r shadows of the gulch.

'Come ahead when you're ready,' he retorted. 'I can see you fine up
there against the skyline. Start it going any time, Monte.'

His was the position of a man in desperate need for action and with
little enough scope for his desire. But he had the hope that
Longstreet and Pony Lee might possibly have been the first at the
court-house; were that to prove to be the case and were he on the
ground when they came in the morning, he would in the end have
prevented a tangle and the long delay and intricate trouble of
dispossessing Courtot's agents. Further, his mood was one in which he
would have been glad to have Monte 'start it going.'

Monte and his companions spoke quietly among themselves a second time.
Then, with never another word to him, they withdrew and disappeared.
An immense silence shut down about him. He knew that they had not gone
far and that they would be heard from before long. For they were not
the men to let go so easily. But Monte Devine, plainly the brains of
the crowd, was a cool hand who played as safe a game as circumstances
allowed.

He sat down with his back to a fallen boulder. He was thinking that
perhaps they were waiting for the dawn; by daylight they would have all
the best of it and might close in on him from three sides. But when
the night wind blowing up the gulch brought him the smell of dead
leaves burning, when he saw a quick tongue of flame on one bank and
then another, like a reflection in a mirror, on the other bank, he
understood. It was like a Monte Devine play. Presently the dry grass
would be burning all along the draw; the flames would sweep by him and
in their light he would stand forth as in the light of day. Then, if
there were a single rifle among the three men, he would have not so
much as a chance to fight. Even if they had nothing but revolvers, the
odds were all on their side.

And it was like Jim Courtot's play, too, to clear out and leave his
agents to deal with the man he hated. All in the world that Courtot
ever wanted was to win; the means were nothing. If his enemy went down
by another man's bullet than his own, so much the better for Jim
Courtot, who had always enough to answer for as it was.

'This belongs to Helen Longstreet,' Howard told himself steadily. 'I
am going to hold it for her if it's in the cards.'

He withdrew a little further. Then, with a sudden inspiration, he
clambered silently up the sloping bank.