in the
dull stupor of horror that was on her spirit.

"Go away! Don't touch me! You and your miscreants killed him!" And with
that she flung herself down again, and buried her face from the sight of
him.

He waited doggedly, helpless against her grief and her hatred of him,
but none the less determined to take her with him. Across the border he
would not be a hunted man with a price on his head. They could be
married by a padre in Sonora, and perhaps some day he would make her
love him and forget this man that had come between them. At all events,
he would be her master and would tie her life inextricably to his. He
stooped and caught her shoulder. She had fainted.

A footfall set rolling a pebble. He looked up quickly, and almost of its
own volition, as it seemed, the rifle leaped to both of his hands. A man
stood looking at him across the plateau of the summit. He, too, held a
rifle ready for instant action.

"So it's you!" Healy cried with an oath.

"Have you killed him?"

The outlaw lied, with swift, unblazing passion: "Yes, Buck Weaver, and
tossed his body to the buzzards. Your turn now!"

"Then who is that with you there?"

"The woman you love, the woman that turned you and him down for me,"
taunted his rival. "After I've killed you we're going off to be
married."

"Only a coyote would stand behind a woman's skirts and lie. I can't kill
you there, and you know it."

Healy asked nothing better than an even break. He might have killed with
impunity from where he stood. Yet pantherlike, he swiftly padded six
paces to the left, never lifting his eyes from his antagonist.

Buck waited, motionless. "Are you ready?"

The outlaw's weapon flashed to the level and cracked. Almost
simultaneously the other answered. Weaver felt a bullet fan his cheek,
but he knew that his own had crashed home.

The shock of it swung Healy half round. The man hung in silhouette
against the sky line, then the body plunged to the turf at full length.
Buck moved forward cautiously, fearing a trick, his eyes fastened on the
other. But as he drew nearer he knew it was no ruse. The body lay supine
and inert, as lifeless as the clay upon which it rested.

Once sure of this Buck turned immediately to Phyllis. A faint crackling
of bushes stopped him. He waited, his eyes fixed on the edge of the
precipice from which the sound had come. Next there came to him the
slipping of displaced rubble. He was all eyes and ears, tense and alert