“Don’t prove a thing,” West broke out impatiently.  “This fellow’s got Tom buffaloed.  Didn’t he make him smash the barrels?  Didn’t he take away his six-gun from him and bring him along like he hadn’t any mind of his own?  Tom’s yellow.  Got a streak a foot wide.”

“Nothin’ of the kind,” denied Stearns, indignation in his voice.  “I done brought up that boy by hand—­learned him all he knows about ridin’ and ropin’.  He’ll do to take along.”

“Hmp!  He always fooled you, Brad.  Different here.  I’m aimin’ to give him the wallopin’ of his life when I meet up with him.  And that’ll be soon, if he’s up there in the rocks.  I’m goin’ a-shootin’.”  Bully West drew his revolver and rode forward.

The constable had disposed of his forces so that behind the cover of the sandstone boulders they commanded the approach.  He had tried to persuade Jessie that this was not her fight, but a question from her had silenced him.

“If that Bully West finds me here, after he’s killed you, d’ you think I can get him to let me go because it wasn’t my fight?”

She had asked it with flashing eyes, in which for an instant he had seen the savagery of fear leap out.  Beresford was troubled.  The girl was right enough.  If West went the length of murder, he would be an outlaw.  Sleeping Dawn would not be safe with him after she had ridden out to warn his enemy that he was coming.  The fellow was a primeval brute.  His reputation had run over the whole border country of Rupert’s Land.

Now he appealed to Morse.  “If they get me, will you try to save Miss McRae?  This fellow West is a devil, I hear.”

The officer caught a gleam of hot red eyes.  “I’ll ’tend to that.  We’ll mix first, him ‘n’ me.  Question now is, do I get a gun?”

“What for?”

“Didn’t you hear him make his brags about what he was gonna do to me?  If there’s shootin’ I’m in on it, ain’t I?”

“No.  You’re a prisoner.  I can’t arm you unless your life is in danger.”

West pulled up his horse about sixty yards from the rocks.  He shouted a profane order.  The purport of it was that Beresford had better come out with his hands up if he didn’t want to be dragged out by a rope around his neck.  The man’s speech crackled with oaths and obscenity.

The constable stepped into the open a few yards.  “What do you want?” he asked.

“You.”  The whiskey-runner screamed it in a sudden gust of passion.  “Think you can make a fool of Bully West?  Think you can bust up our cargo an’ get away with it?  I’ll show you where you head in at.”

“Don’t make any mistake, West,” advised the officer, his voice cold as the splash of ice-water.  “Three of us are here, all with rifles, all dead shots.  If you attack us, some of you are going to get killed.”

“Tha’s a lie.  You’re alone—­except for Tom Morse, an’ he ain’t fool enough to fight to go to jail.  I’ve got you where I want you.”  West swung from the saddle and came straddling forward.  In the uncertain light he looked more like some misbegotten ogre than a human being.