cket.

"You talk too much with your mouth."

With superb contempt, Luck slapped him, turned on his heel, and moved
away, regardless of the raw, stark lust to kill that was searing this
man's elemental brain.

Across the convict's rage came a vision. He saw a camp far up in the
Rincons, and seated around a fire five men at breakfast, all of them
armed. Upon them had come one man suddenly. He had dominated the situation
quietly, had made one disarm the others, had handcuffed the one he wanted
and taken him from his friends through a hostile country where any hour he
might be shot from ambush. Moreover, he had traveled with his prisoner two
days, always cheerful and matter of fact, not at all uneasy as to what
might lie behind the washes or the rocks they passed. Finally he had
brought his man safely to Casa Grande, from whence he had gone over the
road to the penitentiary. Blackwell had been the captured man, and he held
a deep respect for the prowess of the officer who had taken him. The sheer
pluck of the adventure had alone made it possible. For such an unflawed
nerve Blackwell knew his jerky rage was no match.

The paroled convict recovered his breath and slunk out of the hotel.

Billie Mackenzie, owner of the Fiddleback ranch, laughed even while he
disapproved. "Some day, Luck, you'll get yours when you are throwing
chances at a coyote like this. You'll guess your man wrong, or he'll be
one glass drunker than you figure on, and then he'll plug you through and
through."

"The man that takes chances lives longest, Mac," his friend replied,
dismissing the subject carelessly. "I'm going to tuck away about three
hours of sleep. So long." And with a nod he was gone to his room.

"All the same Luck's too derned rash," Flandrau commented. "He'll run into
trouble good and hard one of these days. When I'm in Rattlesnake Gulch I
don't aim to pick posies too unobservant."

Mackenzie looked worried. No man lived whom he admired so much as Luck
Cullison. "And he hadn't ought to be sitting in these big games. He's hard
up. Owes a good bit here and there. Always was a spender. First thing
he'll have to sell the Circle C to square things. He'll pay us this week
like he said he would. That's dead sure. He'd die before he'd fall down on
it, now Fendrick has got his back up. But I swear I don't know where he'll
raise the price. Money is so tight right now."

That afternoon Luck called at every bank in Saguache. All of the banke