too late! The cry was repeated as a nearer slogan of defiance--the
plain shook--there was the tempestuous onset of furious hoofs--a
dozen shots--the scattering of the embers of the camp-fire into a
thousand vanishing sparks even as the lurid gathering of savage
humanity was dispersed and dissipated over the plain, and Gideon
and the prisoner stood alone. But as the sheriff of Contra Costa
with his rescuing posse swept by, the man they had come to save
fell forward in Gideon's arms with a bullet in his breast--the
Parthian shot of the flying Vigilante leader.

The eager crowd that surged around him with outstretched helping
hands would have hustled Gideon aside. But the wounded man roused
himself, and throwing an arm around the young preacher's neck,
warned them back with the other. "Stand back!" he gasped. "He
risked his life for mine! Look at him, boys! Wanted ter stand up
'twixt them hounds and me and draw their fire on himself! Ain't he
just hell?" he stopped; an apologetic smile crossed his lips. "I
clean forgot, pardner; but it's all right. I said I was ready to
go; and I am." His arm slipped from Gideon's neck; he slid to the
ground; he had fainted.

A dark, military-looking man pushed his way through the crowd--the
surgeon, one of the posse, accompanied by a younger man
fastidiously dressed. The former bent over the unconscious
prisoner, and tore open his shirt; the latter followed his
movements with a flush of anxious inquiry in his handsome, careless
face. After a moment's pause the surgeon, without looking up,
answered the young man's mute questioning. "Better send the
sheriff here at once, Jack."