in his hand, drawn while he tumbled. It spat
fire, and Sliver Waldron staggered forward drunkenly, waved both his
armed hands as if he were trying to talk by signal, and pitched on his
face into the dust.

The fourth man had died for Grey Molly.

No gun was destined for Gus Reeve, however. Black Bart had left the
lifeless body of his victim and was darting towards the third man; the
master was on his knee, raising his gun for the last shot; but Gus Reeve
was blind to all that had happened. He saw only the black stallion,
the matchless prize of horseflesh. He tossed a loop in the taut rope
to entangle a bind foot, but that slackening of the line gave Satan his
instant's purchase, and a moment later he was on his feet, whirled, and
two iron-hard hoofs crushed the whole framework of the man's chest like
an egg-shell. The impact lifted him from his feet, but before that body
struck the ground the life was fled from it. The fifth man had died for
Grey Molly.

Chapter XXIII. Bad News

News of the Killing at Alder, as they call that night's slaughter to
this day in the mountain-desert, traveled swiftly, and lost nothing of
bulk and burden on the way; so that two days later, when Lee Haines went
down for mail to the wretched little village in the valley, he heard the
store-keeper retailing the story to an awe-stricken group. How the tale
had crossed all the wild mountains which lay between in so brief a space
no man could say, but first there ran a whisper and then a stir, and
then half a dozen men came in at once, each with an elaboration of the
theme more horrible than the last. The store-keeper culled the choicest
fragments from every version, strung them together with a narrative of
his own fertile invention, polished off the tale by a few rehearsals in
his home, and then placed his product on the open market. The very first
day he kept the store-room well filled from dawn until dark.

And this was the creation to which Lee Haines had to listen, impatient,
sifting the chaff from the grains of truth. Down upon Alder, exactly
at midnight, had ridden a cavalcade headed by that notorious,
half-legendary man-slayer, Dan Barry--Whistling Dan. While his crew of
two-score hardened ruffians held the doors and the windows with leveled
rifles, Barry had entered with a gun and a wolf--a wild wolf, and had
butchered ten men, wantonly. To add to the mystery, there was no motive
of robbery for the crime. One sweeping visitation o