Then, suddenly as it had swept over Roy, the brain-storm passed.  The mists cleared from his eyes.  He looked down at the leg of the stool in his hand, which was all that remained of it.  He looked up—­and saw Beulah Rutherford in the street astride a horse.

She spoke to her brother, who had drawn a revolver from his pocket.  “You don’t need that now, Ned.  He’s through.”

Her contemptuous voice stung Roy.  “Why didn’t they leave me alone, then?” he said sullenly in justification.

The girl did not answer him.  She slipped from the horse and ran into the arcade with the light grace that came of perfect health and the freedom of the hills.  The eyes of the young man followed this slim, long-limbed Diana as she knelt beside Charlton and lifted his bloody head into her arms.  He noticed that her eyes burned and that her virginal bosom rose and fell in agitation.

None the less she gave first aid with a business-like economy of motion.  “Bring water, Ned,—­and a doctor,” she snapped crisply, her handkerchief pressed against the wound.

To see what havoc he had wrought amazed Roy.  The arcade looked as if a cyclone had swept through it.  The cigar-stand was shattered beyond repair, its broken glass strewn everywhere.  The chair of the bootblack had been splintered into kindling wood.  Among the debris sat Meldrum groaning, both hands pressing a head that furiously ached.  Brad Charlton was just beginning to wake up to his surroundings.

A crowd had miraculously gathered from nowhere.  The fat marshal of Battle Butte was puffing up the street a block away.  Beaudry judged it time to be gone.  He dropped the leg of the stool and strode toward the hotel.

Already his fears were active again.  What would the hillmen do to him when they had recovered from the panic into which his madness had thrown them?  Would they start for him at once?  Or would they mark one more score against him and wait?  He could scarcely keep his feet from breaking into a run to get more quickly from the vicinity of the Silver Dollar.  He longed mightily to reach the protection of Dave Dingwell’s experience and debonair sang froid.

The cattleman had not yet reached the hotel.  Roy went up to their room at once and locked himself in.  He sat on the bed with a revolver in his hand.  Now that it was all over, he was trembling like an aspen leaf.  For the hundredth time in the past week he flung at himself his own contemptuous scorn.  Why was the son of John Beaudry such an arrant coward?  He knew that his sudden madness and its consequences had been born of panic.  What was there about the quality of his nerves that differed from those of other men?  Even now he was shivering from the dread that his enemies might come and break down the door to get at him.

He heard the jocund whistle of Dingwell as the cattleman came along the corridor.  Swiftly he pocketed the revolver and unlocked the door.  When Dave entered, Roy was lying on the bed pretending to read a newspaper.