nd Thornton followed at his heels. In this
fashion they came to the door of Pollard's study and saw through it,
since it had been flung wide open and so left.

In a far corner of the room was Winifred Waverly, her face dead white,
her body pressed tight into the angle of the walls, her hands twisting
before her, her eyes going swiftly to the two entering figures from that
other figure which had held her fascinated. Upon the floor, just rising,
knelt Ben Broderick. He had tossed a rug aside and had lifted out the
short sections of half a dozen strips of flooring, disclosing a rude
wooden vault below. Here was the accumulation of loot, here where the
Kid had known Broderick was to be found.

For a very brief yet electrically vital and vivid moment there was no
sound in the room, wherein never a single muscle twitched. And then
there were no words and only three sharp pistol shots. Broderick had
seen what lay in the Kid's eye, a look to be read by any man; he had
snatched his gun up from the floor beside him and had fired, point
blank. There is no name for the brief fragment of time between his shot
and the Kid's. But Ben Broderick had shot true to the mark, and the Kid
was sinking; Bedloe's bullet had gone wide.... And then the third shot,
Thornton's ... and as the two men fell, Kid Bedloe and Ben Broderick,
they pitched forward toward the centre of the room and the big body of
the Kid lay across the body of Ben Broderick. As the Kid died his eyes
were upon Thornton, and in them was a look of content and of gratitude!

"Again he tried to kiss me.... He is all brute. He ... he told me you
were dead.... Oh, dear God, dear God!" cried the girl, shrinking back,
covering her face with her hands.

Thornton, his face set and white and grave, came to her. She was
trembling so that he put his arm about her. She sobbed and caught at him
as a child might have done. His arm tightened, holding her closer.

"Let me take you away," he said gently.

With never a look back to see what long hoarded booty there in the hole
in the floor had drawn Ben Broderick back to Pollard's house, he turned
and with his arm still about her, led the girl from the room, from the
house and out to his horse at the fence. She moaned again and drooped
against him. He gathered her up into his arms tenderly. And with a
tenderness which was to become part of the man, he held her close while
he swung slowly into the saddle.

"Winifred Waverly...." he began.