the north. This on the
outside, at a first glance only. For the black scowl he flung at his
partner was so deadly that it seemed to come red-hot from a furnace of
hate and evil passion.

"Run to earth!" he roared. "Thought you'd hole up, you damned fox,
where I wouldn't find you. Thought you'd give Bully West the slip,
you'n' that li'l' hell-cat. Talk about Porcupine Creek, eh? Tried to
send me mushin' over there while you'n' her--"

What the fellow said sent a hot wave creeping over the girl's face to
the roots of her hair. The gambler did not speak, but his eyes, filmed
and wary, never lifted from the other's bloated face.

"Figured I'd forget the ol' whiskey cache, eh? Figured you could gimme
the double-cross an' git away with it? Hell's hinges, Bully West's no
fool! He's forgot more'n you ever knew."

The man swaggered forward, the lash of the whip trailing across the
puncheon floor. Triumph rode in his voice and straddled in his gait.
He stood with his back to the fireplace absorbing heat, hands behind
him and feet set wide. His eyes gloated over the victims he had
trapped. Presently he would settle with both of them.

"Not a word to say for yoreselves, either one o' you," he jeered.
"Good enough. I'll do what talkin' 's needed, then I'll strip the hide
off'n both o' you." With a flirt of the arm he sent the lash of the
dog-whip snaking out toward Jessie.

She shrank back against the wall, needlessly. It was a threat, not an
attack; a promise of what was to come.

"Let her alone." They were the first words Whaley had spoken. In his
soft, purring voice they carried out the suggestion of his crouched
tenseness. If West was the grizzly bear, the other was the forest
panther, more feline, but just as dangerous.

The convict looked at him, eyes narrowed, head thrust forward and
down. "What's that?"

"I said to let her alone."

West's face heliographed amazement. "Meanin'--?"

"Meaning exactly what I say. You'll not touch her."

It was a moment before this flat defiance reached the brain of the big
man through the penumbra of his mental fog. When it did, he strode
across the room with the roar of a wild animal and snatched the girl
to him. He would show whether any one could come between him and his
woman.

In three long steps Whaley padded across the floor. Something cold and
round pressed against the back of the outlaw's tough red neck.

"Drop that whip."

The order came in a low-voiced imperative.