iting
with weapons extended. Then Vorse clutched at his breast, muttered
thickly and toppled over full length on the floor.

The sharp pungent smell of powder smoke mingled with the reek of
liquor.

"He's dead," Madden said.

"Yes."

"Are you hit?"

"No. His bullet went past my hip; he never got his gun up."

Madden glanced about towards the rear of the room. A command for
Sorenson to stop broke from his lips. Next he fired. And Weir swinging
his look that way saw Sorenson's form, untouched by the bullet,
vanishing through the rear door into the night. Using the minute that
the two men's surveillance had been lifted he had escaped.

"Hard luck when we had him," Weir growled.

"He can't get away."

"I'm not so sure. And he's armed."

"He'll strike for home to get his car."

"Or to the office for money," Weir exclaimed.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE FOURTH MAN

A last look Steele Weir had at the dead man on the floor before he
turned to go in search of Sorenson. Not so astute or crafty as Judge
Gordon, nor so intelligent as Sorenson, nor so belligerent as
Burkhardt, he had been as rapacious and infinitely more cool-minded
than any of the three. If anything, he was the one of them all to
proceed to a crime, whether fraud or murder, in sheer cold blood and
by natural craving. No uneasy conscience would have ever disturbed his
rest: no remorse or pity ever stirred in his breast. He was the human
counterpart of a bird of prey.

Well, he was dead now. Three of the quartette who had been joined by
avarice and lawless actions were taken care of--Burkhardt a prisoner,
Gordon dead by self-administered poison, Vorse by bullets. Almost did
Steele Weir feel himself an embodiment of Fate, clipping the strands
of these men's power and lives as with shears. Sorenson alone remained
to be dealt with and his freedom should be short.

Beckoning Madden, he went swiftly through the door where the cattleman
had leaped into the shadows. Where the gloom ceased and the space
behind the row of store buildings was clear in the moonlight, nothing
was to be seen. Naturally the man had kept within black shade in his
flight.

When they reached the rear of the cattle company's office building,
they peered in through its barred back windows, but all was dark
inside the structure so far as they could determine. To all appearance
Sorenson had not stopped here: it was quiet, gloomy, untenanted.

"We'll have to try his home now," the s