ird day he was sunning himself
on the porch. Dave had gone on a little jaunt to a water-hole to shoot
hooters for supper. Mrs. Hart was baking bread inside. Her husband
had left before daybreak and was not yet back. He was looking for
strays, his wife said.

In the family rocking-chair Roy was reading a torn copy of "Martin
Chuzzlewit." How it had reached this haven was a question, since it
was the only book in the house except a Big Creek bible, as the
catalogue of a mail-order house is called in that country. Beaudry
resented the frank, insolent observations of Dickens on the manners of
Americans. In the first place, the types were not true to life. In
the second place--

The young man heard footsteps coming around the corner of the house.
He glanced up carelessly--and his heart seemed to stop beating.

He was looking into the barrel of a revolver pointed straight at him.
Back of the weapon was the brutal, triumphant face of Meldrum. It was
set in a cruel grin that showed two rows of broken, tobacco-stained
teeth.

"By God! I've got you. Git down on yore knees and beg, Mr. Spy. I'm
going to blow yore head off in just thirty seconds."

Not in his most unbridled moments had Dickens painted a bully so
appalling as this one. This man was a notorious "killer" and the lust
of murder was just now on him. Young Beaudry's brain reeled. It was
only by an effort that he pulled himself back from the unconsciousness
into which he was swimming.

Chapter XV

The Bad Man

The eyes of Beaudry, held in dreadful fascination, clung to the lupine
face behind the revolver. To save his life he could have looked
nowhere else except into those cold, narrow pupils where he read death.
Little beads of sweat stood on his forehead. The tongue in his mouth
was dry. His brain seemed paralyzed. Again he seemed to be lifted
from his feet by a wave of deadly terror.

Meldrum had been drinking heavily, but he was not drunk. He drew from
his pocket a watch and laid it on the arm of the chair. Roy noticed
that the rim of the revolver did not waver. It was pointed directly
between his eyes.

"Git down on yore knees and beg, damn you. In less 'n a minute hell
pops for you."

The savage, exultant voice of the former convict beat upon Roy like the
blows of a hammer. He would have begged for his life,--begged
abjectly, cravenly,--but his teeth chattered and his parched tongue was
palsied. He would have sunk to hi