t escape to left or right, once
they were entangled amidst the trees. Then it would be time to give
the alarm, and go down with a bullet in his body, or by some
contrivance evade the deadly rifle and come to grips with his enemy.
He also knew Lance Courthorne, and remembering how the lash had seamed
his face, expected no pity. One of them is was tolerably certain would
have set out on the long trail before the morning, but they breed grim
men in the bush of Ontario, and no other kind ride very long with the
wardens of the prairie.

"Stop where you are," said Courthorne, presently. "Now then, turn
round. Move a finger or open your lips, and I'll have great pleasure
in shooting you. In the meanwhile you can endeavor to make favor with
whatever saint is honored by the charge of you."

Shannon smiled in a fashion that resembled a snarl as once more a blink
of moonlight shone down upon them, and in place of showing
apprehension, his young white face, from which the bronze had faded,
was venomous.

"And my folks were Orange, but what does that matter now?" said he.
"There'll be one of us in--to-morrow, but for the shame ye put on Larry
ye'll carry my mark there with ye."

Courthorne looked at him with a little glow in his eyes. "You haven't
felt mine yet," he said. "You will probably talk differently when you
do."

It may have been youthful bravado, but Trooper Shannon laughed. "In
the meanwhile," he said, "I'm wondering why you're wearing an honest
man's coat and cap. Faith, if he saw them on ye, Winston would burn
them."

Courthorne returned no answer, and the moonlight went out, but they
stood scarcely three feet apart, and one of them knew that any move he
made would be followed by the pressure of the other's finger on the
trigger. He, however, did not move at all, and while the birches
roared about them they stood silently face to face, the man of birth
and pedigree with a past behind him and blood already upon his head,
and the raw lad from the bush, his equal before the tribunal that would
presently judge their quarrel.

In the meanwhile Trooper Shannon heard a drumming of hoofs that grew
steadily louder before Courthorne apparently noticed the sound, and his
trained ears told him that the rustlers' horses were coming down the
trail. Now they had passed the forking, and when the branches ceased
roaring again he knew they had floundered down the first of the
declivity, and it would be well to wait a