stand between them. An unbridgeable gulf
separated them, created by his shameless weakness.

When Bob came to earth he found himself clumping down the river road
miles from town. He turned and walked back to Bear Cat. His cowpony was
at the corral and he was due at the ranch by night.

Young Dillon's thoughts had been so full of June and his relation to her
that it was with a shock of surprise he saw Jake Houck swing out from the
hotel porch and bar the way.

"Here's where you 'n' me have a settlement," the Brown's Park man
announced.

"I'm not lookin' for trouble," Bob said, and again he was aware of a
heavy sinking at the stomach.

"You never are," jeered Houck. "But it's right here waitin' for you, Mr.
Rabbit Heart."

Bob heard the voices of children coming down the road on their way from
school. He knew that two or three loungers were watching him and Houck
from the doors of adjacent buildings. He was aware of a shouting and
commotion farther up the street. But these details reached him only
through some subconscious sense of absorption. His whole attention was
concentrated on the man in front of him who was lashing himself into a
fighting rage.

What did Houck mean to do? Would he throw down on him and kill? Or would
he attack with his bare hands? Fury and hatred boiled into the big man's
face. His day had come. He would have his revenge no matter what it cost.
Bob could guess what hours of seething rage had filled Houck's world. The
freckle-faced camp flunkey had interfered with his plans, snatched from
him the bride he had chosen, brought upon him a humiliation that must be
gall to his proud spirit whenever he thought of Bear Cat's primitive
justice. He would pay his debt in full.

The disturbance up the street localized itself. A woman picked up her
skirts and flew wildly into a store. A man went over the park fence
almost as though he had been shot out of a catapult. Came the crack of a
revolver. Some one shouted explanation. "Mad dog!"

A brindle bull terrier swung round the corner and plunged forward. With
bristling hair and foaming mouth, it was a creature of horrible menace.

Houck leaped for the door of the hotel. Bob was at his heels, in a panic
to reach safety.

A child's scream rang out. Dillon turned. The school children were in
wild flight, but one fair-haired little girl stood as though paralyzed in
the middle of the road. She could not move out of the path of the wild
beast bearing dow