de to reveal the cancer of his past.

"I'm a branded murderer," he said at last, gasping.

"But you never killed a man out of mere wanton desire to slay," Steele
responded firmly. "I too have killed men in fights in Mexico. That
fact doesn't weight my mind."

"In the line of your duty, in the line of your duty. But I was drunk.
He was a friend. When I became sober, I saw him with a bullet hole in
his head."

"Do you remember nothing of shooting him?"

"Nothing, nothing."

"How do you know you killed him?" his son demanded with inexorable
logic. "What is the proof?"

A low groan escaped his father.

"Men said I had killed him. But my own mind was blank."

"Who were the men? Were they present at the time?"

"They were four--Sorenson, Vorse, Gordon, Burkhardt."

"Were you arrested and tried?"

"No. They helped me to escape. Because of your mother, they said, and
because they said they were my friends. But I never felt they were
really friends. For they were always against new-comers and wanted to
keep things in their own hands. You were only three or four years old
at that time, Steele, so you wouldn't remember anything about matters
there."

"What were you doing at San Mateo, father?"

Now that the hideous past at last stood uncovered the son was able to
turn upon it his incisive mind; he would drag out and scrutinize every
bone of the skeleton which had terrorized his father and shadowed his
own life Facts faced are never so dreadful as fears unmaterialized.
And more, he sought with all the love of a son for circumstances that
would mitigate, excuse, or even justify his father's act.

"I was ranching," was the low answer. "I had come to San Mateo two
years before from the east, bringing you and your mother and
considerable money. I bought a ranch and stocked it with cattle; I was
doing well, in spite of the fact I was new to the country and the
business. Also I was making friends, and I had been nominated for the
legislature of the Territory to run against Gordon. But I had taken to
drinking with the men I met, other cattlemen, because I fancied no
harm in it. And then while in a drunken stupor I killed Jim Dent."

"Had you quarreled with him?"

"Never, never--till that moment I killed Jim. They said I quarreled
with him then. But I remember nothing. Jim was my best friend; I would
have trusted him with my life. Even now I can't make it seem real I
shot him, though it must be true by those four witn