agle-beaked turkey buzzard, or I salivates you rapid!"

The situation was one of intense delicacy. Gieger might have averted the
threatening clash with a judicious use of soft, placating speech. But it
pleased him to bluster.

"We are deputies, acting under orders from the court. We are after a
murderer, and we mean to get him!" he said, coldly.

"Deputies! Hell!" Barkwell's voice rose, sharply scornful and mocking.
"Deputies! Crooks! Gun-fighters! Pluguglies!" His eyes, bright, alert,
gleaming like a bird's, were roving over the faces in the group of
deputies. "A damn fine bunch of guys to represent the law! There's Dakota
Dick, there! Tinhorn, rustler! There's Red Classen! Stage robber! An'
Pepper Ridgely, a plain, ornery thief! An' Kid Dorgan, a sneakin' killer!
An' Buff Keller, an' Andy Watts, an' Pig Mugley, an'--oh, hell! Deputies!
Law!----Ah--hah!"

One of the men had reached for his holster. Weaver's gun barked twice and
the man pitched limply forward to his horse's neck. Other weapons flashed;
the calm of the early morning was rent by the hoarse, guttural cries of
men in the grip of the blood-lust, the sustained and venomous popping of
pistols, the queer, sodden impact of lead against flesh, the terror-snorts
of horses, and the grunts of men, falling heavily.

* * * * *

A big man in khaki, loping his horse up the slope of an arroyo half a mile
distant, started at the sound of the first shot and raced over the crest.
He pulled the horse to an abrupt halt as his gaze swept the plains in
front of him. He saw riderless horses running frantically away from a
smoking blot, he saw the blot streaked with level, white smoke-spurts that
ballooned upward quickly; he heard the dull, flat reports that followed
the smoke-spurts.

It seemed to be over in an instant. The blot split up, galloping horses
and yelling men burst out of it. The big man had reached the crest of the
arroyo at the critical second in which the balance of victory wavers
uncertainly. With thrusting chin, lips in a hideous pout, and with sullen,
blazing eyes, he watched the battle go against him. Fifteen cowboys--he
counted them, deliberately, coldly, despite the rage-mania that had seized
him--were spurring after eight other men whom he knew for his own. As he
watched he saw two of these tumble from their horses. And at a distance he
saw the loops of ropes swing out to enmesh four more--who were thrown and