e. To extract the bullet would be a difficult
and savage operation, an operation which the surgeon thought his
patient in his present weakened condition could not stand. Pete lay in
a heavy stupor, his left arm and the left side of his face partially
paralyzed.

The day after his arrival at the General two plain-clothes men came to
question him. He was conscious and could talk a little. But they had
learned nothing of his companion, the killing of Brent, nor how
Brevoort managed to evade them. They gathered little of Pete's history
save that he told them his name, his age, and that he had no relatives
nor friends. On all other subjects he was silent. Incidentally the
officials gave his name to the papers, and the papers dug into their
back files for reference to an article they had clipped from the
"Arizona Sentinel," which gave them a brief account of the Annersley
raid and the shooting of Gary. They made the most of all this, writing
a considerable "story," which the president of the Stockmen's Security
read and straightway mailed to his old acquaintance, The Spider.

The officers from the police station had told Pete bluntly that he
could not live, hoping to get him to confess to or give evidence as to
the killing of Brent. Pete at once knew the heavy-shouldered man--the
man who had shot him down and who was now keen on getting evidence in
the case.

"So I'm goin' to cross over?" Pete had said, eying the other curiously.
"Well, all I wish is that I could git on my feet long enough--to--get a
crack at you--on an even break. I wouldn't wear no coat, neither."

The fact that Pete had bungled seemed to worry him much more than his
condition. He felt that it was a reflection on his craftmanship. The
plain-clothes man naturally thought that Pete was incorrigible, failing
to appreciate that it was the pride of youth that spoke rather than the
personal hatred of an enemy.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE SPIDER'S ACCOUNT

That the news of Pete's serious condition should hit The Spider as hard
as it did was as big a surprise to The Spider himself as it could ever
have been to his closest acquaintance. Yet it was a fact--and The
Spider never quarreled with facts.

The spider of the web-weaving species who leaves his web, invites
disaster unless he immediately weaves another, and The Spider of
Showdown was only too well aware of this. Always a fatalist, he took
things as they came, but had never yet gone out o