r! Git
him some breakfast," he ordered, turning to Maggie.

Maggie hung back a moment, until Thorn had come into the room, then
she shot into the kitchen like a cat through a fence, and slammed the
door behind her.

"What in the hell do you mean by comin' around here?" Chadron demanded
angrily. "Didn't I tell you never to come here? you blink-eyed old
snag-shin!"

"You told me," Thorn admitted, putting his rifle down across a chair,
drawing another to the table, and seating himself in readiness for the
coming meal.

"Then what'd you sneak--"

"News," said Thorn, in his brief way.

"Which news?" Chadron brightened hopefully, his implements, clamped in
his hairy fists, inviting the first bolt from the heavens.

"I got him last night."

"You got--_him?_" Chadron lifted himself from his chair on his bent
legs in the excitement of the news.

"And I'm through with this job. I've come to cash in, and quit."

"The hell you say!"

"I'm gittin' too old for this kind of work. That feller chased me
around till my tongue was hangin' out so fur I stepped on it. I tell
you he was--"

"How did you do it?"

Thorn looked at him with a scowl. "Well, I never used a club on a man
yit," he said.

"Where did it happen at?"

"Up there at his place. He'd been chasin' me for two days, and when he
went back--after grub, I reckon--I doubled on him. Just as he went in
the door I got him. I left him with his damn feet stickin' out like a
shoemaker's sign."

"How fur was you off from him, Mark?"

"Fifty yards, more 'r less."

"Did you go over to him to see if he was finished, or just creased?"

"I never creased a man in my life!" Thorn was indignant over the
imputation.

Chadron shook his head, in doubt, in discredit, in gloomy disbelief.

"If you didn't go up to him and turn him over and look at the whites
of his eyes, you ain't sure," he protested. "That man's as slippery as
wet leather--he's fooled more than one that thought they had him, and
I'll bet you two bits he's fooled you."

"Go and see, and settle it yourself, then," Thorn proposed, in surly
humor.

Chadron had suspended his breakfast, as if the news had come between
him and his appetite. He sat in a study, his big hand curved round his
cup, his gaze on the cloth. At that juncture Maggie came in with a
platter of eggs and ham, which she put down before Mark Thorn
skittishly, ready to jump at the slightest hostile start. Thorn began
to eat, as calmly as