Pardaloe."

"Say what you have got to say, Jim."

"The only job I could get in the Gap was with old Duke Morgan--I've
been working for him, off and on, and spending the rest of my time
with Gale and Dave Sassoon. There were three men in the barn-burning.
Dave Sassoon put up the job."

"Where is Dave Sassoon now?"

"Dead."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean what I say."

Both men were silent for a moment.

"Yesterday morning's fight?" asked de Spain reluctantly.

"Yes, sir."

"How did he happen to catch us on El Capitan?"

"He saw a fire on Music Mountain and watched the lower end of the Gap
all night. Sassoon was a wide-awake man."

"Well, I'm sorry, Pardaloe," continued de Spain after a moment.
"Nobody could call it my fault. It was either he or I--or the life of
a woman who never harmed a hair of his head, and a woman I'm bound to
protect. He was running when he was hit. If he had got to cover again
there was nothing to stop him from picking both of us off. I shot
low--most of the lead must have gone into the ground."

"He was hit in the head."

De Spain was silent.

"It was a soft-nose bullet," continued Pardaloe.

Again there was a pause. "I'll tell you about that, too, Pardaloe," de
Spain went on collectedly. "I lost my rifle before that man opened
fire on us. Nan happened to have her rifle with her--if she hadn't,
he'd 've dropped one or both of us off El Capitan. We were pinned
against the wall like a couple of targets. If there were soft-nose
bullets in her rifle it's because she uses them on game--bobcats and
mountain-lions. I never thought of it till this minute. That is it."

"What I came up to tell you has to do with Dave Sassoon. From what
happened to-day in the Gap I thought you ought to know it now. Gale
and Duke quarrelled yesterday over the way things turned out; they
were pretty bitter. This afternoon Gale took it up again with his
uncle, and it ended in Duke's driving him clean out of the Gap."

"Where has he gone?"

"Nobody knows yet. Ed Wickwire told me once that your father was shot
from ambush a good many years ago. It was north of Medicine Bend, on a
ranch near the Peace River; that you never found out who killed him,
and that one reason why you came up into this country was to keep an
eye out for a clew."

"What about it?" asked de Spain, his tone hardening.

"I was riding home one night about a month ago from Calabasas with
Sassoon. He'd been drinking. I let him do the