very fast to make a
get-away, Jack," he said dryly.

"I'm sure on the jump. They're no bully-puss kind of men, but sure
enough terrors from the chaparral. If I never get out o' town, ship my
saddle in a gunny-sack to my brother at Dallas."

"Makin' yore will, are you?" inquired Joe Johnston's former trooper.

The red-haired man grinned. "I got to make arrangements. They came here
to get me. Two of 'em--bad-men with blood in their eyes." He hummed,
with jaunty insolence:

"He's a killer and a hater!
He's the great annihilator!
He's a terror of the boundless prai-ree.

"That goes double. I'm certainly one anxious citizen. Don't you let 'em
hurt me, Sam."

There was a movement at the table where the two men were sitting. One of
them had slid from his chair and was moving toward the back door.

The Ranger pretended to catch sight of him for the first time. "Hello,
Gurley! What's yore hurry? Got to see another man, have you?"

The rustler did not wait to answer. He vanished through the door and
fled down the alley in the direction of the corral. Overstreet could do
as he pleased, but he intended to slap a saddle on his horse and make
tracks for the cap-rock country.

Overstreet himself was not precisely comfortable in his mind, but he did
not intend to let a smooth-faced boy run him out of the gambling-house
before a dozen witnesses. If he had to fight, he would fight. But in his
heart he cursed Gurley for a yellow-backed braggart. The fellow had got
him into this and then turned tail. The man from Colorado wished
devoutly that Pete Dinsmore were beside him.

"You're talkin' at me, young fellow. Listen: I ain't lookin' for any
trouble with you--none a-tall. But I'm not Steve Gurley. Where I come
from, folks grow man-size. Don't lean on me too hard. I'm liable to
decrease the census of red-haired guys."

Overstreet rose and glared at him, but at the same time one hand was
reaching for his hat.

"You leavin' town too, Mr. Overstreet?" inquired the Ranger.

"What's it to you? I'll go when I'm ready."

"'We shall meet, but we shall miss you--there will be one vacant
chair,'" murmured the young officer, misquoting a song of the day.
"Seems like there's nothin' to this life but meetin' an' partin'. Here
you are one minute, an' in a quarter of an hour you're hittin' the high
spots tryin' to catch up with friend Steve."

"Who said so? I'll go when I'm good an' ready," reiterated the bad-man.

"Well,