als upright, then spring forward in
pursuit. He heard the shouting which, though far away, sounded the
unmistakable accent of ungovernable fury. In the glaring moonlight, he
distinguished plainly the cloud of dust and sand raised by the horses,
which the wind lifted in white shapes against the deep blue of the sky.
And looking beyond his pursuers toward the rude cabin where the
highwaymen had so long held their rendezvous, he knew, because no
animate forms appeared against the horizon, that the Kimball brothers
lay where he had stretched them--one, senseless from the crashing blow
on his head, the other, lifeless from the bullet in his breast.

The little girl and her stepfather had vanished from the smooth open
page of the Texas Panhandle--and Brick Willock rejoiced, with a joy new
to him, that these escaped prisoners had not been pursued. It was
himself that the band meant to subject to their savage vengeance, and
himself alone. The murder of the child was abhorrent to their hearts
which had not attained the hardened insensibility of their leader's
conscience, and they were willing for the supposed spy to escape, since
it spared them the embarrassment of disposing of the little girl.

But Brick Willock had been one of them and he had killed their leader,
and their leader's brother, or at least had brought them to the verge
of death. If Red Kimball revived, he would doubtless right his own
wrongs, should Willock live to be punished. In the meantime, it was
for them to treat with the traitor--this giant of a Texan,
huge-whiskered, slow of speech, who had ever been first to throw
himself into the thick of danger but who had always hung back from
deeds of cruelty. He had plundered coaches and wagon-trains with them,
he had fought with them against strong bodies of emigrants, he had
killed and burned--in the eyes of the world his deeds made him one of
them, and his aspect marked him as the most dangerous of the band. But
they had always felt the difference--and now they meant to kill him not
only because he had overpowered their leader but because of this
difference.

As their bullets pursued him, Willock lay along the body of the
broncho, feeling his steed very small, and himself very large--and yet,
despite the rain of lead, his pleasure over the escape of the child
warmed his heart. The sand was plowed up by his side from the
peppering of bullets--but he seemed to feel that innocent unconscious
arm about his