pt his
black eyes on her constantly. "That's not what we're blaming him for. The
indictment against your friend is that he interfered when it wasn't his
business."

"But it was his business. Don't you know he's sheriff? He had to do it."
Melissy turned to the outlaw impetuously.

"So. And I have to play my hand out, too. It wipes out Mr. Flatray. Sorry,
but business is business."

"But--but----" Melissy grew pale as the icy fear gripped her heart that
the man meant to go on with the crime. "Don't you see? He's the sheriff?"

"And I never did love sheriffs," drawled MacQueen.

The girl repeated herself helplessly. "It was his sworn duty. That was how
he looked at it."

A ghost of an ironic smile flitted across the face of the outlaw chief.
"Rosario's sworn duty is to avenge her son's death. That is how she looks
at it. The rest of us swore the oath with her."

"But Lieutenant O'Connor had the law back of him. This is murder!"

"Not at all. It is the law of the valley--a life for a life."

"But---- Oh, no--no--no!"

"Yes."

The finality of it appalled her. She felt as if she were butting her head
against a stone wall. She knew that argument and entreaty were of no
avail, yet she desperately besought first one and then another of them to
save the prisoner. Each in turn shook his head. She could see that none of
them, save Rosario, bore him a grudge; yet none would move to break the
valley oath. At the last, she was through with her promises and her
prayers. She had spent them all, and had come up against the wall of blank
despair.

Then Jack's grave smile thanked her. "You've done what you could,
Melissy."

She clung to him wildly. "Oh, no--no! I can't let you go, Jack. I can't. I
can't."

"I reckon it's got to be, dear," he told her gently.

But her breaking heart could not stand that. There must somehow be a way
to save him. She cast about desperately for one, and had not found it when
she begged the outlaw chief to see her alone.

"No use." He shook his head.

"But just for five minutes! That can't do any harm, can it?"

"And no good, either."

"Yet I ask it. You might do that much for me," she pleaded.

Her despair had moved him; for he was human, after all. That he was
troubled about it annoyed him a good deal. Her arrival on the scene had
made things unpleasant for everybody. Ungraciously he assented, as the
easiest way out of the difficulty.

The two moved off to the corral. It was perhap