“Will you?  What if he puts that brother of his on your trail?”

Lowrie swallowed hard.  “Well—­” he began, but said no more.

They mounted in a new silence and took the back trail slowly.  Not until the evening began to fall did they hurry, for fear the darkness would make them lose the position of their comrade.  When they were quite near the place, the semidarkness had come, and Quade began to shout in his tremendous voice.  Then they would listen, and sometimes they heard an echo, or a voice like an echo, always at a great distance.

“Maybe he’s started crawling and gone the wrong way.  He should have sat still,” said Lowrie, “because—­”

“Oh, Lord,” broke in Sandersen, “I knew it!  I been seeing it all the way!” He pointed to a figure of a man lying on his back in the sand, with his arms thrown out crosswise.  They dismounted and found Hal Sinclair dead and cold.  Perhaps the insanity of thirst had taken him; perhaps he had figured it out methodically that it was better to end things before the madness came.  There was a certain stern repose about his face that favored this supposition.  He seemed much older.  But, whatever the reason, Hal Sinclair had shot himself cleanly through the head.

“You see that face?” asked Lowrie with curious quiet.  “Take a good look.  You’ll see it ag’in.”

A superstitious horror seized on Sandersen.  “What d’you mean, Lowrie?  What d’you mean?”

“I mean this!  The way he looks now he’s a ringer for Riley Sinclair.  And, you mark me, we’re all going to see Riley Sinclair, face to face, before we die!”

“He’ll never know,” said Quade, the stolid.  “Who knows except us?  And will one of us ever talk?” He laughed at the idea.

“I dunno,” whispered Sandersen.  “I dunno, gents.  But we done an awful thing, and we’re going to pay—­we’re going to pay!”

2

Their trails divided after that.  Sandersen and Quade started back for Sour Creek.  At the parting of the ways Lowrie’s last word was for Sandersen.

“You started this party, Sandersen.  If they’s any hell coming out of it, it’ll fall chiefly on you.  Remember, because I got one of your own hunches!”

After that Lowrie headed straight across the mountains, traveling as much by instinct as by landmarks.  He was one of those men who are born to the trail.  He stopped in at Four Pines, and there he told the story on which he and Sandersen and Quade had agreed.  Four Pines would spread that tale by telegraph, and Riley Sinclair would be advised beforehand.  Lowrie had no desire to tell the gunfighter in person of the passing of Hal Sinclair.  Certainly he would not be the first man to tell the story.

He reached Colma late in the afternoon, and a group instantly formed around him on the veranda of the old hotel.  Four Pines had indeed spread the story, and the crowd wanted verification.  He replied as smoothly as he could.  Hal Sinclair had broken his leg in a fall from his horse, and they had bound it up as well as they could.  They had tied him on his horse, but he could not endure the pain of travel.  They stopped, nearly dying from thirst.  Mortification set in.  Hal Sinclair died in forty-eight hours after the halt.