e floor of the little basin, watching Morgan
and wondering at the seeming absence of Deveny's men, when he saw a smoke
streak issue from one of the windows of the house, saw Morgan reel in the
saddle, and slide to the ground.

But before Harlan could reach the spot where Morgan had fallen, the man
staggered to his feet and was running toward the house, swaying as he
went.

Harlan heard a muffled report as he sent Purgatory scampering after
Morgan. He saw Morgan reel again, and he knew someone in the house was
using a rifle.

There was another report as Morgan lurched through an open doorway of the
house. Then Harlan knew Morgan was using his gun, for its roaring crash
mingled with the whiplike crack of a rifle.

The firing had ceased when Harlan slipped off Purgatory at the open door;
and both his guns were out as he leaped over the threshold.

He halted, though, standing rigid, his guns slowly swagging in his hands,
their muzzles drooping.

For on the floor of the room--flat on his back near a corner--was Haydon.
He was dead--there was no doubt of that.

Nor was there any doubt that the bullets Haydon had sent had finished
Morgan. He was lying on his right side, his right arm under him,
extended; the palm of the hand upward, the fingers limply holding the
pistol he had used, some smoke curling lazily from the muzzle.

Harlan knelt beside Morgan, examining him for signs of life. He got up a
little later and stood for some time looking down at the man, thinking of
Barbara. Twice had tragedy cast its sinister shadow over her.

CHAPTER XXVIII

CONVERGING TRAILS

An hour or so later, Harlan, having finished his labors in a clearing at
the edge of the level near the gorge, climbed slowly on Purgatory and
sent him back down the valley trail toward the Star.

From the first his sympathies for Barbara had been deep, beginning on the
evening Lane Morgan had mentioned her in his presence--when the man
seemed to see her in that strange, awesome moment before his death--when
he had seemed to hold out his arms to her. Later, at Lamo, when Harlan
had held the girl in his arms, he felt that at that instant he must have
experienced much the same protective impulse that Morgan would have felt,
had the experience occurred to him. Harlan had been slightly cynical
until that minute; but since then he had known that his rage against the
outlaws was deeply personal.

That rage, though, had centered most heavily upon D