e, I'm saying good-by to the
mountains."

"You're not going away for good, Murray?"

"I'm going away for good. What's the use? For two years these railroad
cutthroats have been trying to put something on me; you know that.
They've been trying to mix me up with that bridge-burning at Smoky
Creek; Sugar Buttes, they had me there; Tower W--nothing would do but
I was there, and they've got one of the men in jail down there now,
Lance, trying to sweat enough perjury out of him to send me up. What
show has a poor man got against all the money there is in the country?
I wouldn't be afraid of a jury of my own neighbors--the men that know
me, Lance--any time. What show would I have with a packed jury in
Medicine Bend? I could explain anything I've done to the satisfaction
of any reasonable man. I'm human, Lance; that's all I say. I've been
mistreated and I don't forget it. They've even turned my wife against
me--as fine a woman as ever lived."

Lance swore sympathetically. "There's good stuff in you yet, Murray."

"I'm going to say good-by to the mountains," Sinclair went on grimly,
"but I'm going to Medicine Bend to-night and tell the man that has
hounded me what I think of him before I leave. I'm going to give my
wife a chance to do what is right and go with me. She's been poisoned
against me--I know that; but if she does what's fair and square
there'll be no trouble--no trouble at all. All I want, Lance, is a
square deal. What?"

Dicksie with her pulses throbbing at fever-heat heard the words. She
stood half-way down the stairs, trembling as she listened. Anger,
hatred, the spirit of vengeance, choked in her throat at the sinister
words. She longed to stride into the room and confront the murderer
and call down retribution on his head. It was no fear of him that
restrained her, for the Crawling Stone girl never knew fear. She would
have confronted him and denounced him, but prudence checked her angry
impulse. She knew what he meant to do--to ride into Medicine Bend
under cover of the storm, murder the two he hated, and escape in the
night; and she resolved he should never succeed. If she could only get
to the telephone! But the telephone was in the room where he sat. He
was saying good-by. Her cousin was trying to dissuade him from riding
out into the storm, but he was going. The door opened; the men went
out on the porch, and it closed. Dicksie, lightly as a shadow, ran
into the office and began ringing Medicine Bend o