and me! Didn't he creep into your house so as to sell you out when
he got the goods? Hasn't he lied from start to finish?"

"Maybe so. But he has no proof against us yet. We'll kick him out of
the park. I'm not going to have his blood on my conscience. That's
flat, Jess."

The eyes in the bloodless face of the other man glittered, but he put a
curb on his passion. "What about me, Hal? I've waited half a lifetime
and now my chance has come. Have you forgot who made me the misshaped
thing I am? I haven't. I'll go through hell to fix Beaudry's cub the
way he did me." His voice shook from the bitter intensity of his
feeling.

Rutherford paced up and down the room in a stress of sentiency. "No,
Jess. I know just how you feel, but I'm going to give this kid his
chance. We gunned Beaudry because he wouldn't let us alone. Either he
or a lot of us had to go. But I'll say this. I never was satisfied
with the way we did it. When Jack Beaudry shot you up, he was fighting
for his life. We attacked him. You got no right to hold it against
his son."

"I don't ask you to come in. I'll fix his clock all right."

"Nothing doing. I won't have it." Rutherford, by a stroke of
strategy, carried the war into the country of the other. "I gave way
to you about Dingwell, though I hated to try that Indian stuff on him.
He's a white man. I've always liked him. It's a rotten business."

"What else can you do? We daren't turn him loose. You don't want to
gun him. There is nothing left but to tighten the thumbscrews."

"It won't do any good," protested the big man with a frown. "He's
game. He'll go through. . . . And if it comes to a showdown, I won't
have him starved to death."

Tighe looked at him through half-hooded, cruel eyes. "He'll weaken.
Another day or two will do it. Don't worry about Dingwell."

"There's not a yellow streak in him. You haven't a chance to make him
quit." Rutherford took another turn up and down the room diagonally.
"I don't like this way of fighting. It's--damnable, man! I won't have
any harm come to Dave or to the kid either. I stand pat on that, Jess."

The man with the crutches swallowed hard. His Adam's apple moved up
and down like an agitated thermometer. When he spoke it was in a
smooth, oily voice of submission, but Rutherford noticed that the
rapacious eyes were hooded.

"What you say goes, Hal. You're boss of this round-up. I was jest
telling you how it loo