if you did get off wrong. I'll remember what you did--for her. Is
there anything we can do for you?"

Goodell shook his head. "I tell you," he said, and turned his head to
look wistfully up at the eastern coulee-rim, all tinted with the blazing
sunset. "I'll go out over the hills with the shadows. An hour--maybe
two. It's my time. I've no complaint to make. All I want is a drink. You
can do no good for a dead man; and the living are sorely in need. It'll
be a bit lonesome, that's all."

"No message for anybody?" MacRae persisted.

"No--yes!" The old mocking, reckless tone crept into his voice again.
"If you should have speech with Lessard before you put his light out,
tell him I go to prepare a place for him--a superheated grid! Now
drift--_vamos_--hit the trail. Remember, the gorge at the mouth of Sage
Creek. Good-by."

Soberly we filed out from among the trees, now swaying in the grip of
the wind, their leafy boughs rustling sibilantly; as though the weird
sisters whispered in the nodding branches that here was another thread
full-spun and ready for the keen shears. Soberly we swung to the saddle
and rode slowly away, lest the quick beat of hoofs should bring a sudden
pang of loneliness to the intrepid soul calmly awaiting death under the
shivering trees. I think that one bold effort to right a wrong will
more than wipe out the black score against him when the Book of Life is
balanced.

A little way beyond the poplar-grove Piegan drew rein, and held up one
hand.

"Poor devil," he muttered. "He's a-calling us."

But he wasn't. He was fighting off the chill of loneliness that comes to
the strongest of us when we face the unknowable, the empty void that
there is no escaping. Dying there in the falling dusk, he was singing to
himself as an Indian brave chants his death-song when the red flame of
the torture-fire bites into his flesh.

Sing heigh, sing ho, for the Cavalier!
Sing heigh, sing ho, for the Crown.
Gentlemen all, turn out, turn out;
We'll keep these Roundheads down!
Down--down--down--down.
We'll ke--ep these Round--heads down!

Once--twice, the chorus of that old English Royalist song rose up out of
the grove. Then it died away, and we turned to go. And as we struck home
the spurs, remembering the mouth of Sage Creek and the dark that was
closing down, a six-shooter barked sharply, back among the trees.

I swung my horse around in his tracks and raced him back to the poplars,
knowi