.

"Quit shootin'!" he yelled. "One more shoot an' I kills Sam Carlyle in
his tracks. I warns ye!"

Carlyle turned his head, too, and bellowed across his shoulder.

"Fer God's sake boys, hold up! He means hit!"

As the racket subsided, Stacy knelt, still covering his hostage and
said briefly to Jerry, "Hook yore arm round my shoulders. I'll tote
ye."

He came laboriously to his feet again with his clinging burden of
bleeding freight,--and abruptly Kinnard Towers appeared in the other
door. His voice was raised in a semblance of rage, corroborated by an
anger so well-simulated that it made his face livid.

"What manner of hell's deviltry air all this?" he thundered. "Who
attacked these men in my place? By God, I don't 'low ter hev my house
turned into no murder den." His minions, acting on his orders, knew
their chief too well to argue, and as they fell shamefacedly silent,
Kinnard shouted to Bear Cat.

"Son, let me succor ye. He looks badly hurted."

"Succor, hell!" retorted Bear Cat grimly. "You an' me will talk later.
Now ef any feller follers me, I aims ter kill this man ye hires ter do
yore murderin'."

At the hitching-rack several horses still stood tethered. There was
need for haste, for one fugitive was perhaps bleeding to death and the
other was wounded and exhausted. Some of the scattered murderers might
be already waiting, too, in the shadows of the thickets.

Then for the first time Bear Cat spoke to Henderson of the mission that
had brought him there.

"Now ye've got ter git up an' ride ter Brother Fulkerson's house," he
said, with a bitter curtness. "Ye're a-goin' ter be married ter-night."

"Married! To-night!" Jerry was hanging limp in the arms of his rescuer.
His senses were reeling with pain and a weakness which was close to
coma, but at the tone he raised his lids and met the glittering eyes
that bent close, feeling a hot breath on his cheeks. This was the face
of the man who had recklessly walked into a death trap to save him, but
in its implacable fixity of feature there was now no vestige of
friendliness.

"Married!" echoed the plunger feebly. "No, buried. I'm mortally hurt, I
tell you.... I'm dying. Just put me down and save yourself while ...
you can."

But Bear Cat Stacy was lifting him bodily to the saddle and holding him
in place.

"Dying?" he scornfully repeated. "I hopes ter God ye air, but afore ye
dies ye're agoin' ter be married. Maybe I'm dying, too--I don't
know--but