d, and having looked
up his eyes remained riveted. The other no longer cringed with
embarrassment, but every line of his body breathed a great happiness.
He was like one who has been riding joyously, with a sharp wind in his
face.

There was a distant rushing of feet, a pounding on the door of the next
room.

"What's that?" muttered the sheriff, his attention called away.

"They want me."

"Wait a minute," called the voice of Billy without.

"I'll open the door. By God, it's locked!"

"They want me--five feet nine or ten, slender, black hair and brown
eyes--"

"Barry!"

"Glass, I've come for you."

"And I'm ready. And I'll say this"--he was standing, now, and his
nervous hands were at his sides--"I been hungerin' and hopin' for this
time to come. Barry, before you die, I want to thank you!"

"You've followed me like a skunk," said Barry, "from the time you killed
a hoss that had never done no harm to you. You got on my trail when I
was livin' peaceable."

There was a tremendous beating on the outer door of the other room, but
Barry went on: "You took a gent that was livin' straight and you made a
sneak and a crook out of him and sent him to double-cross me. You ain't
worth livin'. You've spent your life huntin' men, and now you're at the
end of your trail. Think it over. You're ready to kill ag'in, but are
you ready to die?"

The little dusty man grew dustier still. His mouth worked.

"Damn you," he whispered, and went for his gun.

It was out, his finger on the trigger, the barrel whipping into line,
when the weapon in Barry's hand exploded. The sheriff spun on his heel
and fell on his face. Three times, as he lay there, dead in all except
the instinctive movement of his muscles, his right hand clawed at the
empty holster at his side. The sixth man had died for Grey Molly.

The outer door of Billy's room crashed to the floor, and heavy feet
thundered nearer. Barry ran to the window and whistled once, very high
and thin. It brought a black horse racing around a corner nearby; it
brought a wolf-dog from an opposite direction, and as they drew up
beneath the window, he slid out and dropped lightly, catlike, to the
ground. One leap brought him to the saddle, and Satan stretched out
along the street.

Chapter XXVIII. The Blood Of The Father

On the night of her failure at the cave, Kate came back to the cabin and
went to her room without any word to Buck or Lee Haines, but when they
sat before th