He thrust the garment across his companion’s wasted shoulders and Barker drew the sleeves across his chest.

As he did so his hand touched something hard, under one lapel. He glanced down at it, and started.

23“What’s that?” he cried, turning the metal badge up for closer inspection.

23

A groan of horror escaped him as he recognized the object.

He sprang to his feet, his long, gaunt hands reaching for the deputy’s throat. Arnold swept him back with one motion of his powerful arm.

“Don’t you do anything like that,” he said, with rough kindness. “You’d be just a skeeter if I took hold of you, and I don’t want to. Suffering snakes!” he pleaded, “Don’t look like that! I’m sorry, man; by Heaven, I’ve hated this job like blue poison, ever since I laid eyes on you.”

The words died away in his throat before the dumb misery in the other man’s face. The wasted figure was slumped forward in an abandon of despair. All the man’s pride and courage died in the face of his fearful disappointment.

“Oh, God! Oh, God!” he moaned. “And I thought I was going to die in the open.”

He turned to the deputy, a sudden hope lighting his woe.

“Let me get out,” he begged. “Let me get out right here. I can’t get anywheres: I’m bound to die; but it’ll be out in the open. Please let me out.”

“I can’t.” The words came through Arnold’s set teeth.

24“Why not? I never killed Dan Lundy. Before God, I never laid a finger on him.” Barker spoke fast and thick, in his eagerness.

24

“I went to his shack and found him there, knifed to death. And Jim Texas swore he saw me do it. Swore it, mind you; when Hart Dowling and I both knew Texas had threatened Lundy time and again.”

A fit of coughing interrupted him, but he went on as soon as he could, his hoarse voice breaking now and then.

“And Westcott came sneaking ’round to see what there was in it for him. 

 Prev. P 13/179 next