And when Shorty drew his horse to a sliding halt within half a dozen paces of Red King, Lawler saw that Shorty was in the grip of a cold, deadly passion.  His eyes were glittering, his lips were stiff and white, and he was drawing great, long breaths that could be heard above the shuddering gasps of the horse he rode.

The giant’s fingers were working—­clenching and unclenching near the butts of the two guns he wore; and his eyes were pools of icy rage that chilled Lawler.

Twice he tried to speak as Lawler shot a short question at him, and twice he failed, making guttural sounds that betrayed the awful agitation that had seized him.  At the third attempt he blurted: 

“Lawler, Antrim’s gang has cleaned up the Circle L!  Damn their sneakin’, dirty hides!  They’ve run off our cattle—­takin’ ’em through Kinney’s canon!  They’ve wiped out the Circle L outfit!  Blackburn’s left—­Blackburn an’ three more poor fellows they plugged, an’ didn’t finish!

“Blackburn made me ride for help—­damn him, anyway, Lawler!  I wanted to stay with the bunch!” Shorty’s voice broke; his lips quivered; his voice rose to a screech of impotent, awful rage.  Brokenly, he told Lawler what had happened after the stampeding of the cattle by Antrim’s men.  He related, in tumbling, rapid, quavering sentences, how he had got the help Blackburn had sent him for—­Caldwell’s outfit—­with the exception of two men who had been sent in different directions to other ranches.  And how, later in the morning, he had returned to the shallow gulley on the plains where he had left Blackburn and the others, to find most of them dead.  Blackburn and three more had been wounded, but had survived.

“Fifteen men, Lawler!” raged Shorty; “fifteen men wiped out by that miserable gang of coyotes!  But damn them!” he added with a fierce, savage joy; “they didn’t get away without payin’ toll, either!  There’s twenty of them layin’ out there, Lawler—­twenty of them for the coyotes to find.  For Caldwell an’ his outfit wouldn’t touch ’em.  When I left, to come an’ tell you—­thinkin’ you was in jail—­Caldwell an’ his boys was plantin’ our fellows, an’ takin’ Blackburn and the three others to the Hamlin shack!”

He looked hard at Lawler, noted the paleness of the man’s face, and then spoke less excitedly, and with deep regret in his voice.

“Lawler, I hate to tell you this.  After I seen what happened to our boys, I rode this way, intendin’ to tell you.  The trail took me past the Hamlin shack.  I wasn’t intendin’ to stop, but it seems like they heard me comin’ an’ run out to see what was up.

“It was your mother stopped me, Lawler—­smiling kind of grim—­like she always smiles when things go wrong.

“‘Shorty,’ she says; ’you go directly to town and find Kane.  You know he’s in jail, for I told you so last night.  Tell Sheriff Moreton to release him; and then tell Kane that Antrim has stolen all the Circle L cattle and has burned all the Circle L buildings.  Tell him that Antrim himself burned the buildings, and that Antrim said he would wait for Kane at Antrim’s shack—­and that he dared Kane to come there for him.  ‘Shorty,’ she said, cold an’ ca’m; ’you tell Kane to get out of jail and go to Antrim’s cabin, and kill him!’”