ho stood
off the raiders and got two of them." And Pete knew that the very folk
who seemed proud of the fact would be the first to condemn him for the
killing of Gary. He was outlawed--not for avenging the death of his
foster-father, but actually because he had defended his own life, a
fact difficult to establish in court and which would weigh little
against the evidence of the six or eight men who had heard him
challenge Gary at the round-up. Jim Bailey had been right. Men talked
too much as a usual thing. Gary had talked too much.

Pete realized that his loyalty to the memory of Annersley had earned
him disrepute. He resented the injustice of this, and all his old
hatred of the law revived. Yet despite all logic of justice as against
law--he could see Gary's hand clutching against his chest, his staring
eyes, and the red ooze starting through those tense fingers--Pete
reasoned that had he not been so skilled and quick with a gun, he would
be in Gary's place now. As it was, he was alive and had a good horse
between his knees.

To ride an unshod horse in the southern desert is to invite disaster.
Toward evening, Pete pulled up at a water-hole, straightened the nails
in the horseshoes and tacked them on again with a piece of rock. They
would hold until he reached the desert town of Showdown--a place of
ill-repute and a rendezvous for outlawry and crime.

He rode on until he came within sight of the town--a dim huddle of low
buildings in the starlight. He swung off the trail, hobbled his horse,
fastened his rope to the hobbles, and tied that in turn to a long,
heavy slab of rock, and turned in. He would not risk losing his horse
in this desert land. At best a posse could not reach Showdown before
noon the next day, and rather than blunder into Showdown at night and
take unnecessary risks, he decided to rest, and ride in at sunup, when
he would be able to see what he was doing and better estimate the
possibilities of getting food for himself and his horse and of finding
refuge in some out-of-the-way ranch or homestead. In spite of his
vivid imaginings he slept well. At dawn he caught up his pony and rode
into town.

Showdown boasted some fifteen or eighteen low-roofed adobes, the most
pretentious being the saloon. These all faced a straggling road which
ran east and west, disappearing at either end of the town as though
anxious to obliterate itself in the clean sand of the desert. The
environs of Showd