, too, had passed over the top of
the hill and disappeared.

The ex-clergyman turned to the treasure-guard. "How bad is it with you,
Art?" he asked gently.

That young man grinned down a little wanly at Jack Roberts. He felt
suddenly nauseated and ill. This business of shooting men and being shot
at filled him with horror.

"Not so bad. I got it in the arm, Jack. Poor old Hank will never drive
again."

The Ranger who had been camouflaged as a clergyman stooped to examine
the driver. That old-timer's heart had stopped beating. "He's gone on
his last long trip, Art."

"This schoolmarm lady has fainted," announced the mule-skinner.

"She's got every right in the world to faint. In Iowa, where she comes
from, folks live in peace. Better sprinkle water on her face, Mike."

Jack moved over to the dead outlaw and lifted the bandana mask from the
face. "Pete Dinsmore, just like I thought," he told Ridley. "Well, he
had to have it--couldn't learn his lesson any other way."

Roberts drove the stage with its load of dead and wounded back to
Clarendon. As quickly as possible he gathered a small posse to follow
the bandits. Hampered as the outlaws were with a badly wounded man,
there was a good chance of running them to earth at last. Before night
he and his deputies were far out on the plains following a trail that
led toward Palo Duro Canon.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE MAN WITH THE YELLOW STREAK

Night fell on both a dry and fireless camp for the outlaws who had tried
to rob the Clarendon-Tascosa stage. They had covered a scant twenty
miles instead of the eighty they should have put behind them. For Dave
Overstreet had been literally dying in the saddle every step of the way.

He had clenched his teeth and clung to the pommel desperately. Once he
had fainted and slid from his seat. But the bandits could not stop and
camp, though Dinsmore kept the pace to a walk.

"Once we reach Palo Duro, we'll hole up among the rocks an' fix you up
fine, Dave," his companion kept promising.

"Sure, Homer. I'm doin' dandy," the wounded man would answer from white,
bloodless lips.

The yellow streak in Gurley was to the fore all day. It evidenced itself
in his precipitate retreat from the field of battle--a flight which
carried him miles across the desert before he dared wait for his
comrades. It showed again in the proposal which he made early in the
afternoon to Dinsmore.

The trio of outlaws had been moving very slowly on a