“Hands up, friend!  We’ll take no chances on yo’.”

The Texan’s hands went up promptly, just as a bullet flattened itself against a rock behind him.  It had been fired from the bank of the dry wash, some hundred and fifty yards away.

“That’s no fair!  Both sides oughtn’t to plug at me,” he protested, grinning.

The darkness which blurred detail melted as Fraser approached, and the moonlight showed him a tall, lank, unshaven old mountaineer, standing behind a horse, his shotgun thrown across the saddle.

“That’s near enough, Mr. Fraser from Texas,” said the old man, in a slow voice that carried the Southern intonation.  “This old gun is loaded with buckshot, and she scatters like hell.  Speak yore little piece.  How came yo’ here, right now?”

“I got lost in the Wind River bad lands this mo’ning, and I been playing hide and go seek with myself ever since.”

“Where yo’ haided for?”

“Gimlet Butte.”

“Huh!  That’s right funny, too.”

“Why?”

“Because all yo’ got to do to reach the butte is to follow this road and yore nose for about three miles.”

A bullet flung up a spurt of sand beside the horse.

The young fellow behind the dead horse broke in, with impatient alarm:  “He’s all right, dad.  Can’t you tell by his way of talking that he’s from the South?  Make him lie down.”

Something sweet and vibrant in the voice lingered afterward in the Texan’s mind almost like a caress, but at the time he was too busy to think of this.  He dropped behind a cottonwood, and drew his revolver.

“How many of them are there?” he asked of the lad, in a whisper.

“About six, I think.  I’m sorry I shot at you.”

“What’s the row?”

“They followed us out of Gimlet Butte.  They’ve been drinking.  Isn’t that some one climbing up the side of the ridge?”

“I believe it is.  Let me have your rifle, kid.”

“What for?” The youngster took careful aim, and fired.

A scream from the sagebrush—­ just one, and then no more.

“Bully for you’, Arlie,” the old man said.

None of them spoke for some minutes, then Fraser heard a sob—­ a stifled one, but unmistakable none the less.

“Don’t be afraid, kid.  We’ll stand ’em off,” the Texan encouraged.

“I ain’t afraid, but I—­ I——­ Oh, God, I’ve killed a man.”

The Texan stared at him, where he lay in the heavy shadows, shaken with his remorse.  “Holy smoke!  Wasn’t he aiming to kill you?  He likely isn’t dead, anyhow.  You got real troubles to worry about, without making up any.”

He could see the youngster shaking with the horror of it, and could hear the staccato sobs forcing themselves through the closed teeth.  Something about it, some touch of pathos he could not account for, moved his not very accessible heart.  After all, he was a slim little kid to be engaged in such a desperate encounter Fraser remembered his own boyhood and the first time he had ever seen bloodshed, and, recalling it, he slipped across in the darkness and laid an arm across the slight shoulder.