Then swift as thought
and simultaneously as twin machines, the hands of the intruder and of
the struggling "buster" went to their hips.

The spectators held their breaths; not one stirred. Before them they
saw the hands which had gone to hips flash up and forward like pistons
from companion cylinders, and they saw two puffs of smoke like
escaping steam.

Smoothly, as a scene in a rehearsed play, the reports mingled, the
riders, scarcely ten feet apart, tottered in their saddles, and
slowly, unconsciously resistant even in death, the two bodies slipped
to earth.

[Illustration: They saw the hands which had gone to hips flash up and
forward like pistons, and two puffs of smoke like escaping steam.]

But there the unison ended. The mustang which "Slim" Rawley rode stood
still in its tracks; but before the spectators could rush in, the
"devil" broncho, relieved of the hand upon the curb, sprang away, and
with the "buster's" foot caught fast in the stirrup ran squealing,
kicking, crazy mad out over the prairie, dragging by its side the limp
figure of its unseated enemy.

Calmar Bye watched the whole spectacle as in a dream. So swift had
been the action, so fantastic the denouement, that he could not at
first reconcile it all with reality. He went slowly over to the
prostrate "Slim" Rawley, whom the others had laid out decently upon
the ground, half expecting him to leap up and laugh in their faces;
but the already stiffening figure with the fiendish scowl upon its
face, was convincing.

Besides,--gods, the indifference of these men to death! The party of
onlookers were already separating--one division, mounted, starting in
pursuit of the escaping broncho, along the narrow trail made by the
dragged man; the others impassively reconnoitring for spades and
shovels, were stolidly awaiting the breaking of the lock of
frost-bound earth at the hands of a big, red-shirted cowboy with a
pick!

"Here, Bye," suggested one toiler, "you're an eddicated man; say a
prayer er something, can't ye, before we plant old 'Slim.' He wa'nt
sech a bad sort."

The tenderfoot complied, and said something--he never knew just
what--as the dry clods thumped dully upon the huddled figure in the
old gunny sack. What he said must have been good, for those present
resisted with difficulty a disposition to applaud.

This labor complete, the cowboys scattered, miles apart, each to his
division of the herd, which for better range had been distribu