some
other man been talking to you?"

"Who? Me? Certainly not."

"Don't lie."

"Drew, rein up. They's one thing no man can say to me and get away with
it."

"I tell you, man, I'm holding myself in harder than I've ever done
before. Answer me!"

He did not even rise, but Glendin, his hand twitching close to the butt
of his gun, moved step by step away from those keen eyes.

"Answer me!"

"Nash; he's been to Eldara."

"I might have known. He told you about this?"

"Yes."

"And you're going the full limit of your power against Bard?"

"I'll do nothin' that ain't been done by others before me."

"Glendin, there have been cowardly legal murders before. Tell me at
least that you will not send a posse to 'apprehend' Bard until it's
learned whether or not Ben will die--and whether or not Duffy will press
the charge of horse stealing."

Glendin was at the door. He fumbled behind him, found the knob, and
swung it open.

"If you double-cross me," said Drew, "all that I've ever done to any man
before will be nothing to what I'll do to you, Glendin."

And the deputy cried, his voice gone shrill and high, "I ain't done
nothin' that ain't been done before!"

And he vanished through the doorway. Drew followed and looked after the
deputy, who galloped like a fugitive over the hills.

"Shall I follow him?" he muttered to himself, but a faint groan reached
him from the bedroom.

He turned on his heel and went back to Calamity Ben and the doctor.

CHAPTER XXXIV

CRITICISM

After the first burst of speed, Bard resigned himself to following
Sally, knowing that he could never catch her, first because her horse
carried a burden so much lighter than his own, but above all because the
girl seemed to know every rock and twist in the trail, and rode as
courageously through the night as if it had been broad day.

She was following a course as straight as a crow's flight between the
ranch of Drew and his old place, a desperate trail that veered and
twisted up the side of the mountain and then lurched headlong down on
the farther side of the crest. Half a dozen times Anthony checked his
horse and shook his head at the trail, but always the figure of the
girl, glimmering through the dusk ahead, challenged and drove him on.

Out of the sharp descent of the downward trail they broke suddenly onto
the comparatively smooth floor of the valley, and he followed her at a
gallop which ended in front of the old house of