as just visible.

Thursday edged carefully along the ledge. He felt for holds with his hand
and feet, for not once did his gaze lift from that patch of hickory
shirt. The eyes of the boy had narrowed to slits of deadly light. He was
wary as a hungry wolf and as dangerous. That the girl had disappeared
around the bend he did not know. His brain functioned for just one
purpose--to get the enemy with whom he had come at last to grips.

As the boy crept along the rock face for a better view of his victim, the
minutes fled. Five of them--ten--a quarter of an hour passed. The
renegade lay motionless. Perhaps he hoped that his location was unknown.

The man-hunter on the ledge flung a bullet against the protecting
boulder. His laugh of cruel derision drifted across the canon.

"Run to earth at last, Ranse Roush!" he shouted, "I swore I'd camp on
your trail till I got you--you an' the rest of yore poison tribe."

From the trapped wretch quavered back a protest.

"Goddlemighty, I ain't done nothin' to you-all. Lemme explain."

"Before you do any explainin' mebbe you'd better guess who it is that's
goin' to send yore cowardly soul to hell inside of five minutes."

"If you're some kin to that gal on the hawss with me, why, I'll tell you
the honest-to-God truth. I was aimin' to save her from the 'Paches when I
got a chanct. Come on down an' let's we-uns talk it over reasonable."

The boy laughed again, but there was something very far from mirth in the
sound of that chill laughter. "If you won't guess I'll have to tell you
Ever hear of the Clantons, Ranse Roush? I'm one of 'em. Now you know what
chance you got to talk yoreself out of this thing."

"I--I'm glad to meet up with you-all. I got to admit that the Roush clan
is dirt mean. Tha's why I broke away from 'em. Tha's why I come out here.
You Clantons is all right. I never did go in for this bushwhackin' with
Dave an' Hugh. I never--"

"You're a born liar like the rest of yore wolf tribe. You come out here
because the country got too hot to hold you after what you did to 'Lindy
Clanton. I might 'a' knowed I'd find you with the 'Paches. You allus was
low-mixed Injun." The boy had fallen into the hill vernacular to which he
had been born. He was once more a tribal feudist of the border land.

"I swear I hadn't a thing to do with that," the man cried eagerly. "You
shore done got that wrong. Dave an' Hugh done that. They're a bad lot.
When I found out about 'Lindy Clanton