or him. The older man had
come along to save Tom Morse from prison and for no other reason. He
did not intend to be swept into indiscriminate crime.

"Don't go with me, Bully," Stearns said. "Count me out. Right here's
where I head for Whoop-Up."

He turned his horse's head and rode into the darkness.

West looked after him, cursing. "We're better off without the
white-livered coyote," he said at last.

"Brad ain't so fur off at that. I'd like blame well to be moseyin' to
Whoop-Up my own self," Gosse said uneasily.

"You'll stay right here an' go through with this job, Harv," West
told him flatly. "All you boys'll do just that. If any of you's got
a different notion we'll settle that here an' now. How about it?" He
straddled up and down in front of his men, menacing them with knotted
fists and sulky eyes.

Nobody cared to argue the matter with him. He showed his broken teeth
in a sour grin.

"Tha's settled, then," he went on. "It's my say-so. My orders go--if
there's no objections."

His outthrust head, set low on the hunched shoulders, moved from right
to left threateningly as his gaze passed from one to another. If there
were any objections they were not mentioned aloud.

"Now we know where we're at," he continued. "It'll be thisaway. Most
of us will scatter out an' fire at the rocks from the front here; the
others'll sneak round an' come up from behind--get right into the
rocks before this bully-puss fellow knows it. If you get a chance,
plug him in the back, but don't hurt the Injun girl. Y' understand? I
want her alive an' not wounded. If she gets shot up, some one's liable
to get his head knocked off."

But it did not, after all, turn out quite the way West had planned it.
He left out of account one factor--a man among the rocks who had been
denied a weapon and any part in the fighting.

The feint from the front was animated enough. The attackers scattered
and from behind clumps of brush grass and bushes poured in a fire that
kept the defenders busy. Barney, with the half-breeds and the Indian
at heel, made a wide circle and crept up to the red sandstone
outcroppings. He did not relish the job any more than those behind
him did, but he was a creature of West and usually did as he was told
after a bit of grumbling. It was not safe for him to refuse.

To Tom Morse, used to Bully West and his ways, the frontal attack did
not seem quite genuine. It was desultory and ineffective. Why? What
trick did Bul