the day if I stayed out in the chaparral. This room
looked handy, so I made myself right at home and locked the door. I hate
to shoot up a lady's boudoir, but looks like that's what I've done."

"You durn fool! Who were you shooting at?" Phil asked contemptuously.

But his father stepped forward, and with a certain austere dignity, more
menacing than threats, took the words out of the mouth of his son.

"I think I'll negotiate this, Phil."

Buck explained the accident amiably, and relieved himself of the
imputation of idiocy. "Serves a man right for smoking without permission
in a lady's room," he admitted humorously.

A man came up the stairway two steps at a time, panting as if he had
been running. It was Keller.

That the cattleman must have been discovered, he knew even before he saw
him grinning round on a circle of armed foes. Weaver nodded recognition,
and Larrabie understood it to mean also thanks for what he had done for
him last night.

"We'll talk this over downstairs," old Sanderson announced grimly.

They went down into the big hall with the open fireplace, and the old
sheepman waved his hand toward a chair.

"Thanks. Think I'll take it standing," said Buck, an elbow on the
mantel.

He understood fully his precarious situation; he knew that these men had
already condemned him to death. The quiet repression they imposed on
themselves told him as much. But his gaze passed calmly from one to
another, without the least shrinking. All of them save Keller and Phil
were unusually tall men--as tall, almost, as he; but in breadth of
shoulder and depth of chest he dwarfed them. They were grim, hard men,
but not one so grim and iron as he when he chose.

"Your life is forfeit, Buck Weaver," Sanderson said, without delay.

"Made up your mind, have you?"

"Your own riders made it up for us when they murdered poor Jesus
Menendez."

"A bad break, that--and me a prisoner here. Some of the boys had been
out on the range a week. I reckon they didn't know I was the rat in your
trap."

"So much the worse for you."

"Looks like," Weaver nodded. Then he added, almost carelessly: "I expect
there wouldn't be any use mentioning the law to you? It's here to
punish the man that shot Menendez."

"Not a bit of use. You own the sheriff and half the juries in this
county. Besides, we've got the man right here that is responsible for
the killing of poor Jesus."

"Oh! If you look at it that way, of course----"

"T