and Lone bumped into them
from behind. A man had risen up from the campfire and faced them, his
hands rising slowly, palms outward.

"Warfield, by----!" Al blurted in his outraged astonishment. "Trailing
me with a bunch, are yuh? I knew you'd double-cross your own father--but
I never thought you had it in you to do it in the open. Damn yuh, what
d'yuh want that you expect to get?"

Warfield stared at him, slack-jawed. He glanced furtively behind him at
Swan, and found that guileless youth ready to poke him in the back with
the muzzle of a gun. Lone, he observed, had another. He looked back at
Al, whose eyes were ablaze with resentment. With an effort he smiled his
disarming, senatorial smile, but Al's next words froze it on his face.

"I think I know the play you're making, but it won't get you anything,
Bill Warfield. You think I slipped up--and you told me not to let my
foot slip; said you'd hate to lose me. Well, you're the one that
slipped, you damned, rotten coward. I was watching out for leaks. I
stopped two, and this one----"

He glanced down at Lorraine, who sat beside the fire, a blanket tied
tightly around her waist and her ankles, so that, while comfortably
free, she could make no move to escape.

"I was fixing to stop _her_ from telling all she knew," he added
harshly. "By to-night I'd have had her married to me, you damned fool.
And here you've blocked everything for me, afraid I was falling down on
my job!

"Now folks, lemme just tell you a few little things. I know my
limit--you've got me dead to rights. I ain't complaining about that; a
man in my game expects to get his, some day. But I ain't going to let
the man go that paid me my wages and a bonus of five hundred dollars
for every man I killed that he wanted outa the way.

"Hawkins knows that's a fact. He's foreman of the Sawtooth, and he knows
the agreement. I've got to say for Hawkins that aside from stealing
cattle off the nesters and helping make evidence against some that's in
jail, Hawkins never done any dirty work. He didn't have to. They paid
_me_ for that end of the business.

"I killed Fred Thurman--this girl, here, saw me shoot him. And it was
when I told Warfield I was afraid she might set folks talking that he
began to get cold feet. Up to then everything was lovely, but Warfield
began to crawfish a little. We figured--_we_ figured, emphasize the
_we_, folks,--that the Quirt would have to be put outa business. We knew
if the gir