When the second glance showed the horseman to be Irish, Weary drove in his spurs and galloped forward.  Ten leaps perhaps he made, when a rifle shot came sharply ahead.  He glanced down and saw horse and rider lying, a blotch of indefinable shape, in the trail.  Weary drew his own gun and went on, his teeth set tight together.  Now, when it was too late, he understood thoroughly the situation.

He came clattering out of the gloom to the very, point of the bluff, just where it was highest and where it crowded closest the trail a long hundred feet below.  A man stood there on the very edge, with a rifle in his hands.  He may have been crouching, just before, but now he was standing erect, looking fixedly down at the dark heap in the trail below, and his figure, alert yet unwatchful, was silhouetted sharply against the sky.

When Weary, gun at aim, charged furiously down upon him, he whirled, ready to give battle for his life; saw the man he supposed was lying down there dead in the trail, and started backward with a yell of pure terror.  “Irish!” He toppled, threw the rifle from him in a single convulsive movement and went backward, down and down.—­

Weary got off his horse and, gun still gripped firmly, walked to the edge and looked down.  In his face, dimly revealed in the fitful moonlight, there was no pity but a look of baffled vengeance.  Down at the foot of the bluff the shadows lay deep and hid all they held, but out in the trail something moved, rose up and stood still a moment, his face turned upward to where stood Weary.

“Are yuh hurt, Irish?” Weary called anxiously down to him.

“Never touched me,” came the answer from below.  “He got my horse, damn him! and I just laid still and kept cases on what he’d do next.  Come on down!”

Weary was already climbing recklessly down to where the shadows reached long arms up to him.  It was not safe, in that uncertain light, but Weary was used to taking chances.  Irish, standing still beside the dead horse, watched and listened to the rattle of small stones slithering down, and the clink of spur chains upon the rocks.

Together the two went into the shadows and stood over a heap of something that had been a man.

“I never did kill a man,” Weary remarked, touching the heap lightly with his foot.  “But I sure would have, that time, if he hadn’t dropped just before I cut loose on him.”

Irish turned and looked at him.  Standing so, one would have puzzled long to know them apart.  “You’ve done a lot for me, Weary, this trip,” he said gravely.  “I’m sure obliged.”