s, she sank on her knees beside him.

"Ben," she said, trying to keep a quiver out of her voice, "are you
sure it was Ferguson who shot you?"

He patted her hand tenderly and sympathetically with his uninjured one.
"I'm sorry for you, Mary," he returned, "but there ain't any doubt
about it." Then he told her of the warning he had received from
Leviatt, and when he saw her lips curl at the mention of the Two
Diamond range boss's name he smiled.

"I thought the same thing that you are thinking, Mary," he said. "And
I didn't want to shoot Ferguson. But as things have turned out I
wouldn't have been much wrong to have done it."

She raised her head from the coverlet. "Did you see him before he shot
you?" she questioned eagerly.

"Just a little before," he returned. "I met him at a turn in the trail
about half a mile from here. I made him get down off his horse and
drop his guns. We had a talk, for I didn't want to shoot him until I
was sure, and he talked so clever that I thought he was telling the
truth. But he wasn't."

He told her about Ferguson's concealed pistol; how they had stood face
to face with death between them, concluding: "By that time I had
decided not to shoot him. But he didn't have the nerve to pull the
trigger when he was looking at me. He waited until I'd got on my horse
and was riding away. Then he sneaked up behind."

He saw her body shiver, and he caressed her hair slowly, telling her
that he was sorry things had turned out so, and promising her that when
he recovered he would bring the Two Diamond stray-man to a strict
accounting--providing the latter didn't leave the country before. But
he saw that his words had given her little comfort, for when an hour or
so later he dropped off to sleep the last thing he saw was her seated
at the table in the kitchen, her head bowed in her hands, crying softly.

"Poor little kid," he said, as sleep dimmed his eyes; "it looks as
though this would be the end of _her_ story."

CHAPTER XX

LOVE AND A RIFLE

Ferguson did not visit Miss Radford the next morning--he had seen
Leviatt and Tucson depart from the ranchhouse, had observed the
direction they took, and had followed them. For twenty miles he had
kept them in sight, watching them with a stern patience that had
brought its reward.

They had ridden twenty miles straight down the river, when Ferguson,
concealed behind a ridge, saw them suddenly disappear into a little
basin. Then