e a
smile grow on his ashen face.

"Another minute, Dan, and I'll tell a man you've forgotten me."

Barry pivoted suddenly as though uneasy at finding something behind him,
and Daniels winced.

"Hello, Buck. Didn't see you was here. Lee Haines? Lee, this is fine."

He passed from one to the other and his handshake was only the elusive
passage of his fingers through their palms. Haines shrugged his
shoulders to get rid of a weight that clung to him; a touch of color
came back to his face.

"Look here, Dan. If you're afraid that gang may trail you here and start
raising the devil--how many are there?"

"Five."

"I'm as good with a gun as I ever was in the old days. So is Buck.
Partner, let's make the show down together. Stick here with Kate and
Joan and Buck and I will help you hold the fort. Don't look at me like
that. I mean it. Do you think I've forgotten what you did for me that
night in Elkhead? Not in a thousand years. Dan, I'd rather make my last
play here than any other place in the world. Let 'em come! We'll salt
them down and plant them where they won't grow."

As he talked the pallor quite left him, and the fighting fire blazed
in his eyes, he stood lion-like, his feet spread apart as if to meet
a shock, his tawny head thrown back, and there was about him a
hair-trigger sensitiveness, in spite of his bulk, a nervousness of hand
and coldness of glance which characterizes the gun-fighter. Buck Daniels
stepped closer, without a word, but one felt that he also had walked
into the alliance. As Barry watched them the yellow which swirled in his
eyes flickered away for a moment.

"Why, gents," he murmured, "they ain't any call for trouble. The posse?
What's that got to do with me? Our accounts are all squared up."

The two stared dumbly.

"They killed Grey Molly; I killed one of them."

"A horse--for a man?" repeated Lee Haines, breathing hard.

"A life for a life," said Dan simply. "They got no call for
complainin'."

Glances of wonder, glances of meaning, flashed back and forth from
Haines to Buck.

"Well, then," said the latter, and he took in Kate with a caution from
the corner of his eye, "if that's the case, let's sit down and chin for
a minute."

Dan stood with his head bowed a little, frowning; two forces pulled him,
and Kate leaned against the wall off in the shadow with her eyes closed,
waiting, waiting, waiting through the crisis.

"I'd like to stay and chin with you, Buck--but, I got