ild, snapshots of men
taken off balance.

Two leaps took Sinclair through the thick of the astonished men before
him. He came to the scattering edges and saw a man dive at him. The
cowpuncher beat the butt of his gun into the latter's face and sped on,
whipping around the corner of the little jail, with bullets whistling
after him.

His own gun, as he leaped out of sight, he fired into the ground, and
he heard a similar shot from the far side of the building. Those two
shots, as he had predicted, checked the pursuers one vital second and
kept them milling in front of the jail. Then they spilled out around
the corners, each man running low, his gun ready.

But Sinclair, deep in the darkness of the tree shadows behind the jail,
was already out of sight. He caught a glimpse of Arizona sprinting
ahead of him for dear life. They reached the cottonwoods together and
were greeted by a low shout from the girl; she was running out from the
shelter, dragging the horses after her.

Arizona went into his saddle with a single leap. Sinclair paused to
take the jump, with his hand on the pommel, and as he lifted himself up
with a jump, a gun blazed in point-blank range from the nearest
shrubbery.

There was a yell from Arizona, not of pain, but of rage. They saw his
gun glistening in his hand, and, swerving his horse to disturb the aim
of the marksman, his weapon's first report blended with the second shot
from the bushes, a tongue of darting flame. Straight at the flash of a
target Arizona had fired, and there was an answering yell. Out of the
dark of the shrubbery a great form leaped, with a grotesque shadow
beneath it on the moon-whitened ground.

"Cartwright!" cried Sinclair, as the big man collapsed and became a
shapeless, inanimate black heap.

Straight ahead Arizona was already spurring, and Sinclair waved once to
the white face of Jig, then shot after his companion, while the trees
and shrubbery to their left emitted a sudden swarm of men and barking
guns.

But to strike a rapidly moving object with a revolver is never easy,
and to strike by the moonlight is difficult indeed. A dangerous flight
of slugs bored the air around the fugitives for the first hundred yards
of their flight, but after that the firing ceased, as the men of Sour
Creek ran for their horses.

Straight on into the night rode the pair.

* * * * *

One year had made Arizona a little plumper, and one year had drawn