Now Galloway had seen him, had recognized him, perhaps, the thought coming naturally to him that it would be Roderick Norton who rode to cut him off.  He shifted his rifle so that his right hand was on the grip, the barrel caught in his left; he had dropped his horse’s reins.  Norton was slipping a fresh clip into his gun, his own reins now upon his horse’s neck.  And now both men knew that unless a bullet stopped him Norton would cut across Galloway’s path before he could come to his men.

“At him, Roddy, old boy!  We’re coming!”

Norton glanced over his shoulder and pressed on.  Brocky had missed him, had seen, had called back a half dozen of his men and was following.  Well, if he dropped, maybe Brocky and the others could get Jim Galloway.  It really began to look as though Galloway had played out his string.

They were firing from the mountainside now, the bullets thus far flying wild of their rushing target.  Norton shook his head and urged his horse to fresh endeavor.  In a moment he would be fairly between Galloway and Galloway’s last chance.  His eye picked out the spot where he would dismount at that moment, a tumble of big boulders.  He would swing down so that they would be between him and the mountain, so that nothing but moonlit open space lay between him and Jim Galloway.

While rifles cracked and spat fire and sprayed lead over him and about him he rode the last fifty yards.  He reached the boulders, set his horse up, threw himself from the saddle, and with his back to the rock, his face toward Galloway, he lifted his rifle.  Galloway, almost at the same instant, jerked in his own horse.  He was so close that Norton caught his cry of rage.

“Hands up, Galloway!” cried the sheriff.  “Hands up or I’ll drop you.”

But at last Galloway had come out into the open; at last there was no subterfuge to stand forth at his need; at last, gambler that he was, he accepted the even break of man to man.  As Norton’s voice rang out Galloway fired.

He shot twice before Norton pulled the trigger.  Norton shot but the once.  Galloway dropped his rifle, sat rigid a moment, toppled from the saddle.  And his men, seeing him go down, cried out to one another and drew back into the mountain canons.

“Funny thing,” said Brocky Lane afterward.  “Had the picture of a kid of a girl in his pocket!  Must have carted it around for a year.  Old Roddy’s bullet tore right square through it.”

It was a picture of Florrie Engle, taken years before.  As Brocky said:  “Just a kid of a girl.”  Where he got it nobody knew.  But then there were other things about Jim Galloway which no one knew.  Perhaps . . .  Quien sabe!