ul gambler, playing with singular
abandon, and usually winning. It mattered not what he held in his hand.

If the urge came to him, and the surety that he was going to bet, he
would wager everything in his wallet, all that he could borrow, on a
pair of treys. And when such a fit was on him, the overwhelming
confidence that shone in his face usually overpowered the other men
sitting in at the game. More than once a full house had been laid down
to his wretched pair. There were other occasions when he had lost the
very boots he wore, but the times of winning naturally overbalanced the
losses in the mind of Bill. It was not he who won, and it was not he
who lost. It was fate which ruled him. And that fate, he felt at
present, had sided against Riley Sinclair.

A sort of pity for the big cowpuncher moved him. He knew that he and
Quade and Lowrie deserved death in its most terrible form for their
betrayal of Hal Sinclair in the desert; and nothing but fate, he was
sure, could save him from the avenger. Fate, however, had definitely
intervened. What save blind fate could have stepped into the mind of
Sinclair and made him keep Cold Feet from the rope, when that hanging
would have removed forever all suspicion that Sinclair himself had
killed Quade?

Another man would have attributed both of those actions to common
decency in Sinclair, but Sandersen always hunted out more profound
reasons. In order to let the fact of his own salvation from Sinclair's
gun sink more definitely into his brain, he trotted his horse into the
hills that afternoon. When he came back he heard that the posse was in
town.

To another it might have seemed odd that the posse was there instead of
on the trail of the outlaws. But Sandersen never thought of so
practical a question. To him it was as clear as day. The posse had been
brought to Sour Creek by fate in order that he, Sandersen, might enlist
in its ranks and help in the great work of running down Sinclair, for,
after all, it was work primarily to his own interest. There was
something ironically absurd about it. He, Sandersen, having committed
the mortal crime of abandoning Hal Sinclair in the desert, was now
given the support of legal society to destroy the just avenger of that
original crime. It was hardly any wonder that Sandersen saw in all this
the hand of fate.

He went straight to the hotel and up to the room which the sheriff had
engaged. Cartwright was coming out with a black face, as