ke a horseman. Puzzled but persistent, Weary
turned back where the slope was easiest, and climbed also. He did not
know the country well enough to tell, in that come-and-go light made
uncertain by drifting clouds, just where he was or where he would bring
up; he only knew instinctively that where Spikes rode, trouble rode
also.

Quite suddenly at the last came further knowledge. It was when, still
following, he rode along a steeply sloping ridge that narrowed
perceptibly, that he looked down, down, and saw, winding brownly in the
starlight, a trail that must be the trail he had left at the coulee
head.

"Mamma!" he ejaculated softly, and strained eyes under his hatbrim to
glimpse the figure he knew rode before. Then, looking down again, he
saw a horseman galloping rapidly towards the ridge, and pulled up short
when he should have done the opposite--for it was then that seconds
counted.

When the second glance showed the horseman to be Irish, Weary drove in
his spurs and galloped forward. Ten leaps perhaps he made, when a
rifle shot came sharply ahead. He glanced down and saw horse and rider
lying, a blotch of indefinable shape, in the trail. Weary drew his own
gun and went on, his teeth set tight together. Now, when it was too
late, he understood thoroughly the situation.

He came clattering out of the gloom to the very, point of the bluff,
just where it was highest and where it crowded closest the trail a long
hundred feet below. A man stood there on the very edge, with a rifle
in his hands. He may have been crouching, just before, but now he was
standing erect, looking fixedly down at the dark heap in the trail
below, and his figure, alert yet unwatchful, was silhouetted sharply
against the sky.

When Weary, gun at aim, charged furiously down upon him, he whirled,
ready to give battle for his life; saw the man he supposed was lying
down there dead in the trail, and started backward with a yell of pure
terror. "Irish!" He toppled, threw the rifle from him in a single
convulsive movement and went backward, down and down.--

Weary got off his horse and, gun still gripped firmly, walked to the
edge and looked down. In his face, dimly revealed in the fitful
moonlight, there was no pity but a look of baffled vengeance. Down at
the foot of the bluff the shadows lay deep and hid all they held, but
out in the trail something moved, rose up and stood still a moment, his
face turned upward to where stood We