wpuncher, "if I save my hoss's wind I may be
saving my own life."

Where the trail bent like an elbow and shot sheer down for the plain
and Sour Creek, Riley Sinclair pointed his horse's nose up to the
taller mountains, but Jig sat his horse in melancholy silence and
looked mournfully up at his companion.

"So long," said Sinclair cheerily. "And when you get down yonder, it'll
happen most likely that pretty soon you'll hear a lot of hard things
about Riley Sinclair."

"If I do--if I hear a syllable against you," cried the schoolteacher
with a flare of color, "I'll--I'll drive the words back into their
teeth!"

He shook with his emotion; Riley Sinclair shook with controlled
laughter.

"Would you do all of that, partner? Well, I believe you'd try. What I
mean to say is this: No matter what they say, you can lay to it that
Sinclair has tried to play square and clean according to his own
lights, which ain't always the best in the world. So long!"

There was no answer. He found himself looking down into the quivering
face of the schoolteacher.

"Why, kid, you look all busted up!"

"Riley," gasped Jig very faintly, "I can't go!"

"And why not?"

"Because I can't meet Jude."

"Cartwright, eh? But you got to, sooner or later."

"I'll die first."

"Would your nerve hold you up through that?"

"So easily," said Jig. There was such a simple gravity and despair in
his expression that Sinclair believed it. He grunted and stared hard.

"This Cartwright gent is worse'n death to you?"

"A thousand, thousand times!"

"How come?"

"I can't tell you."

"I kind of wish," said Sinclair thoughtfully, "that I'd kept my grip a
mite longer."

"No, no!"

"You don't wish him dead?"

Jig shuddered.

"You plumb beat me, partner. And now you want to come along with me?"
Sinclair grinned. "An outlaw's life ain't what it's cracked up to be,
son. You'd last about a day doing what I have to do."

"You'll find," said the schoolteacher eagerly, "that I can stand it
amazingly well. I'll--I'll be far, far stronger than you expect!"

"Somehow I kind of believe it. But it's for your own fool sake, son,
that I don't want you along."

"Let me try," pleaded Jig eagerly.

The other shook his head and seemed to change his mind in the very
midst of the gesture.

"Why not?" he asked himself. "You'll get enough of it inside of a day.
And then you'll find out that they's some things about as bad as
death--or Cartwright. Come on