t?" he asked finally.

"I was drunk, and I hated him. He married a girl I was crazy about."

Bassett tried new tactics. He stressed the absurdity of surrendering for
a crime committed ten years before and forgotten.

"They won't convict you anyhow," he urged. "It was a quarrel, wasn't it?
I mean, you didn't deliberately shoot him?"

"I don't remember. We quarreled. Yes. I don't remember shooting him."

"What do you remember?"

Dick made an effort, although he was white to the lips.

"I saw him on the floor," he said slowly, and staggered a little.

"Then you don't even know you did it."

"I hated him."

But Bassett saw that his determination to surrender himself was
weakening. Bassett fought it with every argument he could summon, and at
last he brought forward the one he felt might be conclusive.

"You see, you've not only made a man's place in the world, Clark, as
I've told you. You've formed associations you can't get away from.
You've got to think of the Livingstones, and you told me yesterday a
shock would kill the old man. But it's more than that. There's a girl
back in your town. I think you were engaged to her."

But if he had hoped to pierce the veil with that statement he failed.
Dick's face flushed, and he went to the door of the cabin, much as he
had gone to the window the day before. He did not look around when he
spoke.

"Then I'm an unconscionable cad," he said. "I've only cared for one
woman in my life. And I've shipwrecked her for good."

"You mean--"

"You know who I mean."

Sometime later Bassett got on his horse and rode out to a ledge which
commanded a long stretch of trail in the valley below. Far away horsemen
were riding along it, one behind the other, small dots that moved on
slowly but steadily. He turned and went back to the cabin.

"We'd better be moving," he said, "and it's up to you to say where.
You've got two choices. You can go back to Norada and run the chance of
arrest. You know what that means. Without much chance of a conviction
you will stand trial and bring wretchedness to the people who stood by
you before and who care for you now. Or you can go on over the mountains
with me and strike the railroad somewhere to the West. You'll have time
to think things over, anyhow. They've waited ten years. They can wait
longer."

To his relief Dick acquiesced. He had become oddly passive; he seemed
indeed not greatly interested. He did not even notice the haste with
which