venture had ended in tragedy both for her and for him. Bob sank
down on a dry-goods box and put his twitching face in his hands. He had
flung away both his own chance for happiness and hers. So far as he was
concerned he was done for. He could never live down the horrible thing he
had done.

He had been rather a frail youth, with very little confidence in himself.
Above all else he had always admired strength and courage, the qualities
in which he was most lacking. He had lived on the defensive, oppressed by
a subconscious sense of inferiority. His actions had been conditioned by
fear. Life at the charitable institution where he had been sent as a
small child fostered this depression of the ego and its subjection to
external circumstances. The manager of the home ruled by the rod. Bob had
always lived in a sick dread of it. Only within the past few months had
he begun to come into his own, a heritage of health and happiness.

Dud Hollister came to him out of Dolan's saloon. "Say, fellow, where's my
gun?" he asked.

Bob looked up. "He--took it."

"Do I lose my six-shooter?"

"I'll fix it with you when I get the money to buy one."

The boy looked so haggard, his face so filled with despair, that Dud was
touched in spite of himself.

"Why in Mexico didn't you give that bird a pill outa the gun?" he asked.

"I don't know. I'm--no good," Bob wailed.

"You said it right that time. I'll be doggoned if I ever saw such a thing
as a fellow lettin' another guy walk off with his wife--when he ain't
been married hardly two hours yet. Say, what's the matter with you
anyhow? Why didn't you take a fall outa him? All he could 'a' done was
beat you to death."

"He hurt me," Bob confessed miserably. "I--was afraid."

"Hurt you? Great jumpin' Jupiter. Say, fellows, listen to Miss--Miss
Roberta here. He hurt him, so he quit on the job--this guy here did. I
never heard the beat o' that."

"If you'll borrow one of yore friends' guns an' blow my brains out you'll
do me a favor," the harried youth told Hollister in a low voice.

Hollister looked at him searchingly. "I might, at that," agreed the
puncher. "But I'm not doin' that kind of favor to-day. I'll give you a
piece of advice. This ain't no country for you. Hop a train for Boston,
Mass., or one o' them places where you can take yore troubles to a fellow
with a blue coat. Tha's where you belong."

Up the street rolled Blister Haines, in time to hear the cowpuncher's
suggest