LITMIR.BIZ

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clearly the main mission that drew him here, and as she looked upon his tall figure and the settled determination of his face something like dread took possession. She knew more about San Saba than he did; she knew the ex-foreman's uncanny power with the gun, and she had heard men of the Wyatt outfit discuss his cold and nerveless presence of mind when in a fight. What chance, then, did Tom Gillette have in an open encounter? She wanted to argue it, but she checked the impulse. She had said all she ever would to Tom; anything more would only make the struggle harder for him. This was the code Lorena had been born and bred into. Tom would never turn now.

      He slipped from the stool. "I'll be ridin' up the gulch," said he. "See you to-night."

      Her cherry lips pressed together; he caught a flash from her eyes as he swung out the door. Saddling his horse he left the town and cruised up the slope and through the pines while the sun went westering. The trail took him along the creek, climbing away from it until the water was but a ribbon unwinding below, flashing like silver under the sun. Men toiled down there, men picked at the hillsides, men moved in and out of the drifts they burrowed; and always more men moved through the trees. Pack trains went along the trail bound still farther into the recesses of the Black Hills.

      He studied all this with a shrewd eye; he made note of how watchful and taciturn were those miners he passed on the trail. And presently he turned back from his tour and returned down the grade as the sun dipped beyond the ragged hills. Twilight, then dusk with its blue shadows swirled among the trees. A halloo echoed through the woods like a trumpet. Somewhere was a gunshot. Deadwood's lights winked below. A man passed him on the trail at a gallop, and he became aware of another horseman sitting silent in the saddle, twenty yards off the road. All he saw was the figure welded to the horse and a beard standing around the lighter skin. He thought the man watched him, but of this he wasn't sure. Dropping into the street he stabled his horse and went to the restaurant for supper. As before, Lorena kept aloof from him. But when he was about to leave she came near enough to say:

      "There has been a man watching along the street all afternoon. I saw him directly after you left here. He's been across in the alley looking toward the restaurant and the stable."

      He nodded. She added a quick warning. "Don't meet me at the restaurant to-night. Go on up the trail a quarter mile till I come. Watch yourself, Tom."

      He slipped out. In the next patch of shadow he ducked back into an alley and circled the whole line of buildings, crossing to the far side of the street at one end. Once more he travelled through the cluttered boxes of debris until he stood in the alley approximately opposite the restaurant. A man stood in the mouth of the alley, and presently, as he turned and his face was silhouetted against the light from across the way, Gillette recognized the Kid, the white savage of Hazel's gang. He withdrew quietly and later emerged through another alley to the street, farther along. Here he rolled a cigarette and waited. Was Hazel trying to get him for last night's affair at the camp by the creek? If this happened to be the case, it further complicated an already tangled situation.

      "The hounds are on the trail again," he murmured. His life had been violently turned from its accustomed channel these last few months. Nothing came easy. At Dodge City his youth fell away from him, never to return, and he had been plunged into mystery and deceit and struggle. "Either I'm so soft I notice it too much, or else I was born to fight. Damn Hazel."

      A saloon door opened. Men spewed out, brawling like strange dogs, and there was the spat of fists against flesh. Somebody went sprawling backward and fell into the street; when the door next opened to emit its momentary light a knife flashed in a weaving hand.

      "Stop it or I'll gore yuh!"

      "Put that stabber away, yuh yella dago! Get yore possibles and skin the camp. I'm through prospectin' with yuh!"

      "Gimme my half or I'll write my mark in yore fat skin, Fluger!"

      "Go join Hazel's gang," was the hot retort. "It's yore style."

      A cool, unexpected interjection emerged from another angle of the street. "Better handle that easy, partner. The walls have ears, an' yore apt to lose yores."

      Gillette's muscles tightened at the sound of the voice. He moved backward, face turned toward the voice. A moment later he was on the other side of the street and in the deeper shadows. By and by he made out Hazel. Hazel moved across a lane of light. Gillette drew a deeper breath.

      "The man keeps his promises. Has he got the camp wound around his finger?"

      He travelled on, keeping abreast of Hazel and at intervals catching a sight of the renegade. Then the man dropped completely out of view. The restaurant was abreast Gillette, and he saw the place was dark. Lorena would be about ready to go; he took to the alleys once more, reached the stable, and got his horse. He rode through a path of light and arrived at the trail. Fifty yards farther up he turned in time to see a lantern rise and dip; horses drummed behind him. Out of a growing caution he drew off the trail and rested silent while they swept past and galloped on until the echo of their progress no longer rolled back through the pines. After this he travelled more discreetly, stopped to mark some stray movement near by, and went on again. The night wind rustled through the boughs of the pines, the moon was shrouded, the notes of a banjo carried across the air. He halted, judging it time to wait for the girl.

      But he remained still only a moment. Uneasiness gripped him so strongly that he turned and started toward town. The air was tainted to-night, there was too much traffic on the road and too many noises in the brush. No woman was safe here. The thought of the girl breasting the darkness alone, as well as living in that bleak hut alone, only added to the uneasiness. She was brave. But that wasn't enough. She judged men too leniently. In this melting pot there were always a certain number of human wolves watching.

      "It won't do," he murmured. "I can't let her go on. Reckon I'll have to find some better words or some stronger words."

      The wind seemed to rise and shake the scattered bushes. Shapes sprang from nothing to confront him, and a familiar voice spat through the darkness, metallic and deadly. "Let him have it!"

      It was then too late—too late for him to escape. And, like the unrolling of a panoramic picture, he saw a great many scenes out of his past; foremost was San Saba's evil face studying him across the tip of trail fire. That was San Saba's voice over there. He knew it as he knew no other. Even while his hand dropped and the whole hillside roared to the enfilading bullet he filled his lungs and shouted:

      "San Saba, you dog, I've come to get you!"

      Smoke belched in his face, the crack of the guns was in his ears. San Saba spoke back, but he couldn't hear then what the man said. He was firing—that he knew. How many times he didn't know, never found out. For this was to Gillette one of those blind passages in life when all things merge to a shape or a sound or a single vivid impression. He thought something fell on his head; the sap flowed out of him, and the weight of his gun became too great to manage. The saddle horn grazed his cheek, he was lying flat, both arms around the pony's neck, tasting his own blood. How had he got into such a shape as this? He should be sitting up. And still they fired. San Saba was speaking more clearly.

      "Not me, yo' don't get. I'm puttin' a curse on yo' soul, Gillette. May yo' burn in hell a thousan' years. Empty those guns—empty 'em! He ain't dead yet. I want him dead! Make him fall, knock him outen that saddle! That's the last Gillette yo' trying to kill!"

      He heard all this, though it sounded remote and unreal. There was a trickle of strength in him yet, but life ebbed swiftly, and his strongest desire was to get away—to defeat San Saba's vicious desire to see him stretched dead. All his will went into one arm. The horse moved downhill; he held on, the horn jarring on his temple and his feet losing the stirrups. Confusion behind and more firing. They would never quit, it seemed. Somebody yelled, Deadwood's lights were below him. He sank his teeth into his tongue to stay the advancing paralysis, he talked to himself but heard nothing of the words. One by one the wires went down and cut him off from life. He fell to the ground, rolled over and over, and brought up against a stump.

      He wasn't dead yet, he wasn't out yet. This he thought with a dim pride. Of course the Gillettes were tough. They died hard. Now, where had he been hit? Maybe he could stop

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