For a very brief yet electrically vital and vivid moment there was no sound in the room, wherein never a single muscle twitched.  And then there were no words and only three sharp pistol shots.  Broderick had seen what lay in the Kid’s eye, a look to be read by any man; he had snatched his gun up from the floor beside him and had fired, point blank.  There is no name for the brief fragment of time between his shot and the Kid’s.  But Ben Broderick had shot true to the mark, and the Kid was sinking; Bedloe’s bullet had gone wide....  And then the third shot, Thornton’s ... and as the two men fell, Kid Bedloe and Ben Broderick, they pitched forward toward the centre of the room and the big body of the Kid lay across the body of Ben Broderick.  As the Kid died his eyes were upon Thornton, and in them was a look of content and of gratitude!

“Again he tried to kiss me....  He is all brute.  He ... he told me you were dead....  Oh, dear God, dear God!” cried the girl, shrinking back, covering her face with her hands.

Thornton, his face set and white and grave, came to her.  She was trembling so that he put his arm about her.  She sobbed and caught at him as a child might have done.  His arm tightened, holding her closer.

“Let me take you away,” he said gently.

With never a look back to see what long hoarded booty there in the hole in the floor had drawn Ben Broderick back to Pollard’s house, he turned and with his arm still about her, led the girl from the room, from the house and out to his horse at the fence.  She moaned again and drooped against him.  He gathered her up into his arms tenderly.  And with a tenderness which was to become part of the man, he held her close while he swung slowly into the saddle.

“Winifred Waverly....” he began.

There he stopped, looking with puzzled eyes down into her white face.  God knew how much she had gone through, what fear Ben Broderick had put into her heart.  But at the least now she had fainted.

“She’s all alone,” muttered the cowboy.  “All alone.  And somebody’s got to look out for her....”

He turned slowly and rode down the crooked street, carrying her lightly in his arms.  And now, more than ever, did the two men at the lunch counter stare.

THE END