. The muzzle of Chadron's pistol was
still in the leather when Macdonald's weapon was leveled at his eyes.

"Drop that gun!"

A moment Chadron's arm hung stiffly in that half-finished movement,
while his eyes gave defiance. He had not bent before any man in many a
year of growing power. But there was no other way; it was either bend
or break, and the break would be beyond repair.

Chadron's fingers were damp with sudden sweat as he unclasped them
from the pistol-butt and let the weapon fall; sweat was on his
forehead, and a heaviness on his chest as if a man sat on him. He felt
backwards through the open door with one foot, like an old man
distrustful of his limbs, and steadied himself with his shoulder
against the jamb, for there was a trembling in his knees. He knew that
he had saved himself from the drop into eternal inconsequence by the
shading of a second, for there was death in dusty Alan Macdonald's
face. The escape left Chadron shaken, like a man who has held himself
away from death by his finger-ends at the lip of a ledge.

"I knowed you'd git me, Macdonald," Thorn repeated. "You don't need no
handcuffs nor nothin' for me. I'll go along with you as gentle as a
fish."

Macdonald indicated that Thorn might lower his arms, having taken
possession of the rifle. "Have you got a horse?" he asked.

Thorn said that he had one in the hotel stable. "But don't you try to
take me too fur, Macdonald," he advised. "Chadron he'll ride a streak
to git his men together and try to take me away from you--I could see
it in his eye when he went out of that door."

Macdonald knew that Thorn had read Chadron's intentions right. He
nodded, to let him know that he understood the cattleman's motives.

"Well, don't you run me off to no private rope party, neither,
Macdonald, for I can tell you things that many a man'd pay me big
money to keep my mouth shut on."

"You'll have a chance, Thorn."

"But I want it done in the right way, so's I'll git the credit and the
fame."

Macdonald was surprised to find this man, whose infamous career had
branded him as the arch-monster of modern times, so vain and
garrulous. He could account for it by no other hypothesis than that
much killing had indurated the warped mind of the slayer until the
taking of a human life was to him a commonplace. He was not capable of
remorse, any more than he had been disposed to pity. He was not a man,
only the blighted and cursed husk of a man, indeed, but