from his gun. Cursing his sentimental weakness, he lifted Molly into a
canter down the street. Still no signs of awakening behind him or about;
only little Jack Sweeney playing tag with a black-and-tan puppy, the
triumphant cackle of a hen somewhere to the left; but as he neared the end
of the street, where the trail swung into the rocks of the slope, a door
banged far off and a voice was screaming: "Pete! Pete Glass!"

Grey Molly switched her tail nervously at the shout, but Vic was too wise
to let her waste strength hurrying up so sharp a declivity; that dusty roan
whose life he had spared would be spending it prodigally to overtake him
before long and Molly's power must be husbanded. So he kept her at a quick
walk by pressing the calf of one leg into her flank and turned in the
saddle to watch the town sink behind him. Sometime in the vague, stupid
past Marne had jog-trotted down this slope, but now he was a new man with
an eye which saw all things and a gun which could not fail. Figures,
singularly tiny and singularly distinct, swarmed into the street from
nowhere, men on horses, men swinging into saddles; here and there the slant
light of the afternoon twinkled on gun barrels, and ludicrous thin voices
came piping up the hill. As he reached the nether lip of Murphy's Pass a
small cavalcade detached itself from the main mass before Captain
Lorrimer's saloon and swept down the street, first a dusty figure on a
dusty horse, hardly visible; then a spot of red which must be Harry Fisher
on his blood-bay, with a long-striding sorrel beside him that could carry
no one except grim old Sliver Waldron. Behind these rode one with the
light glinting on his silver conchos--Mat Henshaw, the town Beau Brummel--
then the black Guss Reeve, and last of all "Ronicky" Joe on his pinto;
"Ronicky" Joe, handy man at all things, and particularly guns. It showed
how fast Pete Glass could work and how well he knew Alder, for Vic himself
could not have selected five cooler fighters among the villagers or five
finer mounts. The posse switched around the end of the street and darted