re streaky, blurred
patches of light. But the sky above was brighter. Dawn was not far off.

To the west all was dark. With infinite care and implacable spirit
and waning strength Duane shoved the plank along, and when at last he
discerned the black border of bank it came in time, he thought, to save
him. He crawled out, rested till the gray dawn broke, and then headed
north through the willows.

CHAPTER XIII

How long Duane was traveling out of that region he never knew. But he
reached familiar country and found a rancher who had before befriended
him. Here his arm was attended to; he had food and sleep; and in a
couple of weeks he was himself again.

When the time came for Duane to ride away on his endless trail his
friend reluctantly imparted the information that some thirty miles
south, near the village of Shirley, there was posted at a certain
cross-road a reward for Buck Duane dead or alive. Duane had heard of
such notices, but he had never seen one. His friend's reluctance and
refusal to state for what particular deed this reward was offered roused
Duane's curiosity. He had never been any closer to Shirley than this
rancher's home. Doubtless some post-office burglary, some gun-shooting
scrape had been attributed to him. And he had been accused of worse
deeds. Abruptly Duane decided to ride over there and find out who wanted
him dead or alive, and why.

As he started south on the road he reflected that this was the first
time he had ever deliberately hunted trouble. Introspection awarded him
this knowledge; during that last terrible flight on the lower Nueces
and while he lay abed recuperating he had changed. A fixed, immutable,
hopeless bitterness abided with him. He had reached the end of his rope.
All the power of his mind and soul were unavailable to turn him back
from his fate.

That fate was to become an outlaw in every sense of the term, to be
what he was credited with being--that is to say, to embrace evil. He
had never committed a crime. He wondered now was crime close to him? He
reasoned finally that the desperation of crime had been forced upon
him, if not its motive; and that if driven, there was no limit to his
possibilities. He understood now many of the hitherto inexplicable
actions of certain noted outlaws--why they had returned to the scene
of the crime that had outlawed them; why they took such strangely fatal
chances; why life was no more to them than a breath of wind; why they
rode