s all; and your pardners the black eye they'd get for
throwing in with you. I heap sabe who was the head push. You got them
in to take whatever dropped, so you could get off slick and clean, just
as you've done before, you--you--"

Buck Olney got it then, hot from the fires of Ward's wrath. A man does
not brood over treachery and wrong and a blackened future for years,
without storing up a good many things that he means to say to the
friend who has played him false. Ward had been a happy-go-lucky young
fellow who had faith in men and in himself and in his future. He had
lived through black, hopeless days and weeks and months, because of
this man who tried now to buy mercy with the faith of his partners.

Ward stood up and let the rope trail forgotten from his hands while he
told Buck Olney all the things he had brooded over in bitterness. He
had meant to keep it all down, but it was another instance of bottled
emotions, and Buck, with his offer of a fresh bit of treachery, had
pulled the cork. Ward trembled a little while he talked, and his face
grew paler and paler as he dug deep into the blackest part of the past,
until when he finished he was a tanned white. He was shaking at the
last; shaking so that he staggered to the tree and leaned against it
weakly, while he fumbled for tobacco and papers.

In the saddle Buck sat all hunched together as if Ward had lashed him
with rawhide instead of with stinging words. The muscles of his face
twitched spasmodically. His eyes were growing bloodshot.

Ward spilled two papers of tobacco before he got a cigarette rolled and
lighted. He wondered a little at the physical reaction from his
outburst, but he wondered more at Buck Olney sitting alive and unhurt
on the horse before him--a Seabeck horse which Ward had seen Floyd
Carson riding once or twice. He wondered what Floyd would do if he saw
Buck now and the use to which the horse was being put.

Ward finished the cigarette, rolled another, and smoked that also
before he could put his hand out before him and hold it reasonably
steady. When he felt fairly sure of himself again, he lifted his hat
to wipe off the sweat of his anger, gave a big sigh, and returned to
the tying of the hangman's noose.

When he finally had it fixed the way he wanted it, he went close and
flung the noose over Buck Olney's head. He could not trust himself to
speak just then. He cast an inquiring glance upward, took Buck's horse
by the b