been so unceremoniously told to 'pull his freight' looked at the ring of faces. Many of them were hard and hostile, others contemptuous, while all expressed curiosity. Deliberately he got out his 'makings,' rolled a cigarette and lighted it. He dropped the match, placed his foot upon it, and straightened up as though he had reached a decision.
'Good enough, marshal, that'll give me time to complete what I came to these parts to do,' he said. Holding open one flap of his vest, he disclosed a metal star sewn on the inside. 'Yu know what that is?' he questioned. They all did, and a ripple of surprise ran through the spectators. What was a United States deputy-sheriff doing in Windy? Upon Slype the appearance of an officer whose authority far exceeded his own fell like an avalanche. Half- dazed, he heard the C P foreman explain that he had been sent to investigate the Black Burdettes, tales of whose plunderings for a hundred miles round had come to the Governor's ears. This statement restored the marshal to normality; the Battle Butte gang was broken, the deputy's work was done; he, the marshal, had nothing to fear from him. Satisfied on this point, he began to bluster.
'Why didn't yu come to me right away an' declare yoreself?' he asked. 'I could 'a' helped yu.'
Sudden smiled mirthlessly. 'Yu did, but I ain't thankin' yu,' he replied. 'When yu bumped off Mart Burdette ...'
The marshal jumped as though jerked with a string. 'Why, I was in the bar there when the fight ended,' he protested.
'Yu left before he did, an' turned my hoss loose so that I'd be delayed, which would help when yu tried to throw suspicion on me,' Sudden replied evenly. 'Raw work, marshal.'
'All damn nonsense,' Slype sneered. 'Mart was a friend.'
'An' so was Sim, huh? Yet yu shot him down under a flag o' truce in the fight at the Circle B,' the cold voice continued.
The hiss of indrawn breath betokened the amazement of the spectators of this strange scene. Save for the scuffle of restless feet as men leant forward, there' was little sound. All eyes were focused on the man in the chair, who from being accuser had so swiftly become the accused.
The marshal's laugh was not convincing. 'Musta bin a wonderful shot,' he said, 'seein' I was in town an' asleep at the time, Purdie not havin' asked for my assistance.'
This remark caused some merriment, but the puncher's next statement stilled it.
'I saw yu at the moment yu fired,' he said.
'That goes for me too,' came the wheezy, cracked voice of California. 'Shore thought yu was on Purdie's side an' that mebbe yu didn't notice the flag.'
The marshal's agile brain was racing. How much did this damned interloper know? He must gain time to think.
'Might as well claim I wiped out King too while yo're about it,' he sneered.
'Not exactly, but yu had to do with it,' Sudden returned. 'He came straight from yore office to `The Plaza,' an' I figure you sent him in search o' me, hopin' we'd kill one another.'
Slippery shrugged his shoulders disdainfully; the needed flash of inspiration had come, and he thought he saw a way out. He turned to the waiting, breathless company.
'Well, boys, I s'pose I gotta explain,' he began. 'For quite a while I've knowed the Burdettes was bad medicine --robbers, rustlers, an' killers.'
'But friends o' yores,' came the acid reminder.
The marshal achieved a passable chuckle. 'I let 'em think so,' he said. 'A fella what represents the law don't allus have to show his hand; yu didn't yoreself, Green.' A sly glance at his hearers told him he had scored a point. 'I kept cases on 'em an' waited for opportunities. Some o' yu may think it was a sneaky way o' doin', but, when yu go after a wolf yu don't give him a chance to bite, an' if I'd come out into the open, how long would I 'a' lasted, marshal or no? Well, I got Mart an' Sim, an' would 'a' got King in time, doin' this yer town the biggest service any fella could.' He affected a jocularity he was by no means feeling as he nodded at the deputy-sheriff. 'Me an' yu was workin' on the same job, an' if yu'd come to me at the start it might 'a' bin put through in better shape.'
