after another, the wild and haunted years, had made him, absolutely in
spite of his will, the gunman. He realized it now, bitterly, hopelessly.
The thing he had intelligence enough to hate he had become. At last he
shuddered under the driving, ruthless inhuman blood-lust of the gunman.
Long ago he had seemed to seal in a tomb that horror of his kind--the
need, in order to forget the haunting, sleepless presence of his last
victim, to go out and kill another. But it was still there in his mind,
and now it stalked out, worse, more powerful, magnified by its rest,
augmented by the violent passions peculiar and inevitable to that
strange, wild product of the Texas frontier--the gun-fighter. And those
passions were so violent, so raw, so base, so much lower than what ought
to have existed in a thinking man. Actual pride of his record! Actual
vanity in his speed with a gun. Actual jealousy of any rival!

Duane could not believe it. But there he was, without a choice. What
he had feared for years had become a monstrous reality. Respect for
himself, blindness, a certain honor that he had clung to while in
outlawry--all, like scales, seemed to fall away from him. He stood
stripped bare, his soul naked--the soul of Cain. Always since the first
brand had been forced and burned upon him he had been ruined. But now
with conscience flayed to the quick, yet utterly powerless over this
tiger instinct, he was lost. He said it. He admitted it. And at the
utter abasement the soul he despised suddenly leaped and quivered with
the thought of Ray Longstreth.

Then came agony. As he could not govern all the chances of this fatal
meeting--as all his swift and deadly genius must be occupied with
Poggin, perhaps in vain--as hard-shooting men whom he could not watch
would be close behind, this almost certainly must be the end of Buck
Duane. That did not matter. But he loved the girl. He wanted her. All
her sweetness, her fire, and pleading returned to torture him.

At that moment the door opened, and Ray Longstreth entered.

"Duane," she said, softly. "Captain MacNelly sent me to you."

"But you shouldn't have come," replied Duane.

"As soon as he told me I would have come whether he wished it or not.
You left me--all of us--stunned. I had no time to thank you. Oh, I
do-with all my soul. It was noble of you. Father is overcome. He didn't
expect so much. And he'll be true. But, Duane, I was told to hurry, and
here I'm selfishly using time."