wife.
The pang that he felt was the torture of offended pride. Indeed, the
fact that he had lost his wife meant less to him than that his wife had
seen him physically beaten by another man. He writhed in his saddle at
the memory.

Instantly his mind flashed back to the details of the scene. He
rehearsed it with himself in a different role, beating the cowpuncher
to a helpless pulp of bruised muscle, snatching away his wife. But even
if he had been able to do that, what would the outcome be? He could not
let the world know the truth--that his wife had fled from him in horror
on their marriage day, that she had wondered about in the clothes of a
man, that she was the companion of another man. And if he brought her
back, certainly all these facts would come to light. The close-cropped
hair alone would be damning evidence.

He framed a wild tale of abduction by villains, of an injury, a
sickness, a fever that forced a doctor to cut her hair short. He had no
sooner framed the story than he threw it away as useless. With all his
soul he began to wish for the only possible solution which would save
the remnants of his ruined self-respect and keep him from the peril of
discovery. The girl must indubitably die!

By the time he came to this conclusion, he had struck out of the hills,
and, as his horse hit the level going and picked up speed, the heart of
Jude Cartwright became lighter. He would get weapons and the finest
horse money could buy in Sour Creek, trail the pair, take them by
surprise, and kill them both. Then back to the homeland and a new life!

Already he saw himself in it, his name surrounded with a glamour of
pathetic romance, as the sad widower with a mystery darkening his past
and future. It was an agreeable gloom into which he fell. Self-pity
warmed him and loosened his fierceness. He sighed with regret for his
own misfortunes.

In this frame of mind he reached Sour Creek and its hotel. While he
wrote his name in the yellowed register he over-heard loud conversation
in the farther end of the room. Two men had been outlawed that
day--John Gaspar, the schoolteacher who killed Quade, and Riley
Sinclair, a stranger from the North.

Paying no further attention to the talk, he passed on into the general
merchandise store which filled most of the lower story of the hotel.
There he found the hardware department, and prominent among the
hardware were the gun racks. He went over the Colts and with an expert
hand t