to assure their escape!"

At first MacRae had looked puzzled, at a loss. Then under the lash of
Lessard's bitter tongue the dull red stole up into his weather-browned
cheeks, glowed there an instant and receded, leaving his face white
under the tan. His left hand was at its old, familiar trick--fingers
shut tight over the thumb till the cords stood tense between the
knuckles and wrist--a never-failing sign that internally he was close to
the boiling-point, no matter how calm he appeared on the surface. And
when Lessard flung out that last unthinkable accusation, the explosion
came.

"You lie, you----!" MacRae spoke in a cold impersonal tone, and only the
flat strained note betrayed his feeling; but the term applied to Lessard
was one to make a man's ears burn; it was the range-riders' gauntlet
thrown squarely in an enemy's face. "You lie when you say that, and you
know you lie. I don't know your object, but I call your bluff--you--you
blasted insect!"

Lessard, if he had been blind till then, saw what was patent to me--that
he had gone a bit too far, that the man he had baited so savagely was
primed to kill him if he made a crooked move. MacRae leaned forward, his
gray eyes twin coals, the thumb of his right hand hooked suggestively in
the cartridge-belt, close by the protruding handle of his six-shooter.
They were a well-matched pair; iron-nerved, both of them, the sort of
men to face sudden death open-eyed and unafraid.

A full minute they glared at each other across the desk corner. Then
Lessard, without moving a muscle or altering his steady gaze, spoke to
Dobson.

"Call the orderly," he said quietly.

Dobson, mouth agape, struck a little bell on the desk and the orderly
stepped in from the outer room.

"Orderly, disarm Sergeant MacRae."

Lessard uttered the command evenly, without a jarring note, his tone
almost a duplicate of MacRae's. He was a good judge of men, that
eagle-faced major; he knew that the slightest move with hostile intent
would mean a smoking gun. MacRae would have shot him dead in his tracks
if he'd tried to reach a weapon. But a man who is really game--which no
one who knew him could deny MacRae--won't, _can't_ shoot down another
unless that other shows _fight_; and a knowledge of that gun-fighters'
trait saved Major Lessard's hide from being thoroughly punctured that
day.

The orderly, a rather shaky orderly if the truth be told (I think he
must have listened through the keyhole!) st