ths and exclamations. "The poisonous
little skunk! It's him! We'll string him up!"

With a rush they started for the door.

"Wait!" called Riley Sinclair.

Bill Sandersen watched him with a keen eye. He had studied the face of
the big man from up north all during the scene, and he found the stern
features unreadable. For one instant now he guessed that Sinclair was
about to confess.

"If you don't mind seven in one party," said Riley Sinclair, "I think
I'll go along to see justice done. You see, I got a sort of secondhand
interest in this necktie party."

Mason clapped him on the shoulder. "You're just the sort of a gent we
need," he declared.

6

Down in the kitchen they demanded a loaf of bread and some coffee from
the Chinese cook, and then the seven dealers of justice took horse and
turned into the silence of the long mountain trail.

The sunrise had picked those mountains out of the night, directly above
Sour Creek. Riley Sinclair regarded them with a longing eye. That was
his country. A man could see up there, and he could see the truth. Down
here in the valley everything was askew. Men lived blindly and did
blind things, like this "justice" which the six riders were bringing on
an innocent man.

Not by any means had Riley decided what he would do. If he confessed
the truth he would not only have a man-sized job trying to escape from
the posse, but he would have to flee before he had a chance to deal
finally with Sandersen. Chiefly he wanted time. He wanted a chance to
study Sandersen. The fellow had spoken for him like a man, but Sinclair
was suspicious.

In his quandary he turned to sad-faced Montana and asked: "Who's this
gent you call Cold Feet?"

"He's a tenderfoot," declared Montana, "and he's queer. He's yaller,
they say, and that's why they call him Cold Feet. Besides, he teaches
the school. Where's they a real man that would do a schoolma'am's work?
Living or dying, he ain't much good. You can lay to that!"

Sinclair was comforted by this speech. Perhaps the schoolteacher was,
as Montana stated, not much good, dead or alive. Sinclair had known
many men whose lives were not worth an ounce of powder. In this case he
would let Cold Feet be hanged. It was a conclusion sufficiently grim,
but Riley Sinclair was admittedly a grim man. He had lived for himself,
he had worked for himself. On his younger brother, Hal, he had wasted
all the better and tenderer side of his nature. For Hal's ed