madly for the last few days, the moment
he had for years been conscious would some day come. It would soon be
his; and with the thought his teeth set firmer, and a fierce joy tugged
at his heart.

Five minutes, ten minutes dragged by; yet no observer, however close,
could have seen a muscle stir in the long body of the waiting man. Like
a great panther cat he lay there, the blue eyes peering just over the
surface of the ambush. Not ten paces away could an observer have told
the tip of that motionless sombrero from the protruding top of a
boulder. Gradually the approaching figure grew more distinct. A red
handkerchief showed clearly about the man's neck. Then a slight limp in
the left leg intruded itself, and a droop of the shoulders that spoke
weariness. He was very near by this time, so near that the black beard
which covered his face became discernible, likewise the bizarre breadth
of the Mexican belt above the baggy chaperejos. The crunch of the
snow-crust marked his every foot-fall.

And still Ben Blair had not stirred. Slowly, as the other had
approached, the big blue eyes had darkened until they seemed almost
brown. Involuntarily the massive chin had moved forward; but that was
all. On the surface he was as calm as a lake on a windless night; but
beneath,--God! what a tempest was raging! Each one of those minutes he
waited so impassively marked the rush of a year's memories. Human hate,
primal instinct all but uncontrollable, throbbed in his accelerated
pulse-beats. Like the continuous shifting scenes in a panorama, the
incidents of his life in which this man had played a part appeared
mockingly before his mind's eye. Plainly, as though in his physical ear,
he heard the shuffle of an uncertain hand upon a latch; he saw a figure
with bloodshot eyes lurch into a rude floorless room, saw it approach a
bunk whereon lay a sick woman, his mother; heard the swift passage of
angry words, words which had branded themselves into his memory forever.
Once more he was on all fours, scurrying for his life toward the dark
opening of a protecting kennel. As plainly as though the memory were of
yesterday, he gazed into the blazing mouth of a furnace, felt its
scorching breath on his cheek. Swiftly the changing scenes danced before
his eyes. A rifle-shot, real almost as though he could smell the burning
powder, sounded in his brain. Within the circle of light from a kerosene
lamp a great figure sank in a heap to a ranch house flo