With a sudden curse Nome leaped toward his companion, his face flaming,
his hands clenched to strike--only to look into the shining muzzle of
Steele's revolver, with Steele's cold gray eyes glittering dangerously
behind it.

"Sit down, Nome--right there, under the man you killed!" he commanded.
"Sit down, or by the gods I'll blow your head off where you stand!
There--and I'll sit here, like this, so that the cur's heart within you
is a bull's-eye for this gun. It's M'sieur Janette's turn tonight," he
went on, leaning over the little table, the red spots in his cheeks
growing redder and brighter as Nome cringed before his revolver.
"M'sieur Janette's--and the colonel's; but mostly Janette's. Remember
that, Nome. It's for Janette. I'm not thinking much about Mrs.
Becker--just now."

Steele's breath came quickly and his lips were almost snarling in his
hatred of the man before him.

"It's a lie!" gasped Nome chokingly, his face ashen white. "You lie when
you say I killed--Janette."

The fingers of Steele's pistol hand twitched.

"How I'd like to kill you!" he breathed. "You won his wife, Nome; you
broke his heart--and after that he killed himself. You sent a report
into headquarters that he killed himself by accident. You lied. It was
you who killed him--by taking his wife. I got his skull because I
thought I might need it against you to show that it was a pistol instead
of a rifle that killed him. And this isn't the first man you've sent to