to bolt and run, or to turn and fight to kill, at the
slightest rustling of the upheld newspaper. Once safely outside in the
cool, clean night air of the streets I despised myself with a loathing
too bitter to be set in words. But the fact remained.

It was like the strugglings of a man striving to throw off the
benumbing effects of an opium debauch--the effort to be at one again
with the present. The effort was no more than half successful when I
stepped into a late-closing hardware store and bought a weapon--a
repeating rifle with its appropriate ammunition. Barrett had said
something about the lack of weapons at the claim--we had only the
shot-gun and Gifford's out-of-date revolver--and I made the purchase
automatically in obedience to an underlying suggestion which was
scarcely more than half conscious.

But once more in the street, and with the means in my hands, a sudden
and fierce impulse prompted me to go back to the hotel lobby and kill
the man who held my fate between his finger and thumb. Take it as a
virtue or a confession of weakness, as you will, but it was only the
thought of what I owed Barrett and Gifford that kept me from doing it.

So it was a potential murderer, at least in willing intention, who took
the long trail back under the summer stars to the hills, with the rifle
and Barrett's shot-gun--the latter picked up in passing the sampling
works--nestling in the hollow of his arm. God or the devil could have
given me no greater boon that night than the hap to meet Kellow on the
lonesome climb. I am sure I should have shot him without the faintest
stirring of irresolution. By the time I reached our gulch I was fuming
over my foolishness in buying the rifle--a clumsy weapon that would
everywhere advertise my purpose. What I needed, I told myself, was a
pocket weapon, to be carried day and night; and the next time I should
go to town the lack should be supplied.

For by now all scruples were dead and I was assuring myself grittingly
that the entire Cripple Creek district was too narrow to hold the man
who knew, and the man who was afraid.

XV

The Broken Wagon

The day following the Kellow incident being Sunday, the three of us
snatched an hour or so in the early forenoon for a breathing space.
Sitting around the plank table in the bunk shack we took account of
stock, as a shopkeeper would say. It was apparent to all of us that
the blazoning abroad of our secret could not now be