damned lie when I was sayin' it.
If you'd be'n milk-gutted, an' louse-hearted, like pilgrims are
supposed to be, there'd be'n a different story to tell, because you
wouldn't have be'n fit for her. But I liked you most as hard as I
loved her. 'From now on it's a square game,' I says, so I made Old Man
Johnson cough up that outfit of raiment, an' made you shave, so she
wouldn't have to take you lookin' like a sheep-herdin' greaser, if she
was a-goin' to take you instead of me. After that I come right out an'
told her just where I stood, an' from then on I've played the game
square. The women ain't divided up right in this world. There ought
to have be'n two of her, but they ain't another in the whole world, I
reckon, like her; so one of us had to lose. An', now, seein' how I've
lied you into all this misery, you ought to just naturally up an' knock
hell out of me. We'll still keep the game fair an' square. I'll throw
away my gun an' you can sail in as quick as you get your sleeves rolled
up. But, I doubt if you can get away with it, at that."

Endicott laughed happily, and in the darkness his hand stole across and
gripped the hand of the Texan in a mighty grip: "I wish to God there
was some way I could thank you," he said. "Had it not been for you, I
never could have won her. Why, man, I never got acquainted with myself
until the past three days!"

"There ain't any posses out," grinned Tex. "The fellow I met in the
coulee there by Antelope Butte told me. They think you were lynched.
He told me somethin' else, too--but that'll keep."

As they were saddling up, the following morning, the Texan grinned:
"I'll bet old Long Bill Kearney's in a pleasin' frame of mind."

"He's had time to meditate a little on his sins," answered Alice.

"No--not Long Bill ain't. If he started in meditatin' on them, he'd
starve to death before he'd got meditated much past sixteen--an' he's
fifty, if he's a day."

"There are four of us and only three horses," exclaimed Endicott, as he
tightened his cinch.

"That's all right. The horses are fresh. I'm light built, an' we'll
change off makin' 'em carry double. It ain't so far."

The morning sun was high when the horses turned into the coulee that
led to Long Bill's ranch. Bat, who had scouted ahead to make sure that
he had not succeeded in slipping his bonds and had plotted mischief,
sat grinning beside the corral fence as he listened, unobserved, to the
whimpering and wa