From out of a doorway stepped a young fellow with his hand on his hip.  Pete’s six-gun flashed upward in a quarter curve even as the bullet crashed on its way.  The youth staggered against the wall and sank together into a heap.  Champa, every sense alert, fired again, then waited warily to make sure this was not a ruse of his victim.

Some one—­a woman—­darted from a building opposite, flew across the street, and dropped beside the crumpled figure.  Her white skirt covered the body like a protecting flag.

The dark eyes in the white face lifted toward Champa were full of horror, “You murderer!  You’ve killed little Bud Proctor!” cried the young woman.

He took an uncertain step or two toward her.  Mysterious Pete knew that if this were true, his race was run.

“Goddlemighty, Miss Snaith!  I swear I thought it was Clanton.  He was drawing a gun on me.”

Lee drew the boy to her bosom so that her body was between the killer and his victim.  A swift, up-blazing, maternal fury seemed to leap from her face.

“Don’t come any nearer!  Don’t you dare!” she cried.

The man’s covert glance swept round.  Already men were peering out of doors and windows to see what the shooting was about.  Soon the street would be full of them, all full of deadly fury at him.  He backed away, snarling, cut across a vacant lot, and ran to his room.  The bolt in his door was no sooner closed than he knew it could not protect him.  There comes a time in the career of a large percentage of bad men when some other hard citizen on behalf of the public puts a period to it.  He is wiped out, not for what he has done only, but for fear also of what he may do.  The only safety for him now was to get out of the country as fast as a house could carry him.  Instinctively Mysterious Pete recognized this now and cursed his folly for not going straight to a corral.

If he hurried he might still make his get-away, He reloaded his revolver, opened the door of his room, and listened.  Cautiously he stole downstairs and out the back door of the building.  A little girl was playing at keeping house in a corner of the yard.  Scarcely more than a baby herself, she was vigorously spanking a doll.

“Be dood.  You better had be dood,” she admonished.

A crafty idea came into the cunning brain of the outlaw.  She would serve as a protection against the bullets of his enemies.  He caught her up and carried her, kicking and screaming, while he ran to the Elephant Corral.

“Saddle me a horse.  Jump!” ordered the fugitive, his revolver out.

The trembling wrangler obeyed.  He did not know the cause of Mysterious Pete’s urgency fact was enough.  He knew that this man with the bad record was flying in fear of his life.  Tiny sweat beads stood out on his forehead.  The fellow was in a blue funk and would shoot at the least pretext.

The saddle that the wrangler flung on the horse he had roped was a Texas one with double cinches.  In desperate haste to be gone, Champa released the child a moment to tighten one of the bands.