napped the padlock, and threw the key into the distance. Then
he stepped back and surveyed his work with satisfaction. It would be a
pretty job to file through that chain, or to knock down those ponderous
rails of the fence and make a gap. A smile of satisfaction came on the
face of Buck Daniels, then, hitching at his belt, and pulling his
sombrero lower over his eyes, he started once more to find Dan Barry.

He was more in haste now, for the sun was dipping behind the mountains
of the west and the long shadows moved along the ground with a
perceptible speed. When he reached the street he found a steady drift of
people towards O'Brien's barroom. They came by ones and twos and idled
in front of the swinging doors or slyly peeked through them and then
whispered one to the other. Buck accosted one of those by the door and
asked what was wrong.

"He's in there," said the other, with a broad and excited grin. "He's in
there--waitin'!"

And when Buck threw the doors wide he saw, at the farther end of the
deserted barroom, Dan Barry, seated at a table braiding a small
horsehair chain. His hat was pushed far back on his head; he had his
back to the door. Certainly he must be quite unaware that all
Brownsville was waiting, breathless, for his destruction. Behind the bar
stood O'Brien, pale under his bristles, and his eyes never leaving the
slender figure at the end of his room; but seeing Buck he called with
sudden loudness: "Come in, stranger. Come in and have one on the house.
There ain't nothing but silence around this place and it's getting on my
nerves."

Buck Daniels obeyed the invitation at once, and behind him, stepping
softly, some of them entering with their hats in their hands and on
tiptoe, came a score of the inhabitants of Brownsville. They lined the
bar up and down its length; not a word was spoken; but every head turned
as at a given signal towards the quiet man at the end of the room.

CHAPTER XVI

THE COMING OF NIGHT

It was not yet full dusk, for the shadows were still swinging out from
the mountains and a ghost of colour lingered in the west, but midnight
lay in the open eyes of Jerry Strann. There had been no struggle, no
outcry, no lifting of head or hand. One instant his eyes were closed,
and then, indeed, he looked like death; the next instant the eyes open,
he smiled, the wind stirred in his bright hair. He had never seemed so
happily alive as in the moment of his death. Fatty Matthews he