ossed back
over the ridge. "Isn't that a hell of a way for a man to die?"

But the girl had seen. Her one brief look had revealed a horse coming
round a bend in a little box canyon below. A shapeless thing dragged
from one stirrup and at every third or fourth jump the big blue horse
side-slashed the limp bundle with his heels.

As the two men reached the bottoms the frenzied horse had stopped and
was fighting to free himself of the thing that followed him. He moved
away from it in a circle but it was always with him. He squealed and
kicked it, then dashed off in a fresh panic, side-swiping his pursuer.

Harris's rope tightened on his neck and threw him. As he rolled over
Foster's noose snared both hind feet and he was held stretched and
helpless between two trained cow horses while the men disengaged the
bundle that had once been Bangs. One boot heel was missing and his
foot was jammed through the stirrup, evidence that the horse had
pitched with him and the loosened heel had come off, allowing his foot
to slip through as he was thrown.

Harris pointed to a burnt red streak across the right side of Bangs's
neck. He unbuttoned his shirt and revealed a similar streak under his
left armpit.

Old Rile cursed horribly and his face seemed to have aged ten years.

"They learned that from the albino," he said. "It's an old trick that
always works. They dropped a rope on him and jerked him, pried off his
heel, shoved his boot through and laid the quirt on his horse. Blue
did the rest."

Both men knew well how it had happened. Bangs had run across the camp
of some of the wild bunch, men he had known for long, and the
slow-thinking youth had suspected no more danger from riding on up to
them at this time than at any other. He had told them of the shot
fired at Harris and they had known that some other Three Bar man would
find the trail leading from the direction of their camp. And Bangs
would mention having found them there, linking them with the
bushwhacker.

When Bangs had left a pair of them had ridden a distance with him and
accomplished their aim.

"It's coming dark," Harris said. "And by morning they'll be thirty
miles away. That sort of a killing was never fastened on to any man
yet."

The old man raised a doubled fist and his face was lined with sorrow.

"Bangs was almost a son to me," he said. "I taught him to ride--and
we've rode together on every job since then. You hear me! Some one is