, his head rocking from side to side; then
suddenly he toppled over on his face, gasping for breath. His
companion caught him, and ripped open the heavy flannel shirt. Then he
strode savagely across in front of his shrinking horse, tore down the
flaring picture, and hastily thrust it into his pocket, the light of
the phosphorus with which it had been drawn being reflected for a
moment on his features.

"A dirty, miserable, low-down trick," he muttered. "Poor old devil!
Yet I've got to do it, for the little girl."

He stumbled back through the darkness, his hat filled with water, and
dashed it into Murphy's face. "Come on, Murphy! There's one good
thing 'bout spooks; they don't hang 'round fer long at a time. Likely
es not this 'un is gone by now. Brace up, man, for you an' I have got
ter get out o' here afore mornin'."

Then Murphy grasped his arm, and drew himself slowly to his feet.

"Don't see nuthin' now, do ye?"

"No. Where's my--horse?"

The other silently reached him the loose rein, marking as he did so the
quick, nervous peering this way and that, the starting at the slightest
sound.

"Did ye say, Murphy, as how it wasn't Nolan after all who plugged the
Major?"

"I 'm damned--if I did. Who--else was it?"

"Why, I dunno. Sorter blamed odd though, thet ghost should be
a-hauntin' ye. Darn if it ain't creepy 'nough ter make a feller
believe most anythin'."

Murphy drew himself up heavily into his saddle. Then all at once he
shoved the muzzle of a "45" into the other's face. "Ye say nuther
word--'bout thet, an' I 'll make--a ghost outer ye--blame lively. Now,
ye shet up--if ye ride with me."

They moved forward at a walk and reached a higher level, across which
the night wind swept, bearing a touch of cold in its breath as though
coming from the snow-capped mountains to the west. There was renewed
life in this invigorating air, and Murphy spurred forward, his
companion pressing steadily after. They were but two flitting shadows
amid that vast desolation of plain and mountain, their horses' hoofs
barely audible. What imaginings of evil, what visions of the past, may
have filled the half-crazed brain of the leading horseman is
unknowable. He rode steadily against the black night wall, as though
unconscious of his actions, yet forgetting no trick, no skill of the
plains. But the equally silent man behind clung to him like a shadow
of doom, watching his slightest motion--a Nemesis that w