A minute later they were mounting the horses that Owen had brought, and shortly afterward they were moving like shadows away from the outskirts of Okar.

Not until they were well out in the big basin did either of them speak.  And then Sanderson said, shortly: 

“Silverthorn was tellin’ me you gassed everything.  Are you feelin’ better over it?”

Owen’s head bent over his horse’s mane; his chin was on his chest when he answered: 

“Come and kill me.”

“Hell!” exploded Sanderson, disgustedly.  “If there was anything comin’ to you killin’ would be too good for you.  You ain’t done anything to me, you sufferin’ fool—­not a thing!  What you’ve done you’ve done to Mary Bransford.  When you see Dale an’ Silverthorn grabbin’ the Double A, an’ Mary Bransford ridin’ away, homeless—­you’ll have feelin’s of remorse, mebbe—­if you’ve got any man in you at all!”

Owen writhed and groaned.

“It was the whisky—­the cursed whisky!” he whispered.  “I can’t let it alone—­I love it!  And once I get a taste of it, I’m gone—–­I’m a stark, staring lunatic!”

“I’d swear to that,” grimly agreed Sanderson.

“I didn’t mean to say a word to anybody,” wailed the little man.  “Do you think I’d do anything to harm Mary Bransford—­after what she did for me?  But I did—­I must have done it.  Dale said I did, Silverthorn said I did, and you say I did.  But I don’t remember.  Silverthorn said I signed a receipt for some money from the Okar bank—­three thousand, odd.  I don’t remember.  Oh, but I’m—­”

“Calling yourself names won’t get you back to where you was before you made a fool of yourself,” Sanderson told him, pityingly.  “An’ me tellin’ you what I think of you won’t relieve my feelin’s a whole lot, for there ain’t words enough layin’ around loose.

“What I want to know is this:  did you go clean loco, or do you remember anything that happened to you?  Do you know who got the money you drew from the bank?”

“Dale,” answered Owen.  “He had that, for I remember him counting it in the back room of the hotel.  There was more, too; I heard him telling Silverthorn there was about seven thousand in all.  Silverthorn wanted him to put it all back in the bank, but Dale said there was just enough for him to meet his pay-roll—­that he owed his men a lot of back pay.  He took it with him.”

“My four thousand,” said Sanderson, shortly.

“Yours?” Owen paled.

“Dale lifted my money belt,” Sanderson returned.  “I was wondering what he did with it.  So that’s what.”

He relapsed into a grim silence, and Owen did not speak again.

They rode several miles in that fashion—­Owen keeping his horse slightly behind Sanderson’s, his gaze on the other’s face, his own white with remorse and anxiety.

At last he heard Sanderson laugh, and the sound of it made him grit his teeth in impotent agony.