when
the sound of voices stopped her. Some instinct made her wait and listen.

The speakers were in a dip of the trail just ahead of her, and the voice
of the first she recognized as belonging to the man Boone. The tone of it
was jubilantly cruel.

"No, sir. You don't move a step of the way, not a step, Mr. Alan
McKinstra. I've got him right where I want him, and I don't care if you
talk till the cows come home."

Alan's voice rang out indignantly, "It's murder then--just plain, low-down
murder. If you hold me here and let Morse fall into a death trap without
warning him, you're as responsible as if you shot him yourself."

"All right. Suits me down to the ground. We'll let it go at that. I'm
responsible. If you want the truth flat and plain, I don't mind telling
you that I wouldn't be satisfied if I wasn't responsible. I'm evening up
some little things with Mr. Morse to-day."

Melissy needed to hear no more to understand the situation, but if she
had, the next words of Boone would have cleared it up.

"When I met up with you and happened on the news that you was taking a
message to Farnum, and when I got onto the fact that Morse, as you call
him, was moving his sheep across the dead line, _relying on you having got
his letter to the cattlemen to make it safe_, it seemed luck too good to
be true. All I had to do was to persuade you to stay right here with me,
and Mr. Morse would walk into the pass and be wiped out. You get the
beauty of it, my friend, don't you? _I'm_ responsible, but it will be
Farnum and his friends that will bear the blame. There ain't but one flaw
in the whole thing: Morse will never know that it's me that killed him."

"You devil!" cried the boy, with impotent passion.

"I've waited ten years for this day, and it's come at last. Don't you
think for a moment I'm going to weaken. No, sir! You'll sit there with my
gun poked in your face just as you've sat for six hours. It's my say-so
to-day, sir," Boone retorted, malevolence riding triumph in his voice.

Melissy's first impulse was to confront the man, her next to slip away
without being discovered and then give the alarm.

"Yes, sir," continued the cowpuncher; "I scored on Mr. Morse two or three
nights ago, when I played hell with one of his sheep camps, and to-day I
finish up with him. His sheep have been watched for weeks, and at the
first move it's all up with him and them. Farnum's vaqueros will pay my
debt in full. Just as soon as I'm