by a metallic double click—the cocking of a rifle.

My ears are acutely sensitive, and I recognized the sound at once. It was the crucial moment. If the men yielded to my order they would leave the property, never to return. If I should allow them to hesitate, permit them to start a fight, my doom was sealed. They outnumbered me, and they were invisible in the darkness.

“Stick ’em up, Barr,” came a rasping voice.

I had been prepared for that voice. The double click had warned me, had given me the direction of the danger, had enabled me to brace my muscles so that the smooth ripple of motion which jerked out my gun, which sent a shot crashing into the darkness, was no mere chance. I had deliberately planned my move. The hand that drew the gun had been on the side away from the fire. The eyes of the man in the darkness, looking toward the glow of the flame, could not have seen the motion. The bullet was sent toward the location of the speaker. Shooting always by the feel of the gun, never by an alignment of the sights, I had acquired an accuracy which was as deadly in the dark as in the daylight.

With the shot came a scream.

“Don’t shoot!”

A man arose to his feet, clutching a dangling arm which was bleeding at the shoulder. All about me, from the darkness, men came to the fire, hands uplifted.

“Get your things together and start, and don’t come back,” I said. “The next man who sets foot on this ground will have to account to Black Barr.”

In silence they gathered their things, saddled their picketed stock, and filed through the gate in the barrier. The man in the lead broke into a gallop, and soon the men were headed in a mad, panic-stricken race for the ranch-house of the Half Box. They were not fighters, merely Border toughs, and they were yellow, clean through.

“And do we stay here?” asked the girl.

I shook my head. “We have taken possession, ejected the guards, and you will have no more trouble. Had they headed toward town we would have stayed, but they went to the ranch. What they will find there will convince them that they are finished. Hired killers do not fight when their pay has ceased. Cowards cease to obey orders which are given by dead lips.”

She nodded.

Together again we trotted toward town.

There was a light in the restaurant of Wing Lee. I had hoped it would be there. Probably the girl would collapse when she could let down from the nervous strain under which she labored. The Chinaman had been a family servant, and there is a loyalty in the Chinese race which knows no bounds.

Wing Lee, himself, came to the door.

And then came a surprise. Both the Chinaman and the girl turned to me with a series of swift, efficient motions. The patch of light from the door had revealed my blood-soaked sleeve, the wound which had been slowly welling blood during my long ride.

While the girl applied hot water and bandages the Chinaman brought forth certain native lotions, evil-smelling, pungent, contained in red-labeled bottles of thick glass, bottles which were three inches high, an inch wide and contained but a score of drops when filled.

“You big killum,” announced Wing Lee when the arm had been bandaged and he was serving tea to the girl and myself.

I said nothing. Evidently he knew something, this Chink.

The girl’s eyes looked me over, and there was something of a caress in her look. To my surprise I found that I understood her better through silence than I had been able to understand many other women through words. Between us there was some tangible bond of psychic affinity which, though invisible, linked us together in a common bond. I could feel it, struggle against it as I might. I am Black Barr, the killer, and the love of a good woman is not for me. Had the girl spoken I would have been rude, have shattered her faith in me, but she did not speak, merely penetrated the inner silences of my soul.

And then the Chinaman broke into his weird chant, a wild, ululating hymn of pagan hate.

“You heap killum!” he said at length, ceasing his music, his beady eyes glowing like polished ebony.

I endeavored to explain to him and to the girl at the same time. “I am the executioner of Fate, Wing Lee. I go ridum my horse. Maybe Fate gettum tired somebody. She send me. Man he fight me. I killum, then go ’way.”

He looked at me without nodding, and I noticed that there was a flicker of red in the whites of his eyes.

“You allee samee execlutioner for Fate,” he singsonged, “I allee samee deputy for devil,” and, with that, his hand plunged into his sleeve and drew out—a long, legal-looking document. It was the quitclaim deed for the homestead, properly signed and acknowledged by Ed Boswell. In the upper corner was a spatter or two of blood.

Gravely I bowed to the devil worshipper and passed the document to the girl.

She took it in dignified silence. It was almost as though the delivery of the deed was a part of some strange ceremonial rite. And well it might be. The Devil’s Deputy and the Executioner of Fate had united to right a wrong—and the deed vested a complete record title.