ced that you
did have a hand in it. What I want to say to you is this:

"Sanderson and Nyland are running maverick around the country tonight.
Nyland has killed Maison and is hunting for Dale. Sanderson and his
men have cleaned up the bunch of guys that went out this morning to
wipe Sanderson out. And Sanderson is looking for Dale. And after he
gets Dale he'll come for you, for he's seeing red, for sure.

"I ain't interfering. This is one of the times when the law don't see
anything--and don't want to see anything. I won't touch Nyland for
killing Maison, and I won't lay a finger on Sanderson if he shoots the
gizzard out of you. There's a train out of here in fifteen minutes. I
give you your chance--take the train or take your chance with
Sanderson!"

"I'll take the train," declared Silverthorn.

Fifteen minutes later, white and scared, he was sitting in a coach,
cringing far back into one of the seats, cursing, for it seemed to him
that the train would never start.

CHAPTER XXXIV

A MAN GETS A SQUARE DEAL

Dale did not miss Ben Nyland by more than a few hundred yards as he
passed through the neck of the basin. But the men could not see each
other in the black shadows cast by the somber mountains that guarded
the entrance to the basin, and so they sped on, one headed away from
Okar and one toward it, each man nursing his bitter thoughts; one
intent on killing and the other riding to escape the death that, he
felt, was imminent.

Dale reached the Bar D and pulled the saddle and bridle from his horse.
He caught up a fresh animal, threw saddle and bridle on him, and then
ran into the house to get some things that he thought might be valuable
to him.

He came out again, and nervously paused on the threshold of the door to
listen.

A sound reached his ears--the heavy drumming of a horse's hoofs on the
hard sand in the vicinity of the ranchhouse; and Dale gulped down his
fear as he ran to his horse, threw himself into the saddle and raced
around a corner of the house.

He had hardly vanished into the gloom of the night when another rider
burst into view.

The second rider was Sanderson. He did not halt Streak at the door of
the Bar D ranchhouse, for from a distance he had seen a man throw
himself upon a horse and dash away, and he knew of no man in the basin,
except Dale, who would find it necessary to run from his home in that
fashion.

So he kept Streak in the dead run he had been in when