uelty. He was the one man to be found in San Juan who
was dressed as the rather fastidiously inclined business men dress in
the cities.

"Another man down, Galloway," said Norton with an ominous sternness.
"And in your place. . . How long do you think that you can keep out
from under?"

His meaning was plain enough; the men behind him in the barroom
listened in attitudes which, varying in other matters, were alike in
their tenseness. Galloway, however, staring stonily with eyes not
unlike polished agate, so cold and steady were they, gave no sign of
taking offense.

"You and I never were friends, Rod Norton," he said, unmoved. "Still
that's no reason you should jump me for trouble. Answering your
question, I expect to keep out from under just as long as two things
remain as they are: first, as long as I play the game square and in the
open, next, as long as an overgrown boy holds down the job of sheriff
in San Juan."

In Norton's eyes was blazing hatred, in Galloway's mere steady,
unwinking boldness.

"You saw the killing?" the sheriff asked curtly.

"Yes," said Galloway.

"The Kid there did it?"

For the first time the man slouching forward in the chair lifted his
head. Had a stranger looked in at that moment, curious to see him who
had just committed homicide . . . or murder . . . he must have
experienced a positive shock. Sullen-eyed, sullen-lipped, the
man-killer could not yet have seen the last of his teens. A thin wisp
of straw-colored hair across a low, atavistic forehead, unhealthy,
yellowish skin, with pale, lack-lustre, faded blue eyes, he looked evil
and vicious and cruel. One looking from him to Jim Galloway would have
suspected that one could be as inhuman as the other, but with the
difference that that which was but means to an end with Galloway would
be end in itself to Kid Rickard. Something of the primal savage shone
in the pale fires of his eyes.

"Yes," retorted the Kid, his surly voice little better than a snarl.
"I got him and be damned to him!"

"Bad luck cursing a dead man, Rickard," said Norton coldly. "What did
you kill him for?"

Kid Rickard's tongue ran back and forth between his colorless lips
before he replied.

"He tried to get me first," he said defiantly.

"Who saw the shooting?"

"Jim Galloway. And Antone."

Rod Norton grunted his disgust with the situation.

"Give me your gun," he commanded tersely.

The Kid frowned. Galloway cleared his throat. Ri