terrible cry and the strange hunched
posture he had assumed. Stillwell's haste and silence, too, were
pregnant of catastrophe.

"Nels, git in this!" yelled Monty; and all the time he never shifted his
intent gaze as much as a hair's-breadth from Hawe and his deputy. "Nels,
chase away them two fellers hangin' back there. Chase 'em, quick!"

These men, the two deputies who had remained in the background with the
pack-horses, did not wait for Nels. They spurred their mounts, wheeled,
and galloped away.

"Now, Nels, cut the gurl loose," ordered Monty.

Nels ran forward, jerked the halter out of Sneed's hand, and pulled
Bonita's horse in close to the porch. As he slit the rope which bound
her she fell into his arms.

"Hawe, git down!" went on Monty. "Face front an' stiff!"

The sheriff swung his leg, and, never moving his hands, with his face
now a deathly, sickening white, he slid to the ground.

"Line up there beside your guerrilla pard. There! You two make a damn
fine pictoor, a damn fine team of pizened coyote an' a cross between a
wild mule an' a Greaser. Now listen!"

Monty made a long pause, in which his breathing was plainly audible.

Madeline's eyes were riveted upon Monty. Her mind, swift as lightning,
had gathered the subtleties in action and word succeeding his domination
of the men. Violence, terrible violence, the thing she had felt, the
thing she had feared, the thing she had sought to eliminate from among
her cowboys, was, after many months, about to be enacted before
her eyes. It had come at last. She had softened Stillwell, she had
influenced Nels, she had changed Stewart; but this little black-faced,
terrible Monty Price now rose, as it were, out of his past wild years,
and no power on earth or in heaven could stay his hand. It was the hard
life of wild men in a wild country that was about to strike this blow at
her. She did not shudder; she did not wish to blot out from sight this
little man, terrible in his mood of wild justice. She suffered a flash
of horror that Monty, blind and dead to her authority, cold as steel
toward her presence, understood the deeps of a woman's soul. For in
this moment of strife, of insult to her, of torture to the man she
had uplifted and then broken, the passion of her reached deep toward
primitive hate. With eyes slowly hazing red, she watched Monty Price;
she listened with thrumming ears; she waited, slowly sagging against
Stillwell.

"Hawe, if you an' your dirt