bullets fired at close range often did freakish things.  There had been a man recently discharged from the General as convalescent, who had been shot in the shoulder, and the bullet, striking the collar-bone, had taken a curious tangent, following up the muscle of the neck and lodging just beneath the ear.  In that case there had been the external evidence of the bullet’s location.  In this case there was no such evidence to go by.

The afternoon of the third day, Pete was taken to the operating room and another examination made.  The X-ray showed a curious blur near the right side of the spine.  To extract the bullet would be a difficult and savage operation, an operation which the surgeon thought his patient in his present weakened condition could not stand.  Pete lay in a heavy stupor, his left arm and the left side of his face partially paralyzed.

The day after his arrival at the General two plain-clothes men came to question him.  He was conscious and could talk a little.  But they had learned nothing of his companion, the killing of Brent, nor how Brevoort managed to evade them.  They gathered little of Pete’s history save that he told them his name, his age, and that he had no relatives nor friends.  On all other subjects he was silent.  Incidentally the officials gave his name to the papers, and the papers dug into their back files for reference to an article they had clipped from the “Arizona Sentinel,” which gave them a brief account of the Annersley raid and the shooting of Gary.  They made the most of all this, writing a considerable “story,” which the president of the Stockmen’s Security read and straightway mailed to his old acquaintance, The Spider.

The officers from the police station had told Pete bluntly that he could not live, hoping to get him to confess to or give evidence as to the killing of Brent.  Pete at once knew the heavy-shouldered man—­the man who had shot him down and who was now keen on getting evidence in the case.

“So I’m goin’ to cross over?” Pete had said, eying the other curiously.  “Well, all I wish is that I could git on my feet long enough—­to—­get a crack at you—­on an even break.  I wouldn’t wear no coat, neither.”

The fact that Pete had bungled seemed to worry him much more than his condition.  He felt that it was a reflection on his craftmanship.  The plain-clothes man naturally thought that Pete was incorrigible, failing to appreciate that it was the pride of youth that spoke rather than the personal hatred of an enemy.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE SPIDER’S ACCOUNT

That the news of Pete’s serious condition should hit The Spider as hard as it did was as big a surprise to The Spider himself as it could ever have been to his closest acquaintance.  Yet it was a fact—­and The Spider never quarreled with facts.

The spider of the web-weaving species who leaves his web, invites disaster unless he immediately weaves another, and The Spider of Showdown was only too well aware of this.  Always a fatalist, he took things as they came, but had never yet gone out of his way to tempt the possibilities.