e you doing over here?"

"Come to see you, Hank." The man, who was under thirty and tall and
strong of limb, thrust out his hand and shook that of his friend. "I
left my horse down at the square."

"What do you want to see me about, Ray?" Bradley's voice almost shook
with growing perturbation. "You told me last week that you never would
come this way again--that the more we all was scattered the safer it
would be."

"I'm on my way to the nighest railroad, Hank."

"You say you are?" Bradley leaned against the fence, and his face turned
white. "You don't think it's as--as bad as that?"

"Don't I? Huh, I only hope I'll catch that twelve-o'clock flyer! I
wouldn't be here now but I told you I'd never act without reporting to
you, and that's what I'm doing, Hank."

"But what's--what's happened to--to scare you up so?" Bradley stammered.

"Hank, that fellow's kin are on our track like a pack of thirsty
bloodhounds. I got onto it by accident. They have smelt blood, and they
are going to drink some. We got the wrong man; I know it damned well
now, and you and me was the ringleaders. You know the West, Hank. I want
you to show me the way. Git a move on you. You haven't a minute to
lose."

"I'll have to raise some money." Bradley looked toward the dim form of
old Welborne through the darkness. "Go back to town, Ray. I'll see my
uncle and pack and meet you at the train. I'm sure you are right. I've
seen bad signs myself. I'd have lit out before this, but there was a
skunk here that I wanted to settle a score with."

"I know, but you'll have to cut that out, Hank. This is no time for
revenge. Hurry up. I'm off. I've got to get a man to take my horse
home."

When his accomplice had gone away, Bradley crossed over to old
Welborne.

"You remember," he began, "that you advised me to leave here the other
day?"

Old Welborne stared at him steadily for a minute, and then shrugged his
decrepit shoulders. "I have been expecting to hear you say you'd settled
with the jackass that gave you that licking that day. I don't want to
see you get into more trouble, but that fellow ought to be pulled down
from his lordly perch. I never see him without feeling his hands on my
throat. He's the one man that has always stood in my way. And now, just
look at him! He's in big luck again, and can sneer in his high and
mighty way at all of us. That fool woman he was so crazy about as to
marry when she loved another man has come into a great bi