gth of the street.

"Those you hire do poor work from behind," Harris said. "Maybe you
sometimes take a chance yourself and work from in front." His thumb
was hooked in the opening of his shirt just above the butt of his gun.

Slade held a cigarette in his right hand and raised it slowly to his
lips. He removed it and flicked the ash from the end, then inspected
the results and snapped it again,--and the downward move of his wrist
was carried through in a smooth sweep for his gun. It flashed into his
hand but his knees sagged under him as a forty-five slug struck him an
inch above the buckle of his belt. Even as he toppled forward he
fired, and Harris's gun barked again. Then the Three Bar men were
vaulting to their saddles. Evans careened down the street, leading the
paint-horse, and within thirty seconds after Slade's first move for his
gun a dozen riders were turning the corner on the run. Before the
spectators had time to realize that it was over, the Three Bar men were
gone. Slade had many friends in town.

The girl had seen Harris's draw, merely a single pull from left to
right and by his quartering pose the gun had been trained on Slade at
the instant it cleared the holster; not one superfluous move, even to
the straightening of his wrist. The driver's voice reached her.

"Fastest draw in the world for the few that can use it," he said.

The guard opened the door. The girl was sitting with her head bowed in
her hands.

"Don't take it that way, Ma'am," he counseled. "He was a hard
one--Slade."

But he had misread his signs. She felt no regret for Slade, only a
wave of thankfulness, so powerful as almost to unnerve her, over
Harris's escape, untouched. She accused herself of callousness but the
spring of her sympathy, usually so ready, seemed dry as dust when she
would have wasted a few drops on Slade.

The next day, in the late afternoon, Harris looked up and saw a
chap-clad rider on the edge of the valley. She had ridden over
unannounced on a horse she had borrowed from Brill. She answered the
wave of his hat and urged the horse down the slope. He met her at the
mouth of the lane and together they walked back to the new buildings of
the ranch. The men breaking horses in the new corrals were the same
old hands. The same old Waddles presided over the new cook shack. Her
old things, rescued from the fire, were arranged in the living room of
the new house. A row of new storerooms and the