“You will stay here—­a little while,” he whispered, running his fingers through her shining hair.  There was a tone of gentle command in his words as he placed her against the rock.  “I must go back for a few minutes.  There is no danger—­now.”

He stooped and picked up the carbine which had fallen from her hand.  There was one cartridge still in the breech.  Replacing his revolver in its holster he rose above the rocks, ready to swing the rifle to his shoulder.  Up where the outlaws lay, a man was standing in the trail.  He was making no effort to conceal himself, and did not see Philip until he was within fifty paces of him.  Even then he did not show surprise.  Apparently he was unarmed, and Philip dropped the muzzle of his carbine.  The man motioned for him to advance, standing with a spread hand resting on either hip.  He was hatless and coatless.  His hair was long.  His face was covered with a scraggly growth of red beard, too short to hide his sunken cheeks.  He might have been a man half starved, and yet there was strength in his bony frame and his eyes were as keen as a serpent’s.

“Got in just in time to miss the fun after all,” he said coolly.  “Queer game, wasn’t it?  I was ahead of you up as far as the water hole.  Saw what happened there.”

Philip’s hand dropped on the butt of his revolver.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Me?  I’m Blackstone—­Jim Blackstone, from over beyond the elbow.  I guess everybody for fifty miles round here knows me.  And I guess I’m the only one who knows what’s happened—­and why.”  He had stepped behind a huge rock that shut out the lower trail from them and Philip followed, his hand still on his revolver.

“They’re both dead,” added the stranger, signifying with a nod of his head that he meant the outlaws.  “One of them was alive when I came up, but I ran my knife between his ribs, and he’s dead now.”

“The devil!” cried Philip, half drawing his revolver at the ferocious leer in the other’s face.

“Wait,” exclaimed the man, “and see if I’m not right.  The man who was responsible for the wreck back there is my deadliest enemy—­has been for years, and now I’m even up with him.  And I guess in the eyes of the law I’ve got the right to it.  What do you say?”

“Go on,” said Philip.

The snake-like eyes of the man burned with a dull flame and yet he spoke calmly.

“He came out here from England four years ago,” he went on.  “He was forced to come.  Understand?  He was such a devil back among his people—­half a criminal even then—­that he was sent out here on a regular monthly remittance.  After that everything went the way of his younger brother.  His father married again, and the second year he became even less cut off.  He was bad—­bad from the start, and he went from bad to worse out here.  He gambled, fought, robbed, and became the head of a gang of scoundrels as dangerous as himself.  He brooded over what he considered his wrongs until