vering all over like a
hound held on a tight leash, with the game in sight, hungry to be
slipped upon it. The edge of his tongue passed across his colourless
lips. He was like a man who long has ridden the white-hot desert and is
now about to drink. There was the same wild gleam in his eyes; his hand
shook with nervous eagerness as he shifted and balanced his revolver.
Listening, in her awe, she heard the sound of his increasing panting; a
sound like the breath of a running man approaching her swiftly.

She slipped to his side.

"Anthony!"

He did not answer; his gun steadied; the barrel began to incline down;
his left eye was squinting. She dropped to her knees and seized his
wrist.

"Anthony, what are you going to do?"

"It's Drew!" he whispered, and she did not recognize his voice. "It's
the grey man I've waited for. It's he!"

In such a tone a dying man might speak of his hope of heaven--seeing it
unroll before him in his delirium.

"But he's carrying the flag of truce, Anthony. You see that?"

"I see nothing except his face. It blots out the rest of the world. I'll
plant my shot there--there in the middle of those lips."

"Anthony, that's William Drew, the squarest man on the range."

"Sally Fortune, that's William Drew, who murdered my father!"

"Ah!" she said, with sharply indrawn breath. "It isn't possible!"

"I saw the shot fired."

"But not this way, Anthony; not from behind a wall!"

His emotion changed him, made him almost a stranger to her. He was
shaking and palsied with eagerness.

"I could do nothing as bad as the crime he has done. For twenty years
the dread of his coming haunted my father, broke him, aged him
prematurely. Every day he went to a secret room and cared for his
revolver--this gun here in my hand, you see? He and I--we were more than
father and son--we were pals, Sally. And then this devil called my
father out into the night and shot him. Damn him!"

"You've got to listen to me, Anthony--"

"I'll listen to nothing, for there he is and--"

She said with a sharp, rising ring in her voice: "If you shoot at him
while he carries that white flag I'll--I'll send a bullet through your
head--that's straight! We got only one law in the mountains, and that's
the law of honour. If you bust that, I'm done with you, Anthony."

"Take my gun--take it quickly, Sally, I can't trust myself; looking at
him, I can see the place where the bullet should strike home."

He forced the butt o