ouldn't have been any
better off, nor you either. If I'd killed _him_, it would have been
your duty as sheriff to put me in jail; and I reckon it wouldn't have
broken your heart, Jim Dunn, to have got rid of _two_ rivals instead of
one. Hullo! Where are you going?"

"Going?" said Dunn hoarsely. "Going to the Carquinez Woods, by God! to
kill him before her. _I'll_ risk it, if you daren't. Let me succeed,
and you can hang _me_ and take the girl yourself."

"Sit down, sit down. Don't be a fool, Jim Dunn! You wouldn't keep the
saddle a hundred yards. Did I say I wouldn't help you? No. If you're
willing, we'll run the risk together, but it must be in my way. Hear
me. I'll drive you down there in a buggy before daylight, and we'll
surprise them in the cabin or as they leave the wood. But you must come
as if to arrest him for some offense--say, as an escaped Digger from
the Reservation, a dangerous tramp, a destroyer of public property in
the forests, a suspected road agent, or anything to give you the right
to hunt him. The exposure of him and Nellie, don't you see, must be
accidental. If he resists, kill him on the spot, and nobody'll blame
you; if he goes peaceably with you, and you once get him in Excelsior
jail, when the story gets out that he's taken the belle of Excelsior
for his squaw, if you'd the angels for your posse you couldn't keep the
boys from hanging him to the first tree. What's that?"

He walked to the window, and looked out cautiously.

"If it was the old man coming back and listening," he said, after a
pause, "it can't be helped. He'll hear it soon enough, if he don't
suspect something already."

"Look yer, Brace," broke in Dunn hoarsely. "D----d if I understand you
or you me. That dog Low has got to answer to _me_, not to the _law_!
I'll take my risk of killing him, on sight and on the square. I don't
reckon to handicap myself with a warrant, and I am not going to draw
him out with a lie. You hear me? That's me all the time!"

"Then you calkilate to go down thar," said Brace contemptuously, "yell
out for him and Nellie, and let him line you on a rest from the first
tree as if you were a grizzly."

There was a pause. "What's that you were saying just now about a
bearskin he sold?" asked Dunn slowly, as if reflecting.

"He exchanged a bearskin," replied Brace, "with a single hole right
over the heart. He's a dead shot, I tell you."

"D----n his shooting," said Dunn. "I'm not thinking of that. How