He slumped back in his chair and mopped his brow, conscious of excited whispering. His story was clever, plausible, and daring. Because the Burdettes were a threat to the town he had made war upon them. His methods might be questionable, but he was not the first law-officer to strain his powers and shoot a criminal instead of arresting him; such a procedure was only too common in those turbulent times. These fools would swallow it, was his thought. Then he looked at his accuser, and shivered; here was a man who would not. For in the narrowed eyes he read the scornful disbelief of one who knows what he has heard to be untrue. Sudden's voice, coldly impassive, told him that the battle was not yet over.
'Slype, yu are a liar from yore toes up. The two crimes yu have confessed to were committed not by virtue of yore office but for yore own ends. When yu murdered Old Man Burdette ...'
'Gawd A'mighty, did Slippery do that too?' Weldon shouted, and his remark was followed by profane expressions of astonishment from all parts of the room.
'... an' let the C P be suspected, yore object was to bring the ill-feeling between the two ranches to an open rupture. Yore plan seemed to be succeedin' when King shot young Purdie an' let Luce shoulder the blame.'
Sudden heard a muttered exclamation, and knew that Purdie's last lingering doubt of his daughter's suitor had vanished. For the rest, some nodded meaningly as if to say they had known it all along, while others appeared incredulous. Slype, scanning their faces narrowly, took his cue from the latter.
'Easy to pin things on a fella if yu kill him first,' he scoffed. 'Yu ain't proved anythin' yet. Why should I want the Purdies an' Burdettes a-scrappin'?'
'So that, if they wiped one another out, yu could grab their ranches--yu knew neither o' the families had any kin. Also, yu wanted Cal's gold mine,' Sudden said sternly, and then his voice changed. 'Yu played ze beeg game, senor.' So life-like was the imitation that the marshal started and glanced fearfully round the room, almost convinced that it was the dead Mexican who had spoken. He had a swift vision of the pain-wrecked, twisted body, with its wide-open, glazing eyes, lying in the sun-drenched gully. The puncher's next words dispelled the illusion. 'No, Ramon is not here, Slype; yu made shore o' that. Do yu remember the `leetle story' he told before yu shot him down?'
Under the shock of this further blow the marshal shivered. What else did he know, this saturnine devil of a deputy-sheriff who had dropped from the clouds? He tried to think, but his brain seemed to be paralysed. The net was closing, he was in deadly peril, he must say something--but what? When at length his trembling lips formed the words he did not recognize his own voice:
'He tried to down me.'
Sudden's expression was withering. 'What's the use o' lyin'--Ramon never went for a weapon,' he said. 'Me an' Bill Yago, up on the rim, saw an' heard everythin'. Yu an' the Mex were sittin' face to face. Yu folded yore arms, an' when he made his proposition, yu pulled that double-barrelled derringer yu wear under yore left shoulder, shot him twice, an' galloped away. He warn't dead when we got to him, an' he signed this before he cashed in.'
The scrap of paper he produced passed rapidly from hand to hand, the eyes of each man as he read it going to the drooping figure in the chair. Somehow the marshal seemed to have shrunk, his clothes hung loosely upon him. In an ashen mask, his eyes were cavernous pools of stark fear. He realized that he was doomed; one look at the ring of silent, relentless faces was enough to tell him this. He knew these men--had drank and gamed with many of them--and yet, they would hang him and go back to their work or play with a scornful jest on their lips. He had, without a qualm, hurled others into the unknown, and now the Dark Destroyer was at his own elbow; a few moments of agony and then--what? The thought appalled him; terror spurred his frozen faculties to action; in a hoarse, unnatural voice he made his last bid.
'Green, yo're an officer o' the law; I demand to be taken to the country seat.'
It was his only chance. The country seat was weeks distant; he might escape on the journey. Even if he did not, a smart lawyer could find excuses for putting off the trial; the jury would be composed of strangers; in the lapse of time evidence might cease to be available. In any case he would procure a respite, and to the abject, broken wretch who felt death clawing at his throat, a few weeks, days, or even hours seemed a priceless boon. Shaking as with an ague, he looked fearfully at the man who held his fate in his hands. The deputy-sheriff's face was that of a statue, his eyes cold, expressionless.
'I don't remember any talk o' the country seat when yu were lettin' 'em hang Luce Burdette,' he said slowly; and the cowering man in the chair knew that he was being condemned. 'When I came here the Governor gave me a
