one replied; and Haig, with a shrug, thrust his revolver back
in its holster.

"Thompson!" he called out.

"Here!" was the answer, in the same tone of readiness with which he
had responded to Huntington. By keeping his mouth shut, and never
taking sides in any of the occasional disagreements and disputes that
enlivened the tedium of life in that community, Thompson had
established a reputation for neutrality and trustworthiness, and was
permitted to be everybody's friend.

"Look after Huntington, please!" said Haig. "He's not badly
hit--you'll find the bullet under the left shoulder blade. It'll do
him good."

Thompson and some others lifted Huntington, and carried him into the
store; and at that moment the stage, its approach unnoticed, rattled
up, and stopped with shrieking brakes and creaking harness. There was
a sudden outbreak of speech on all sides, as if the tension had been
relaxed by the recurrence of a familiar and orderly event. In the
confusion Haig turned toward Sunnysides and the three cow-punchers.

"Now, Larkin," he began briskly, "we'll finish this business, and
then--"

He stopped short, and stared.

By the side of the golden horse stood Marion. Still shocked and
bewildered, yet strangely thrilled, she had stretched out one
trembling arm, and rested her hand on the neck of the wild creature,
from which every other person in the crowd around--and she too in her
right senses--had kept away, in full appreciation of his reputation.
Whether it was that the outlaw had for the time given up all notion of
resistance and hostility, or that he felt the difference between the
girl's gentle touch and the rough handling he had undergone, he did
not stir. But this docility, this understanding, was only a part of
the sight that brought Haig to a standstill.

He had left many things behind him, but there was one thing he had not
been, able to destroy as he would have destroyed it, root and branch
and flower. He would always have a weakness--he called it that--for
beauty in whatever form it appeared to him. Sunsets and twilights, the
shadows of trees in still waters, flowers and reeds, old ruins in the
moonlight, sometimes even faces moved him until he was ashamed, and
berated himself for a sentimental weakling. And now--

The girl was tawny as a leopard. Her hair was almost exactly the color
of the outlaw's dull yellow mane, but finer, of course, and softer;
and her complexion--he wondered that he had not