n to the Jailbird," said Billy, Young. "That's where
he hangs out lately."

Lee turned and went out, Carson at his heels, all eyes following him.
In his heart was a blazing, searing rage. And that rage was not for
Quinnion alone. He thought of Judith as he had seen her that very
night, a graceful, gray-eyed slip of a girl, the sweetest little maid
in all of the world known to him--and of how he, brutal in the surge of
love for her, had swept her into his arms, crushed her to him, forced
upon her laughing lips the kiss of his own.

"My God," he said within himself, "I was mad. It would be a good thing
if I got Quinnion to-night--and he got me. Two of a kind," he told
himself sneeringly.

As he made his way down the ill-lighted street, his hat drawn over his
eyes now. Bud Lee for a moment lost sight of the rows of rude
shanties, the drowsing saddle-ponies, the street-lamps, and saw only
the vision of a girl. A girl clean and pure, a girl for a man to kneel
down to in worship, a girl who, as he had seen her last, was a
fairylike creature born of music and soft laughter and starlight, a
maid indescribably sweet. In the harshness of the mood which gripped
him, she seemed to him superlatively adorable; the softness of her eyes
at the moment before he had kissed her haunted him. As he strode on
seeking Quinnion, who had spoken evil of her, he carried her with him
in his heart.

The horrible thing was that her name had already been bandied about
from a ruffian's lips. Lee winced at that even as he had winced at the
remembrance of having been brutally rough with her himself. But what
was past was past; Quinnion had talked and must talk no more.

"He'll start something the minute he sees you," cautioned Carson, his
own revolver loose in the belt under his coat, his hard fingers like
talons gripped about the butt. "Keep your eye peeled, Bud. Better
cool off a speck before you tie into him. You're too mad, I tell you,
for straight, quick shooting."

Lee made no answer. Side by side the two men went on. They had left
the sidewalk and walked down the middle of the rusty, rut-gouged
street. Every man they met, every figure standing in the shadows,
received their quick, measuring looks.

"Most likely," suggested the cattle foreman, "by now he's got drunk an'
gone to sleep it off."

But Lee knew better than that. Quinnion wasn't the sort that got
drunk. He'd drink until the alcohol stirred up all of the evil