Thornton’s eyes were for Ben Broderick alone.  And, it would seem, Broderick’s for Thornton.  But in their expressions there was nothing of similarity; in Thornton’s was a stern readiness to mete out punishment while from Broderick’s there looked forth a sudden furtiveness, a feverish desire for escape.

Broderick had never drawn to himself the epithet of coward.  But now he knew what he was doing, where wisdom pointed and what was his one chance.  There was still a good fifty yards between him and the man who rode down upon him, a long shot for a revolver when the horses which both men bestrode were rearing and plunging wildly.  Broderick bent forward suddenly, whirled his horse, drove his spurs deep into the grey’s sides and in a flash had cleared the fallen log, shot around the bend in the road and, taking his desperate chance with all of the cool defiance of danger which was a part of the man, sent his mount leaping down the steepening bank, into the willow thicket and on across.  Shouting mightily and wrathfully, after him came Buck Thornton.  But Broderick had the few yards’ headstart and, for the moment his destiny was with him.  Thornton saw only a thicket of willows wildly disturbed as Broderick went threshing through them and knew that for the present at least Broderick was beyond pursuit.

Swinging about angrily he rode back to join Comstock.  Already the battle there in the canon was over, the smell of powder was gone from the still air, the last reverberating echo of a shot had died away.  And in the road lay three men, two of them severely wounded while the other was already dead.  Stooping over this man, a queer look in his eyes, stood Comstock.

“I hankered to bring him in alive,” he muttered.  “But, after all it’s just as well.  And it had to be him or me.”

“Pollard?” asked Thornton quickly.  But Comstock shook his head.  Then Thornton, riding close, looking down from the saddle, saw the white upturned face.  This time as his eyes came back to Comstock, Comstock nodded.

“Cole Dalton, sheriff,” he said gravely.  “Yes.  And he’s the man I came all this way to gather in, Buck.  I’ve been after him for seven years, never guessing until lately that he was out here working the old Henry Plummer game of sheriff and badman at the same time.  He’s kept under cover, that being always his way; you’d never have thought that Pollard, Broderick, Bedloe were all tools....  But, I got him, Buck.  At last.”

A moment only Thornton stared incredulously.  Then his shoulders twitched as though this was a matter which could not concern him at present and he had other things to think of.

“Pollard?” he asked shortly.

“Over yonder.”  Comstock nodded toward the patch of brush on the mountainside.  “Shot through the head.”

“And the others?  One was the Kid, wasn’t it?...”