erick had never drawn to himself the epithet of coward. But now he
knew what he was doing, where wisdom pointed and what was his one
chance. There was still a good fifty yards between him and the man who
rode down upon him, a long shot for a revolver when the horses which
both men bestrode were rearing and plunging wildly. Broderick bent
forward suddenly, whirled his horse, drove his spurs deep into the
grey's sides and in a flash had cleared the fallen log, shot around the
bend in the road and, taking his desperate chance with all of the cool
defiance of danger which was a part of the man, sent his mount leaping
down the steepening bank, into the willow thicket and on across.
Shouting mightily and wrathfully, after him came Buck Thornton. But
Broderick had the few yards' headstart and, for the moment his destiny
was with him. Thornton saw only a thicket of willows wildly disturbed as
Broderick went threshing through them and knew that for the present at
least Broderick was beyond pursuit.

Swinging about angrily he rode back to join Comstock. Already the battle
there in the canon was over, the smell of powder was gone from the still
air, the last reverberating echo of a shot had died away. And in the
road lay three men, two of them severely wounded while the other was
already dead. Stooping over this man, a queer look in his eyes, stood
Comstock.

"I hankered to bring him in alive," he muttered. "But, after all it's
just as well. And it had to be him or me."

"Pollard?" asked Thornton quickly. But Comstock shook his head. Then
Thornton, riding close, looking down from the saddle, saw the white
upturned face. This time as his eyes came back to Comstock, Comstock
nodded.

"Cole Dalton, sheriff," he said gravely. "Yes. And he's the man I came
all this way to gather in, Buck. I've been after him for seven years,
never guessing until lately that he was out here working the old Henry
Plummer game of sheriff and badman at the same time. He's kept under
cover, that being always his way; you'd never have thought that Pollard,
Broderick, Bedloe were all tools.... But, I got him, Buck. At last."

A moment only Thornton stared incredulously. Then his shoulders twitched
as though this was a matter which could not concern him at present and
he had other things to think of.

"Pollard?" he asked shortly.

"Over yonder." Comstock nodded toward the patch of brush on the
mountainside. "Shot through the head."

"And the others?