“All right—­I’ll wait here.”  Tom sat down on a boulder and chewed tobacco, his head sunk in his clenched palms.

Keller walked down the trail to the ranch.  He was glad to go in place of Dixon; for he felt that the young man was unstable and could not be depended upon not to fall into a rage, and, in a passionate impulse, tell all he knew.  He saddled the horse, explaining casually to the wrangler that he had lost a bet with Tom, by the terms of which he had to come down and saddle the latter’s mount.

He swung to the back of the pony and cantered up the trail.  But before he had gone a hundred yards, he was off again, examining the hoofmarks the animal left in the sand.  The left hind mark differed from the others in that the detail was blurred and showed nothing but a single flat stamp.

This seemed to interest Keller greatly.  He picked up the corresponding foot of the cow pony, and found the cause of the irregularity to be a deformity or swelling in the ball of the foot, which apparently was now its normal condition.  The young man whistled softly to himself, swung again to the saddle, and continued on his way.

The owner of the horse had his back turned and did not hear him coming as he padded up the soft trail.  The man was testing in his hand something that clicked.

Larrabie swung quietly to the ground, and waited.  His eyes were like tempered steel.

“Here’s your horse,” he said.  Before the other man moved, he drawled:  “I reckon I’d better tell you I’m armed, too.  Don’t be hasty.”

Dixon turned his swollen face to him in a childish fury.  He had picked up, and was holding in his hand, the revolver Larrabie had taken from him and later thrown down.  “Damn you, what do you mean?  It’s my own gun, ain’t it?  Mean to say I’m a murderer?”

“I happen to know you have impulses that way.  I thought I’d check this one, to save you trouble.”

He was standing carelessly with his right hand resting on the mane of the pony; he had not even taken the precaution of lowering it to his side, where the weapon might be supposed to lie.

For an instant Tom thought of taking a chance.  The odds would be with him, since he had the revolver ready to his fingers.  But before that indomitable ease his courage ebbed.  He had not the stark fighting nerve to pit himself against such a man as this.

“I don’t know as I said anything about shooting.  Looks like you’re trying to fasten another row on me,” the craven said bitterly.

“I’m content if you are; and as far as I’m concerned, this thing is between us two.  It won’t go any further.”

Keller stood aside and watched Dixon mount.  The hillman took his spleen out on the horse, finding that the safest vent for his anger.  He jerked its head angrily, cursed it, and drove in the spurs cruelly.  With a leap, the cow pony was off.  In fifty strides it reached the top of the hill and disappeared.