The red-bearded one, a man of large frame and gaunt face, wicked and wild-looking, spoke out, “Say, Smith, or whatever the hell’s yore right handle—­is this hyar a game we’re playin’?”

“I reckon.  An’ if you turn a trick you’ll be damn lucky,” growled Folsom.

The other rustler did not speak.  He was small, swarthy-faced, with sloe-black eyes and matted hair, evidently a white man with Mexican blood.  Keen, strung, furtive, he kept motionless, awaiting events.

“Buster Jack, these new pards of yours are low-down rustlers, an’ one of them’s worse, as I could prove,” said Wade, “but compared with you they’re all gentlemen.”

Belllounds leered.  But he was losing his bravado.  Something began to dawn upon his obtuse consciousness.

“What do I care for you or your gabby talk?” he flashed, sullenly.

“You’ll care when I tell these rustlers how you double-crossed them.”

Belllounds made a spring, like that of a wolf in a trap; but when half-way up he slipped.  The rustler on his right kicked him, and he sprawled down again, back to the wall.

“Buster, look into this!” called Wade, and he leveled the gun that quivered momentarily, like a compass needle, and then crashed fire and smoke.  The bullet spat into a log.  But it had cut the lobe of Belllounds’s ear, bringing blood.  His face turned a ghastly, livid hue.  All in a second terror possessed him—­shuddering, primitive terror of death.

Folsom haw-hawed derisively and in crude delight.  “Say, Buster Jack, don’t get any idee thet my ole pard Wade was shootin’ at your head.  Aw, no!”

The other rustlers understood then, if Belllounds had not, that the situation was in control of a man not in any sense ordinary.

“Cap, did you know Buster Jack accused my friend, Wils Moore, of stealin’ these cattle you’re sellin’?” asked Wade, deliberately.

“What cattle did you say?” asked the rustler, as if he had not heard aright.

“The cattle Buster Jack stole from his father an’ sold to you.”

“Wal, now!  Bent Wade at his old tricks!  I might have knowed it, once I seen you....  Naw, I’d no idee Belllounds blamed thet stealin’ on to any one.”

“He did.”

“Ahuh!  Wal, who’s this Wils Moore?”

“He’s a cowboy, as fine a youngster as ever straddled a horse.  Buster Jack hates him.  He licked Jack a couple of times an’ won the love of a girl that Jack wants.”

“Ho!  Ho!  Quite romantic, I declare....  Say, thar’s some damn queer notions I’m gettin’ about you, Buster Jack.”

Belllounds lay propped against the wall, sagging there, laboring of chest, sweating of face.  The boldness of brow held, because it was fixed, but that of his eyes had gone; and his mouth and chin showed craven weakness.  He stared in dread suspense at Wade.