ll right, boys," Mead yelled to his friends. "Don't shoot any
more."

"You're a fool, Emerson," Halliday went on, "or you'd give yourself
up, go down to Plumas and clear yourself,--if you can--and have this
thing over with. For we're goin' to get you yet, somehow."

Antone Colorow spurred his horse close to Mead and with all the varied
and virulent execration of which the cow-boy is capable shouted at
him:

"Yes, and if they don't get you, I will! I come after you till I get
you, and I come a-smoking every time! You won't need a trial after I
get through with you! You've done me up, but I'll get even and more
too!"

Mead listened quietly, looking the man in the eye. "Look here," he
said, "what did you reckon would happen to any man who tried to rope
me? Did you think I'd let you-all drag me into camp at your horse's
tail? I'm sorry I had to do that, but I didn't want to kill you. Here,
Jim, you fellows better tie up Antone's wrists." Mead offered his own
handkerchief to help out the bandages, and, suddenly remembering the
whisky flask in his breast pocket, took it out and told the wounded
man to finish its contents.

While this was going on Tuttle and Ellhorn rode up. The rain had
stopped, and through a rift in the eastern clouds the level, red rays
of the sun were shining. Mead met their eager, anxious faces with a
smile.

"It's all right, boys. Jim says the game's off for this morning."

Nick and Tom turned black and scowling looks on Halliday and his
party, and the deputy sheriff, manifestly nervous, rode toward them
with an exaggeratedly genial greeting:

"Howdy, boys! Put up your guns! We ain't goin' to have any gun-fight
this morning."

"How do you know we ain't?" growled Tom.

"Well, Emerson says so," he replied, with an apprehensive glance at
Mead.

"Well," said Nick, "if Emerson says so it's all right. But we've had a
devil of a ride, and we'd like to get square somehow!"

Mead laughed. "You can tally up with Jim, who's going to lose his job
because I'm too mean to let him run me in."

Tuttle and Ellhorn turned grimly joyous faces toward Halliday. "If you
want to arrest Emerson this morning," said Ellhorn, "just begin right
now! We're three to three! Come on now and try it!"

The officer edged his horse away: "I'll wait till the round-up is
over. Then you can't have the excuse that the Fillmore Company's doing
it. But I'll have him yet, and don't you forget it!"

"Just like you got him this