r, Hervey."

He gave just the slightest emphasis to the important word, and yet
something in Hervey grew tense. Murder it was, and of the most
dastardly order, no matter how he tried to excuse it by protesting to
himself his devotion to Oliver Jordan. The lies we tell to our own
souls about ourselves are the most damning ones, as they are also the
easiest. But Hervey found himself so cornered that he dared not think
about his act. He stopped thinking, therefore, and began to shout.
This is logical and human, as every woman knows who has found an irate
husband in the wrong. Hervey began to hate with redoubled intensity
the man he was about to destroy.

"You come here and try to play the cock of the walk," cried the
foreman. "It don't work. You try to face me out before all my men. You
threaten me. You show off your gun-fighting, damn you, and then you
call it murder when I beat you fair and square and--"

He found it impossible to continue. The prisoner was actually smiling.

"Hound dogs always hunt in the dark," said Red Jim.

A quiver of fear ran through Hervey. Indeed, he was haunted by chilly
uneasiness all the time. In vain he assured himself with reason that
his victim was utterly helpless. A ghostly dread remained in the back
of his mind that through some mysterious agency the red-headed man
would be liberated, and then----. Hervey shuddered in vital earnest.
What would happen to a crow that dared trap an eagle.

"I'm due back at the ranch," said Hervey, "to tell 'em how you jumped
me here while I was waiting here quiet to warn you again to get out
of the Valley of the Eagles peaceable. Before I go, Perris, is they
anything you want done, any messages you want to leave behind you?"

And he set his teeth when he saw that Perris did not blench. He was
perfectly quiet. Nearness to death sometimes acts in this manner. It
reduces men to the unaffected simplicity of children.

"No message, thanks," said Red Jim. "Nobody to leave them to and
nothing to leave but a hoss that somebody else will ride and a gun
that somebody else will shoot."

"And the girl?" said Lew Hervey.

And a thrill of consummate satisfaction passed through him, for Red
Perris had plainly been startled out of his calm.

"A girl?"

"You know what I mean. Marianne Jordan."

He smiled knowingly.

"Well?" said Perris, breathing hard.

"Why, you fool," cried the foreman, "don't you know she's gone plumb
wild about you? Didn't she come be