stance at which the pursuers
followed.

"I reckon they're gainin' on him," was Sanderson's mental comment when
an hour later he saw the first rider appear for a moment on the sky
line, vanish, reappear for an instant, only to be followed within a few
minutes by the figures of the other men.

Sanderson was closing up the space that separated him from the two men,
and by that medium he knew they were not traveling rapidly, for the
brown horse was loping slowly. Thus he knew that the first man was not
yet aware that he was being followed.

But some time later to Sanderson's ears was borne the faint, muffled
report of a firearm, and he smiled solemnly.

"That first guy will know, now," he told himself. Sanderson kept
steadily on. In half an hour he heard half a dozen rifle reports in
quick succession, He could see the smoke puffs of the weapons, and he
knew the pursuit was over.

The second riders had brought the first to bay in a section of broken
country featured by small, rock-strewn hills. By watching the smoke
balloon upward, Sanderson could determine the location of the men.

It seemed to Sanderson that the two had separated, one swinging
westward and the other eastward, in an endeavor to render hazardous any
concealment the other might find. It was the old game of getting an
enemy between two fires, and Sanderson's lips curved with an
appreciative grin as he noted the fact.

"Old-timers," he said.

It was not Sanderson's affair. He told himself that many times as he
rode slowly forward. To his knowledge the country was cursed with too
many men of the type the two appeared to be; and as he had no doubt
that the other man was of that type also, they would be doing the
country a service were they to annihilate one another.

Sanderson, though, despite his conviction, felt a pulse of sympathy for
the first rider. It was that emotion which impelled him to keep going
cautiously forward when, by all the rules of life in that country, he
should have stood at a distance to allow the men to fight it out among
themselves.

Sanderson's interest grew as the fight progressed. When he had
approached as far as he safely could without endangering his own life
and that of Streak, he dismounted at the bottom of a small hill,
trailed the reins over Streak's head and, carrying his rifle, made his
way stealthily to the crest of the hill. There, concealed behind an
irregularly shaped boulder, he peered at the combatan