ace behind a calico curtain he took out a repeating rifle.

"Thar's my co'te of jestice," he declared, and his voice trembled as
with hunger and thirst.

But Parish Thornton had thrown back his head and unaccountably he
laughed as he laid on the other's arm fingers that closed slowly into a
grip of steel and rawhide.

"Hump," he said, "hit would be a turrible pity fer us ter quarrel--but I
don't aim ter be robbed, even by _you_! Thet man belongs ter _me_ ...
an' I aims ter claim him now. When my blood war bi'lin' like a mortal
fever ... right hyar in this room ... didn't ye fo'ce me ter lay aside
my grudge till sich day es ye give me license ter take hit up ergin?...
an' hain't thet day come now?... From thet time till this I've kep' my
word ... but hell hitself couldn't hold me back no longer.... Ye kain't
hev him, Hump. He's _mine_!"

He paused, then with something like a sob he repeated in a dazed voice,
"An' ye says he aimed ter fo'ce Dorothy with his love-makin'. God!"

Hump Doane was still clinging to the rifle upon which Thornton had laid
his hands, and they stood there, two claimants, neither of whom was
willing to surrender his title to a disputed prize--the prize of Bas
Rowlett's life.

But at length the older fingers loosened their hold and the older man
took a stumbling step and knelt by his dead. Then the younger, with the
gun cradled in his elbow, and a light of release in his eyes--a light
that seemed almost one of contentment--went out through the door and
crossed the yard to the fence where his mount was hitched.

CHAPTER XXXII

Sim, standing at the barn door, had watched Parish Thornton ride away
that morning with a troubled heart, as he wondered what sequel these
events would bring for himself. Then he went to the house and called
softly to Dorothy. She was crooning a lullaby, behind the closed door of
her room, to the small mite of humanity that had come, in healthy
pinkness, to the comparatively mature age of one month.

"Thar hain't nuthin' ter be done right now," the hired man told her,
"an' I've got ter fare over ter my own place fer a spell. A man's comin'
ter haggle with me over a cattle deal."

But Sim was not going to his own house. He was acting under standing
orders which might in no wise be disobeyed.

The organization that had been born in secret and nurtured to malignant
vigour had never held a daylight session before. No call had gone out
for one now, but an underst