urn in."

It seemed much later that a shot startled him. To his dizzy hearing
came the sound of curses overhead, the stamp and shift of feet, the
crashing fall of struggling men, and, what brought him unsteadily to
his legs, the agonized scream of a woman. It echoed through the
house, chilling him, and dwindled to an aching moan.

Something was wrong, he knew that, but it was hard to tell just what.
He must think. What hard work it was to think, too; he'd never
noticed before what a laborious process it was. Probably that
sheriff had got into trouble; he was a fresh guy, anyhow; and he'd
laughed when he first saw Shorty. That settled it. He could get out
of it himself. Evidently it was nothing serious, for there was no
more disturbance above, only confused murmurings. Then a light
showed in the stairs, and again the shuffling of feet came, as four
strange men descended. They were lighted by the sardonic Bailey, and
they dragged a sixth between them, bound and helpless. It was the
sheriff.

Now, what had he been doing to get into such a fix?

The prisoner stood against the wall, white and defiant. He strained
at his bonds silently, while his captors watched his futile
struggles. There was something terrible and menacing in the
quietness with which they gloated--a suggestion of some horror to
come. At last he desisted, and burst forth.

"You've got me all right. You did this, Bailey, you ---- traitor."

"He's never been a traitor, as far as we know," sneered one of the
four. "In fact, I might say he's been strictly on the square with
us."

"I didn't think you made war on women, either, Marsh Tremper, but it
seems you're everything from a dog-thief down. Why couldn't you
fight me alone, in the daylight, like a man?"

"You don't wait till a rattler's coiled before you stamp his head
off," said the former speaker. "It's either you or us, and I reckon
it's you."

So these were the Tremper boys, eh? The worst desperadoes in the
Southwest; and Bailey was their ally. The watcher eyed them, mildly
curious, and it seemed to him that they were as bad a quartette as
rumour had painted--bad, even, for this country of bad men. The
sheriff was a fool for getting mixed up with such people. Shorty
knew enough to mind his own business, anyway, if others didn't. He
was a peaceful man, and didn't intend to get mixed up with outlaws.
His mellow meditations were interrupted by the hoarse speech of the
sherif