Fight?  Lowrie looked down at his hand and found that the very wrist was quivering.  Even at his best he felt that he would have no chance.  Once he had seen Sinclair in action in Lew Murphy’s old saloon, had seen Red Jordan get the drop, and had watched Sinclair shoot his man deliberately through the shoulder.  Red Jordan was a cripple for life.

Suppose he walked boldly down, told his story, and trusted to the skill of his lie?  No, he knew his color would pale if he faced Sinclair.  Suppose he refused to fight?  Better to die than be shamed in the mountain country.

He hurried to the window for another look into the street, and he found that Sinclair had disappeared.  Lowrie’s knees buckled under his weight.  He went over to the bed, with short steps like a drunken man, and lowered himself down on it.

Sinclair had gone into the hotel, and doubtless that meant that he had grown impatient.  The fever to kill was burning in the big man.  Then Lowrie heard a steady step come regularly up the stairs.  They creaked under a heavy weight.

Lowrie drew his gun.  It caught twice; finally he jerked it out in a frenzy.  He would shoot when the door opened, without waiting, and then trust to luck to fight his way through the men below.

In the meantime the muzzle of the revolver wabbled crazily from side to side, up and down.  He clutched the barrel with the other hand.  And still the weapon shook.

Curling up his knee before his breast he ground down with both hands.  That gave him more steadiness; but would not this contorted position destroy all chance of shooting accurately?  His own prophecy, made over the dead body of Hal Sinclair, that all three of them would see that face again, came back to him with a sense of fatality.  Some forward-looking instinct, he assured himself, had given him that knowledge.

The step upon the stairs came up steadily.  But the mind of Lowrie, between the steps, leaped hither and yon, a thousand miles and back.  What if his nerve failed him at the last moment?  What if he buckled and showed yellow and the shame of it followed him?  Better a hundred times to die by his own hand.

Excitement, foreboding, the weariness of the long trail—­all were working upon Lowrie.

Nearer drew the step.  It seemed an hour since he had first heard it begin to climb the stairs.  It sounded heavily on the floor outside his door.  There was a heavy tapping on the door itself.  For an instant the clutch of Lowrie froze around his gun; then he twitched the muzzle back against his own breast and fired.

There was no pain—­only a sense of numbness and a vague feeling of torn muscles, as if they were extraneous matter.  He dropped the revolver on the bed and pressed both hands against his wound.  Then the door opened, and there appeared, not Riley Sinclair, but Pop Hansen.

“What in thunder—­” he began.

“Get Riley Sinclair.  There’s been an accident,” said Lowrie faintly and huskily.  “Get Riley Sinclair; quick.  I got something to say to him.”