d near, after the
fashion of a man who is greatly worried. He watched while Sinclair
deliberately took out an old stained envelope and the stub of a pencil
and started to write. His brows knitted in pain with the effort.
Suddenly Gaspar cried: "Don't do it, Mr. Sinclair!"

A slight lifting of Sinclair's heavy brows showed that he had heard,
but he did not raise his head.

"Don't do what?"

"Don't try to kill that second man. Don't do it!"

Gaspar was rewarded with a sneer.

"Why not?"

The schoolteacher was desperately eager. His glance roved from the set
face of the cowpuncher and through the scragged branches of the tree.

"You'll be damned for it--in your own mind. At heart you're a good man;
I swear you are. And now you throw yourself away. Won't you try to open
your mind and see this another way?"

"Not an inch. Kid, I gave my word for this to a dead man. I told you
about a friend of mine?"

"I'll never forget."

"I gave my word to him, though he never heard it. If I have to wait
fifty years I'll live long enough to kill the gent that's in Sour Creek
now. The other day I had him under my gun. Think of it! I let him go!"

"And you'll let him go again. Sinclair, murder isn't in your nature.
You're better than you think."

"Close up," growled the cowpuncher. "It ain't no Saturday night party
for me to write. Keep still till I finish."

He resumed his labor of writing, drawing out each letter carefully. He
had reached his signature when a low call from John Gaspar alarmed him.
He looked up to find the little man pointing and staring up the trail.
A horseman had just dropped over the crest and was winding leisurely
down toward the plain below.

"We can get behind that knoll, perhaps, before he sees us," suggested
Jig in a whisper. His suggestion met with no favor.

"You hear me talk, son," said Sinclair dryly. "That gent ain't carrying
no guns, which means that he ain't on our trail, we being figured
particularly desperate." He pointed this remark with a cold survey of
the "desperate" Jig.

"But the best way to make danger follow you, Jig, is to run away from
it. We stay put!"

He emphasized the remark by stretching luxuriously. Gaspar, however,
did not seem to hear the last words. Something about the strange
horseman had apparently riveted his interest. His last gesture was
arrested halfway, and his color changed perceptibly.

"You stay, then, Mr. Sinclair," he said hurriedly. "I'm going to slip