f which would be summary
vengeance? A glance at Lane's face reassured him. This young fellow
would be no accomplice at murder. Yet the chill at his heart told him
he was in for serious trouble.

He tried to placate Olson with a smile and made a motion to offer his
hand. The Scandinavian glared at him.

The taxicab swung down Fourteenth, across the viaduct to Lake Place,
and from it to Federal Boulevard.

Hull moistened his lips with his tongue and broke the silence. "Where
we goin'?" he asked at last.

"Where we can talk without bein' overheard," Kirby answered.

The cab ran up the steep slope to Inspiration Point and stopped there.
The men got out.

"Come back for us in half an hour," the cattleman told the driver.

In front and below them lay the beautiful valley of Clear Creek.
Beyond it were the foothills, and back of them the line of the Front
Range stretching from Pike's Peak at the south up to the Wyoming line.
Grey's and Long's and Mount Evans stood out like giant sentinels in the
clear sunshine.

Hull looked across the valley nervously and brought his eyes back with
a jerk. "Well, what's it all about? Whadjawant?"

"I know now why you lied at the inquest about the time you saw me on
the night my uncle was killed," Kirby told him.

"I didn't lie. Maybe I was mistaken. Any man's liable to make a
mistake."

"You didn't make a mistake. You deliberately twisted your story so as
to get me into my uncle's apartment forty minutes or so earlier than I
was. Your reason was a good one. If I was in his rooms at the time he
was shot, that let you out completely. So you tried to lie me into the
death cell at Canon City."

Hull's bandanna was busy. "Nothin' like that. I wouldn't play no such
a trick on any man. No, sir."

"You wouldn't, but you did. Don't stall, Hull. We've got you right."

The rancher from Dry Valley broke in venomously. "You bet we have, you
rotten crook. I'll pay you back proper for that deal you an'
Cunningham slipped over on me. I'm gonna put a rope round yore neck
for it. I sure am. Why, you big fat stiff, I was standin' watchin'
you when you knocked out Cunningham with the butt of yore gun."

From Hull's red face the color fled. He teetered for a moment on the
balls of his feet, then sank limply to the cement bench in front of
him. He tried to gasp out a denial, but the words would not come. In
his throat there was only a dry rattle.

He heard, as from a l