A form which he did not recognize rushed up out of the darkness and
confronted the three belligerently. "You're a-disturbin' the peace," he
yelled. "We don't stand for nothing like that in Camas. You're my
prisoners--all uh yuh." The edict seemed to include even the bartender,
peering over the shoulder of Bob Nevin, who struggled with several others
for immediate passage through the doorway.

"I guess not, pardner," retorted Pink, facing him as defiantly as though the
marshal were not twice his size.

The marshal lunged for him; but the Silent One, reaching a long arm from the
door-step, rapped him smartly on the head with his gun. The marshal squawked
and went down in a formless heap.

"Come on, boys," said the Silent One coolly. "I think we'd better go. Your
friend seems to have vanished in thin air."

Rowdy, grumbling mightily over what looked unpleasantly like retreat, was
pushed toward his horse and mounted under protest. Likewise Pink, who was
for staying and cleaning up the whole town. But the Silent One was firm, and
there was that in his manner which compelled obedience.

Harry Conroy might have been an optical--and aural--illusion, for all the
trace there was of him. But when the three rode out into the little street,
a bullet pinged close to Rowdy's left ear, and the red bark of a revolver
spat viciously from a black shadow beside the Come Again.

Rowdy and the two turned and rode back, shooting blindly at the place, but
the shadow yawned silently before them and gave no sign. Then the Silent
One, observing that the marshal was getting upon a pair of very unsteady