“I reckon they’re gainin’ on him,” was Sanderson’s mental comment when an hour later he saw the first rider appear for a moment on the sky line, vanish, reappear for an instant, only to be followed within a few minutes by the figures of the other men.

Sanderson was closing up the space that separated him from the two men, and by that medium he knew they were not traveling rapidly, for the brown horse was loping slowly.  Thus he knew that the first man was not yet aware that he was being followed.

But some time later to Sanderson’s ears was borne the faint, muffled report of a firearm, and he smiled solemnly.

“That first guy will know, now,” he told himself.  Sanderson kept steadily on.  In half an hour he heard half a dozen rifle reports in quick succession, He could see the smoke puffs of the weapons, and he knew the pursuit was over.

The second riders had brought the first to bay in a section of broken country featured by small, rock-strewn hills.  By watching the smoke balloon upward, Sanderson could determine the location of the men.

It seemed to Sanderson that the two had separated, one swinging westward and the other eastward, in an endeavor to render hazardous any concealment the other might find.  It was the old game of getting an enemy between two fires, and Sanderson’s lips curved with an appreciative grin as he noted the fact.

“Old-timers,” he said.

It was not Sanderson’s affair.  He told himself that many times as he rode slowly forward.  To his knowledge the country was cursed with too many men of the type the two appeared to be; and as he had no doubt that the other man was of that type also, they would be doing the country a service were they to annihilate one another.

Sanderson, though, despite his conviction, felt a pulse of sympathy for the first rider.  It was that emotion which impelled him to keep going cautiously forward when, by all the rules of life in that country, he should have stood at a distance to allow the men to fight it out among themselves.

Sanderson’s interest grew as the fight progressed.  When he had approached as far as he safely could without endangering his own life and that of Streak, he dismounted at the bottom of a small hill, trailed the reins over Streak’s head and, carrying his rifle, made his way stealthily to the crest of the hill.  There, concealed behind an irregularly shaped boulder, he peered at the combatants.

He had heard several reports while dismounting and ascending the hill, and by the time he looked over the crest he saw that the battle was over.  He saw the three men grouped about a cluster of rocks on a hill not more than a hundred yards distant.  Two of the men were bending over the third, who was stretched out on his back, motionless.  It appeared to Sanderson that the two men were searching the pockets of the other, for they were fumbling at the other’s clothing and, seemingly, putting something into their own pockets.