s an insult to Texas. What's your idea in holdin'
up wimmin-folk, anyhow?"

"Mebby you'd hold up anybody if you hadn't et since yesterday morning."

"Think I believe that?"

"Suit yourself. You got me down."

"Well, you can get up and get movin'."

The man rose. He shuffled forward, limping heavily. Occasionally he
stopped and turned to meet a level gaze that was impersonal; that
promised nothing. Lorry would have liked to let the other ride. The man
was suffering--and to ride would save time. But the black, a rangy,
quick-stepping animal, was faster than Gray Leg. But what if the man did
escape? No one need know about it. Yet Lorry knew that he was doing
right in arresting him. In fact, he felt a kind of secret pride in
making the capture. It would give him a name among his fellows. But was
there any glory in arresting such a man?

Lorry recalled the other's wild shot as he was whirled through the
brush. "He sure tried to get me!" Lorry argued. "And any man that'd hold
up wimmin ought to be in the calaboose--"

The trail meandered down the hillside and out across a barren flat.
Halfway across the flat the trail forked. Lorry had ceased to whistle.
At the fork his pony stopped of its own accord. The man turned
questioningly. Lorry gestured toward the right-hand trail. The man
staggered on. The horses fretted at the slow pace. Keen to anticipate
some trickery, Lorry hardened himself to the other's condition. Perhaps
the man was hungry, sick, suffering. Well, a mile beyond was the
water-hole. The left-hand trail led directly to Stacey, but there was no
water along that trail.

They moved on across a stretch of higher land that swept in a gentle,
sage-dotted slope to the far hills. Midway across the slope was a bare
spot burning like white fire in the desert sun. It was the water-hole.
The trail became paralleled by other trails, narrow and rutted by
countless hoofs.

Within a hundred yards of the water-hole the prisoner collapsed. Lorry
dismounted and went for water.

The man drank, and Lorry helped him up and across the sand to the rim of
the water-hole. The man gazed at the shimmering pool with blurred eyes.

Lorry rolled a cigarette. "Roll one?" he queried.

The man Waco took the proffered tobacco and papers. His weariness seemed
to vanish as he smoked. "That pill sure saved my life," he asserted.

"How much you reckon your life's worth?"

Waco blew a smoke-ring and nodded toward it as it dissolved. Lo