hear voices at the door of the shop.
She heard as if she dreamed, but at the door the words were dread
reality. Sinclair had made good his word, and had come out of the
storm with a summons upon Marion and it was the surgeon who threw open
the door and saw Sinclair standing in the snow.

No man in Medicine Bend knew Sinclair more thoroughly or feared him
less than Barnhardt. No man could better meet him or speak to him with
less of hesitation. Sinclair, as he faced Barnhardt, was not easy in
spite of his dogged self-control; and he was standing, much to his
annoyance, in the glare of an arc-light that swung across the street
in front of the shop. He was well aware that no such light had ever
swung within a block of the shop before and in it he saw the hand of
Whispering Smith. The light was unexpected, Barnhardt was a surprise,
and even the falling snow, which protected him from being seen twenty
feet away, angered him. He asked curtly who was ill, and without
awaiting an answer asked for his wife.

The surgeon eyed him coldly. "Sinclair, what are you doing in Medicine
Bend? Have you come to surrender yourself?"

"Surrender myself? Yes, I'm ready any time to surrender myself. Take
me along yourself, Barnhardt, if you think I've done worse than any
man would that has been hounded as I've been hounded. I want to see my
wife."

"Sinclair, you can't see your wife."

"What's the matter--is she sick?"

"No, but you can't see her."

"Who says I can't see her?"

"I say so."

Sinclair swept the ice furiously from his beard and his right hand
fell to his hip as he stepped back. "You've turned against me too,
have you, you gray-haired wolf? Can't see her! Get out of that door."

The surgeon pointed his finger at the murderer. "No, I won't get out
of this door. Shoot, you coward! Shoot an unarmed man. You will not
live to get a hundred feet away. This place is watched for you; you
could not have got within a hundred yards of it to-night except for
this snow." Barnhardt pointed through the storm. "Sinclair, you will
hang in the court-house square, and I will take the last beat of your
pulse with these fingers, and when I pronounce you dead they will cut
you down. You want to see your wife. You want to kill her. Don't lie;
you want to kill her. You were heard to say as much to-night at the
Dunning ranch. You were watched and tracked, and you are expected and
looked for here. Your best friends have gone back on you. Ay,