it!" snapped out Delmar, and the tone of his voice was terrible to
hear. Mose's heart stopped beating; he held his breath, expecting the
shooting to begin.

Conrad was white with fear as he said: "Give 'em up, boys. He's a
desperate man. Don't shoot, you fools!"

One by one, with a certain amount of bluster on the part of two, the
cowboys dropped their guns, and Delmar said: "Gather 'em in, Mose."

Mose leaped from his horse and gathered the weapons up. Delmar thrust
the revolvers into his pockets, and handed one Winchester to Mose.

"You'll find your guns on that rise beside yon rock," said Delmar, "and
when we meet again, it will be Merry War. Good-day!"

An angry man knows no line of moderation. Delmar, having declared war,
carried it to the door of the enemy. Accompanying the sheep himself, he
drove them into the fairest feeding-places beside the clearest streams.
He spared no pains to irritate the cattlemen, and Mose, who alone of
all the outsiders realized to the full his terrible skill with weapons,
looked forward with profound dread to the fight which was sure to
follow.

He dreaded the encounter for another reason. He had no definite plan of
action to follow in his own case. A dozen times a day he said to
himself: "Am I a coward?" His stomach failed him, and he ate so
sparingly that it was commented upon by the more hardened men. He was
the greater troubled because a letter from Jack came during this stormy
time, wherein occurred this paragraph: "Mary came back to the autumn
term. Her mother is dead, and she looks very pale and sad. She asked
where you were and said: 'Please tell him that I hope he will come home
safe, and that I am sorry I could not see him before he went away.'"

All the bitterness in his heart long stored up against her passed away
in a moment, and sitting there on the wide plain, under the burning sun,
he closed his eyes in order to see once more, in the cold gray light of
the prison, that pale, grave girl with the glorious eyes. He saw her,
too, as Jack saw her, her gravity turned into sadness, her pallor into
the paleness of grief and ill health. He admitted now that no reason
existed why she should write to him while her mother lay dying. All
cause for hardness of heart was passed away. The tears came to his eyes
and he longed for the sight of her face. For a moment the boy's wild
heart grew tender.

He wrote her a letter that night, and it ran as well as he could hope
for, as h