see Philip until
he was within fifty paces of him. Even then he did not show surprise.
Apparently he was unarmed, and Philip dropped the muzzle of his carbine.
The man motioned for him to advance, standing with a spread hand resting
on either hip. He was hatless and coatless. His hair was long. His face
was covered with a scraggly growth of red beard, too short to hide his
sunken cheeks. He might have been a man half starved, and yet there was
strength in his bony frame and his eyes were as keen as a serpent's.

"Got in just in time to miss the fun after all," he said coolly. "Queer
game, wasn't it? I was ahead of you up as far as the water hole. Saw
what happened there."

Philip's hand dropped on the butt of his revolver.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Me? I'm Blackstone--Jim Blackstone, from over beyond the elbow. I guess
everybody for fifty miles round here knows me. And I guess I'm the only
one who knows what's happened--and why." He had stepped behind a huge
rock that shut out the lower trail from them and Philip followed, his
hand still on his revolver.

"They're both dead," added the stranger, signifying with a nod of his
head that he meant the outlaws. "One of them was alive when I came up,
but I ran my knife between his ribs, and he's dead now."

"The devil!" cried Philip, half drawing his revolver at the ferocious
leer in the other's face.

"Wait," exclaimed the man, "and see if I'm not right. The man who was
responsible for the wreck back there is my deadliest enemy--has been for
years, and now I'm even up with him. And I guess in the eyes of the law
I've got the right to it. What do you say?"

"Go on," said Philip.

The snake-like eyes of the man burned with a dull flame and yet he spoke
calmly.

"He came out here from England four years ago," he went on. "He
was forced to come. Understand? He was such a devil back among his
people--half a criminal even then--that he was sent out here on a
regular monthly remittance. After that everything went the way of his
younger brother. His father married again, and the second year he became
even less cut off. He was bad--bad from the start, and he went from bad
to worse out here. He gambled, fought, robbed, and became the head of
a gang of scoundrels as dangerous as himself. He brooded over what
he considered his wrongs until he went a little mad. He lived only to
avenge himself. At the first opportunity he was prepared to kill his
father and his step-mother