ced what was more horrible to her
than hanging, and that was life with Cartwright.

"Which reminds me," said Arizona, "that the old sheriff may not wait
for morning before he starts after you. Just slope down the hill and
saddle your hoss, will you?"

Automatically she obeyed, wild thoughts running through her mind. To go
back to Sour Creek meant a return to Cartwright, and then nothing could
save her from him. Halfway to her saddle her foot struck metal, her own
gun, which Arizona had dropped after firing the bullet. Was there not a
possibility of escape? She heard Arizona humming idly behind her.
Plainly he was entirely off guard.

Bending with the speed of a bird in picking up a seed, she scooped up
the gun, whirling with the heavy weapon extended, her forefinger
curling on the trigger. But, as she turned, the humming of Arizona
changed to a low snarl. She saw him coming like a bolt. The gun
exploded of its own volition, it seemed to her, but Arizona had swerved
in his course, and the shot went wild.

The next instant he struck her. The gun was wrenched from her hand, and
a powerful arm caught her and whirled her up, only to hurl her to the
ground; Arizona's snarling, panting face bent over her. In the very
midst of that fury she felt Arizona stiffen and freeze; the snarling
stopped; his nerveless arm fell away, and she was allowed to stagger to
her feet. She found him staring at her with a peculiar horror.

"Murdering guns!" whispered Arizona.

Now she understood that he knew. She saw him changed, humbled, disarmed
before her. But even then she did not understand the profound meaning
of that moment in the life of Arizona.

But to have understood, she would have had to know how that life began
in a city slum. She would have had to see the career of the sneak thief
which culminated in the episode of the lumber camp eight years before.
She would have had to understand how the lesson from the hand of big
Sinclair had begun the change which transformed the sneak into the
dangerous man of action. And now the second change had come. For
Arizona had made the unique discovery that he could be ashamed!

He would have laughed had another told him. Virtue was a name and no
more to the fat man. But in spite of himself those eight years under
free skies had altered him. He had been growing when he thought he was
standing still. When the eye plunges forty miles from mountain to
mountain, through crystal-clear air, the min