d lead over him and about
him he rode the last fifty yards. He reached the boulders, set his
horse up, threw himself from the saddle, and with his back to the rock,
his face toward Galloway, he lifted his rifle. Galloway, almost at the
same instant, jerked in his own horse. He was so close that Norton
caught his cry of rage.

"Hands up, Galloway!" cried the sheriff. "Hands up or I'll drop you."

But at last Galloway had come out into the open; at last there was no
subterfuge to stand forth at his need; at last, gambler that he was, he
accepted the even break of man to man. As Norton's voice rang out
Galloway fired.

He shot twice before Norton pulled the trigger. Norton shot but the
once. Galloway dropped his rifle, sat rigid a moment, toppled from the
saddle. And his men, seeing him go down, cried out to one another and
drew back into the mountain canons.

"Funny thing," said Brocky Lane afterward. "Had the picture of a kid
of a girl in his pocket! Must have carted it around for a year. Old
Roddy's bullet tore right square through it."

It was a picture of Florrie Engle, taken years before. As Brocky said:
"Just a kid of a girl." Where he got it nobody knew. But then there
were other things about Jim Galloway which no one knew. Perhaps . . .
Quien sabe!

During the late hours of the night and the following forenoon the thing
was ended. Sheriff Roberts's deputies with a posse in automobiles had
raced southward, intercepting those other cars despatched toward the
border by the Kid and del Rio. Brocky Lane with a score of men had
swept down upon the stolen herds, scattered them, fired fifty shots,
emptied some three or four saddles, and sent the escaping rustlers
flying toward the Mexican line. Singly and in small groups other men,
farmers, cowboys, miners, and the dwellers of small settlements, joined
with Norton's men, giving battle to those of Galloway's crowd who had
drawn back into the fastnesses of Mt. Temple. In the afternoon Norton,
with the aid of a handful of cowboys from Brocky's outfit and from Las
Flores, escorted fifteen anxious-faced prisoners to the county-seat,
where jail capacity was to be taxed. And night had come again, serene
and peaceful with the glory of the moon and stars, when he rode once
more into San Juan, sore and saddle-weary.

At the hotel he learned that Virginia had gone to the Engles. He left
his jaded horse with Ignacio and walked down the street. In fro