I quarreled with 'em an' we-all
split up company. Tha's the way of it."

"You're ce'tainly in bad luck then," the boy shouted back tauntingly.
"For I aim to stomp you out like I would a copperhead." Very distinctly
he added his explanation. "I'm 'Lindy Clanton's brother."

Roush begged for his life. He groveled in the dust. He promised to
reform, to leave the country, to do anything that was asked of him.

"Go ahead. It's meat an' drink to me to hear a Roush whine. I got all day
to this job, but I aim to do it thorough," jeered Clanton.

A bullet flattened itself against the rock wall ten feet below the boy.
In despair the man was shooting wildly with his revolver. He knew there
was no use in pleading, that his day of judgment had come.

Young Clanton laughed in mockery. "Try again, Roush. You ain't quite got
the range."

The man made a bolt for the bend in the canon a hundred yards away.
Instantly the rifle leaped to the shoulder of the boy.

"Right in front of you, Roush," he prophesied.

The bullet kicked up the dust at the feet of the running man. The nerve
of Roush failed him and he took cover again behind a scrub live-oak. A
memory had flashed to him of the day when he had seen a thirteen-year-old
boy named Jim Clanton win a turkey shoot against the best marksmen of
the hill country.

The army Colt spit out once more at the boy on the ledge. Before the echo
had died away the boom of an explosion filled the canon. Roush pitched
forward on his face.

Jim Clanton lowered his rifle with an exclamation. His face was a picture
of amazement. Some one had stolen his vengeance from him by a hair's
breadth.

Two men came round the bend on horseback. Behind them rode a girl. She
was mounted on the barebacked pinto of the Indian Clanton had killed
with the shotgun.

The boy clambered down to the bed of the gulch and limped toward them.
The color had ebbed from his lips. At every step a pain shot through his
leg. But in spite of his growing weakness anger blazed in the light-blue
eyes.

"I waited four years to git him. I kept the trail hot from Tucson to
Vegas an' back to Santone. An' now, doggone it, when my finger was on the
trigger an' the coyote as good as dead, you cut in an' shoot the
daylights out of him. By gum, it ain't fair!"

The older man looked at him in astonishment. "But he is only a child,
Polly! Cela me passe!"

"Mebbe I am only a kid," the boy retorted resentfully. "But I reckon I'm
man e