“How’s everything?” he asked in the customary inconsequential manner of casual acquaintanceship.

“Fine,” said Blackie in a tone of equal casualness.  “Couldn’t be better.”

The stranger slouched on his way, climbed into the saddle of the horse he had left by the door, and rode off....  And Buck Thornton, from the bend in the road where he had halted Comet under a big live oak tree, noted how the horseman rode on his spurs when once he had passed from the sight of the stage driver.

“Taking the Red Canon trail,” he marked with satisfaction.  “Carrying the word to Broderick and Pollard that there’s been no slip-up and that the box is really aboard.  And now....  Shake a foot, Comet; here’s where we put one over on Blackie.”

The man who had passed the time of day with the saloon man had disappeared over a ridge and out of sight; Thornton consequently rode swiftly to overtake the stage.  Before the four running horses had drawn the creaking wagon after them a half mile Hap Smith stopped his horses in answer to the shout from behind him and stared over his shoulder wonderingly.

“What the hell ...” he began.  And then with a shade of relief in his tone and yet half hesitatingly, the frown still on his face as Thornton rode close up, “It’s you, is it?  I thought for a minute....”

“That it was Broderick?” laughed Thornton.  “You didn’t think so, did you, Blackie?”

Blackie drew back and slipped his hand covertly into his coat pocket.  Thornton, giving no sign that he had seen, said briefly to Hap Smith: 

“You’ve talked things over with Banker Templeton?  And with Comstock?”

“Yes,” said Hap Smith, his thick, squat figure growing tense where he sat as though with a sudden nervous bracing within.  “Yes.”

“And you expected me here?  You will give me a free hand?”

“Yes,” cried Smith ringingly.  “Damn ’em, yes.  Go to it, Buck!”

Thornton turned stern eyes upon Blackie.

“I can shoot twelve holes through you before you get your hand out of your pocket,” he said crisply.  “You damned stool-pigeon!  Now, suppose you pull your hand out ... empty! ... and stick it up high above your head.  Think it over, Blackie, before you take any fool chances.”

His left hand held Comet’s reins gathered up close as he spoke; his right rested lightly on the horn of his saddle.  Blackie plainly hesitated; a tinge of red warmed his swarthy cheek; his eyes glittered evilly....  Then suddenly he whipped out his hand, a revolver in it....

But Thornton, for all of the handicap, fired first.  His own right hand went its swift, sure way to the gun swinging loose in its holster under his left arm pit; he jabbed it forward even as he swung himself to one side in the saddle, and fired.  The revolver slipped from Blackie’s hand and clattered down to the bed of the wagon while Blackie, crying out chokingly, his face going white with fear, clutched at his shoulder and gave up the fight.