. I _thought that it was you_! The
man was dressed as you were dressed, his grey handkerchief even was like
yours. Now I know it was a man named Ben Broderick who robbed me, and
that he wanted me to think that it was you.

"Can't you see the whole scheme? Broderick and the men who are with him,
have been committing these crimes. And pretty soon, in a few days, in
five days I think, they will be ready to make the evidence show that you
are the man who has done it all."

There was more; there were several sheets of paper, closely written.
Thornton saw the names of Henry Pollard, of Cole Dalton. But he read no
further. In one instant the mind which had been so intent upon these
things a girl's writing was telling him forgot Winifred Waverly, Henry
Pollard, Broderick--everything except that which was happening at his
side.

For, while he read, there had been the sharp crack of a revolver, he saw
the spit of angry reddish flame almost at his side, and as he saw he
dropped to his knee, Winifred's note in his left hand, his right
flashing to his own revolver. For his first thought was that a man had
crept up behind him, that it was Pollard, that he was shooting at him.

But almost with the flash and the report of the gun he knew that this
man was not shooting at him. There came the crash and tinkle of broken
glass, one of the small panes of the window beside which Thornton had
been reading dropped out, and almost before the falling pieces had
ceased to rattle against the bare floor he heard the sound of running
footsteps behind him. The man who had fired had made sure with one shot.

Then Thornton heard the Kid cry out, his voice hoarse and inarticulate,
and with the cry came a moan from Charley Bedloe. Charley staggered half
across the room, his two big hands going automatically to his hips. He
had come close to his younger brother, staring at him with wide eyes,
and then slipped forward and down, quiet and limp and dead.

Thornton's one first emotion, one so natural to a man who takes his
fight in the open, was a boundless rage toward the man who had murdered
another man in this cold blooded fashion, taking his grim toll from the
darkness and without warning. He whirled about, his own gun blazing in
his hand, and as fast as his finger could work the trigger sent six
shots after the flying footsteps.

The footsteps were gone. Again the cowboy looked swiftly in at the
window. He saw that Charley Bedloe was dead; the Kid