short work of you if they got their hands
on you. Darn your ornery hide, I'm holding the winning cards in this
game!" he concluded excitedly.

Rathburn was smiling at him; and it was not his natural smile. It gave
the justice pause as he looked up into those narrowed gray eyes, shot
with a steel-blue light. Rathburn's right hand and wrist moved with
incredible swiftness, and Brown found himself staring into the black
bore of a six-gun. Still he saw the eyes above the weapon. His face
blanched.

"There are six winning cards in my right hand," Rathburn said slowly.
"You can start shoutin' for those hundred men you mentioned just as
soon as you want. Brown, it's you an' your kind that's made me
desperate--dangerous, like you said in that printed notice. I won't
fool with you or any other man on earth!"

"What--what did you come here for?" stammered the justice.

"To get away from--from back there in that cactus-bordered country of
black, lava hills where I was born an' where I belong!" said Rathburn
grimly, sliding into a chair on the opposite side of the table from
Brown.

"Listen to me! I was driven out. I've ridden for a week with the idea
of gettin' where I wasn't known an' where I could maybe get a fresh
start, and here I find a reward notice staring me in the face from the
top of the first hill I cross after leaving Arizona. I've never been
here before; I've done nothing to molest you or your town; but you sic
the pack on me first off an' hand-running, without any reason, except
that you've _heard_ things about me, I reckon."

Brown nodded his head as Rathburn finished. A measure of composure
returned to him. His eyes gleamed with cunning as he remembered that
his front door was unlocked and some one might by chance come in. But
he again felt troubled as he conjectured what might happen in such
event.

"You cannot blame me," he said to Rathburn. "You've robbed, and you're
a killer----"

"That's what you _hear_?" thundered Rathburn. "I admit several
robberies--holdups of crooked, gambling joints like you've got in this
town, an' petty-larceny bankers who robbed poor stockmen with sanction
of the law. I've killed one man who had it coming to him. But I've
shouldered the blame for every killing an' every robbery that's been
staged in the desert country for the last three years. 'The Coyote did
it,' is what they say, an' the crooks an' gunmen that turned the deal
go free. I'm talking to you, Brown, as man to