“Partner,” said Bill Gregg desperately, “I have to get there!”

“Then get there on your own feet, not the feet of another gent’s hoss.”

Gregg controlled his rising anger.  Beyond him the train was looming larger and larger in the plain, and Stillwater seemed more and more distant.  He writhed in the saddle.

“I tell you I’ll pay—­I’ll pay the whole value of the hoss, if you want.”

He was about to say more when he saw the eyes of Ronicky Doone widen and fix.

“Look,” said the other suddenly, “you’ve been cutting her up with the spurs!”

Gregg glanced down to the flank of the bay to discover that he had used the spurs more recklessly than he thought.  A sharp rowel had picked through the skin, and, though it was probably only a slight wound indeed, it had brought a smear of red to the surface.

Ronicky Doone trembled with anger.

“Confound you!” he said furiously.  “Any fool would have known that you didn’t need a spur on that hoss!  What part d’you come from where they teach you to kill a hoss when you ride it?  Can you tell me that?”

“I’ll tell you after I get to Stillwater.”

“I’ll see you hung before I see you in Stillwater.”

“You’ve talked too much, Doone,” Gregg said huskily.

“I’ve just begun,” said Doone.

“Then take this and shut up,” exclaimed Bill Gregg.

Ordinarily he was the straightest and the squarest man in the world in a fight.  But a sudden anger had flared up in him.  He had an impulse to kill; to get rid of this obstacle between him and everything he wanted most in life.  Without more warning than that he snatched out his revolver and fired point blank at Ronicky Doone.  Certainly all the approaches to a fight had been made, and Doone might have been expecting the attack.  At any rate, as the gun shot out of Gregg’s holster, the other swung himself sidewise in his own saddle and, snapping out his revolver, fired from the hip.

That swerve to the side saved him, doubtless, from the shot of Gregg; his own bullet plowed cleanly through the thigh of the other rider.  The whole leg of Gregg went numb, and he found himself slumping helplessly to one side.  He dropped his gun, and he had to cling with both hands to lower himself out of the saddle.  Now he sat in the dust of the trail and stared stupidly, not at his conqueror, but at the train that was flashing into the little town of Stillwater, just below them.

He hardly heeded Ronicky Doone, as the latter started forward with an oath, knelt beside him and examined the wound.  “It’s clean,” Doone said, as he started ripping up his undershirt to make bandages.  “I’ll have you fixed so you can be gotten into Stillwater.”

He began to work rapidly, twisting the clothes around Gregg’s thigh, which he had first laid bare by some dexterous use of a hunting knife.

Then Gregg turned his eyes to those of Doone.  The train had pulled out of Stillwater.  The sound of the coughing of the engine, as it started up, came faintly to them after a moment.