see you around here again I won't
wait for Ben to shoot you!"

Ferguson hesitated, a deep red mounting over the scarf at his throat.
Then his voice rose, tingling with regret. "There ain't any use of me
sayin' anything now, ma'am," he said. "You wouldn't listen. I'm goin'
away, of course, because you want me to. You didn't need to get that
gun if you wanted to hurt me--what you've said would have been enough."
He bowed to her, not even looking at the rifle. "I'm goin' now," he
concluded. "But I'm comin' back. You'll know then whether I'm the
sneak you've said I was."

He bowed again over the pony's mane and urged the animal around the
corner of the cabin, striking the trail that led through the flat
toward the Two Diamond ranchhouse.

CHAPTER XXI

THE PROMISE

Ferguson heard loud talking and laughter in the bunkhouse when he
passed there an hour after his departure from the Radford cabin in Bear
Flat. It was near sundown and the boys were eating supper. Ferguson
smiled grimly as he rode his pony to the corral gate, dismounted,
pulled off the bridle and saddle, and turned the animal into the
corral. The presence of the boys at the bunkhouse meant that the wagon
outfit had come in--meant that Leviatt would have to come in--if he had
not already done so.

The stray-man's movements were very deliberate; there was an absence of
superfluous energy that told of intensity of thought and singleness of
purpose. He shouldered the saddle with a single movement, walked with
it to the lean-to, threw it upon its accustomed peg, hung the bridle
from the pommel, and then turned and for a brief time listened to the
talk and laughter that issued from the open door and windows of the
bunkhouse. With a sweep of his hands he drew his two guns from their
holsters, rolled the cylinders and examined them minutely. Then he
replaced the guns, hitched at his cartridge belt, and stepped out of
the door of the lean-to.

In spite of his promise to Mary Radford to the effect that he would
return to prove to her that he was not the man who had attempted to
kill her brother he had no hope of discovering the guilty man. His
suspicions, of course, centered upon Leviatt, but he knew that under
the circumstances Mary Radford would have to be given convincing proof.
The attempted murder of her brother, following the disclosure that he
had been hired by Stafford to do the deed, must have seemed to her
sufficient evidence of his g