“It’s up to you, Sheriff,” said Anastacio briskly.  “I can turn you over to the Bar Cross outfit and they’ll hang you now; or I can turn you over to the Barelas and you will be hung later.  Dick Marr was your friend!  Take your choice.  You go on down, Pringle, while the sheriff is looking over the relative advantages of the two propositions.  I think Miss Vorhis may have something to say to you.”

* * * * *

She came to meet him; Foy and the Major waited by the horses.  “John!” she said.  “Faithful John!” She sought his hands.

“There now, honey—­don’t take on so!  Don’t!  It’s all right!  You know what the poet says: 

    “Cast your bread upon the waters
      And you may live to say: 
    ’Oh, how I wish I had the crust
      That once I threw away!’”

Her throat was pulsing swiftly; her eyes were brimming with tears, bruised for lost sleep.

“Dearest and kindest friend!  When I think what you have done for me—­that you faced shame worse than death—­guarded by unprovable honor—­John!  John!”

“Why, you mustn’t, honey—­you mustn’t do that!  Why, Stella, you’re crying—­for me!  You mustn’t do that, Little Next Door!”

“If you had been killed, taking Chris—­or after you gave him up—­no one but me would have ever believed but that you meant it.”

“But you believed, Stella?”

“Oh, I knew!  I knew!”

“Even when you first heard of it?”

“I never doubted you—­not one instant!  I knew what you meant to do.  You knew I loved him.  The led horse was for you.  I thought Chris would be gone.  Why, John Wesley, I have known you all my life!  You couldn’t do that!  You couldn’t!  Oh, kiss me, kiss me—­faithful John!”

But he bent and kissed her hands—­lest, looking into his eyes, she should read in the book of his life one long, long chapter—­that bore her name.

THE END

THE COME ON

“Fair fellow, said Sir Ector, knowest thou not in this country any adventures that be here nigh hand?  Sir, said the forester,... strike upon that basin with the butt of thy spear thrice, and soon after thou shalt hear new tidings, and else hast thou the fairest grace that many a year had ever knight that passed through this forest.... Then anon Sir Ector beat on the basin as he were wood.”

Chapter I

    “Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go!”

Steve Thompson had sold his cattle.  El Paso is (was) the Monte Carlo of America.  Therefore—­The syllogism may he imperfectly stated, but the conclusion is sound.  Perhaps there is a premise suppressed or overlooked somewhere.

Cash in hand, well fortified with paving material, Thompson descended on the Gate City.  At the expiration of thirty-six blameless hours he perceived that he was looking through a glass darkly, in the Business Man’s Club, intently regarding a neatly-lettered placard which ambiguously advised all concerned in this wise: