e suggested. "Molly has been beatin' us all
day and she looks like she's fightin' us still."

The sheriff was not a man of very many words, and surely of little
sentiment; perhaps it was the heat of the long chase which now made
him take off his hat so that the air could reach his sweaty forehead.
"Gents," he said, "she lived game and she died game. But they ain't no
use of wastin' that saddle. Take it off."

And that was Grey Molly's epitaph.

They decided to head straight back for the nearest town with the body of
Harry Fisher, and, fagged by the desperate riding of that day, they let
their horses go with loose rein, at a walk. Darkness gathered; the last
light faded from even the highest peaks; the last tinge of color dropped
out of the sky as they climbed from the valley. Now and then one of the
horses cleared its nostrils with a snort, but on the whole they went in
perfect silence with the short grass silencing the hoofbeats, and never
a word passed from man to man.

Beyond doubt, if it had not been for that same silence, if it had not
been for the slowness with which they drifted through the dark,
what follows could never have happened. They had crossed a hill, and
descended into a very narrow ravine which came to so sharp a point that
the horses had to be strung out in single file. The ravine twisted to
the right and then the last man of the procession heard the sheriff
call: "Halt, there! Up with your hands, or I'll drill you!" When they
swung from side to side, craning their heads to look, they made out a
shadowy horseman facing Pete head on. Then the sheriff's voice again:
"Gregg, I'm considerable glad to meet up with you."

If that meeting had taken place in any other spot probably Gregg would
have taken his chance on escaping through the night, but in this narrow
pass he could swing to neither side and before he could turn the brown
horse entirely around the sheriff might pump him full of lead. They
gathered in a solemn quiet around him; the irons were already upon his
wrists.

"All right, boys," he said, "you've got me, but you'll have to give in
that you had all the luck."

A moment after that sharp command in the familiar, dreaded voice of Pete
Glass, Vic had been glad that the lone flight was over. Eventually this
was bound to come. He would go back and face the law, and three men
lived to swear that Blondy had gone after his gun first.

"Maybe luck," said the sheriff. "How d' you come back th