ration the victim of unreadiness had been cherishing.

When the superintendent recrossed to the Celestial corner, Mesa Avenue
was still practically deserted, though the group on the hotel porch had
increased its numbers. Three doors below, in front of Biggs's, a bunch
of saddled cow-ponies gave notice of a fresh accession to the bar-room
crowd which was now overflowing upon the steps and the plank sidewalk.
Lidgerwood's thoughts shuttled swiftly. He argued that a brave man would
neither hurry nor loiter in passing the danger nucleus, and he strove
with what determination there was in him to keep even step with the
reasoned-out resolution.

But once more his weakness tricked him. When the determined stride had
brought him fairly opposite Biggs's door, a man stepped out of the
sidewalk group and calmly pushed him to a stand with the flat of his
hand. It was Rufford, and he was saying quite coolly: "Hold up a
minute, pardner; I'm going to cut your heart out and feed it to that pup
o Schleisinger's that's follerin' you. He looks mighty hungry."

With reason assuring him that the gambler was merely making a
grand-stand play for the benefit of the bar-room crowd wedging itself in
Biggs's doorway, Lidgerwood's lips went dry, and he knew that the
haunting terror was slipping its humiliating mask over his face. But
before he could say or do any fear-prompted thing a diversion came. At
the halting moment a small man, red-haired, and with his cap pulled down
over his eyes, had separated himself from the group of loungers on the
Celestial porch to make a swift detour through the hotel bar, around the
rear of Biggs's, and so to the street and the sidewalk in front. As once
before, and under somewhat less hazardous conditions, he came up behind
Rufford, and again the gambler felt the pressure of cold metal against
his spine.

"It ain't an S-wrench this time, Bart," he said gently, and the crowd on
Biggs's doorstep roared its appreciation of the joke. Then: "Keep your
hands right where they are, and side-step out o' Mr. Lidgerwood's
way--that's business." And when the superintendent had gone on: "That's
all for the present, Bart. After I get a little more time and ain't so
danged busy I'll borrow another pair o' clamps from Hepburn and take you
back to Copah. So long."

By all the laws of Angelic procedure, Judson should have been promptly
shot in the back when he turned and walked swiftly down the avenue to
overtake the superint