It was dark, but not so dark as last night, there being no clouds to blot out the stars. And the moon was slipping upward through the trees upon the mountain top when Thornton came at last to the lake. As before, he was watchful and alert. Clayton was Kid Bedloe's friend, and Clayton had always struck him as a man in whom one could put little faith. It was quite in keeping with what he knew that Jimmie's note had been written at the instigation of Kid Bedloe himself and that he was to be led out here where Kid Bedloe and Ed might be in waiting for him. It was quite possible, even probable. But he thought it more than likely that for once Jimmie Clayton was acting in good faith.

The Jimmie Clayton whom he found alone a little after moonrise was very much as he had found him that other night. The fugitive lay upon the bunk in the darkness of the dugout, and only when he was a.s.sured that it was Buck Thornton come to him did he light his stub of candle. As before Thornton entered and closed the door after him to look down on the man with a sharp twinge of pity.

"How're they coming, Jimmie?" he asked gently.

"Can't you see?" replied Clayton with a nervous laugh. "I'm all in, Buck. All in."

If ever a man looked to be "all in" it was poor little Jimmie Clayton.

He threw back his coat for Thornton to see. There upon the side was the stain of blood hardly dry upon the shirt. His eyes were hollow, sunken, fever-filled, his cheeks unthinkably drawn, yellow-white and sickly, the hand which fell back weakly from the exertion of opening his coat showed the bones thrust up as though they would pierce the skin.

"You've been shot again?" demanded the cowboy.

Jimmie shook his head.

"The same ol' hole, Buck; Colt forty-five. It won't heal up, it breaks out all the time. I can't sleep with it, I can't eat, I can't set still." He had begun manfully, but now the little whimper came back into his voice, his shaking hand gripped Thornton's arm feebly, and he cried tremulously, "I wisht I was dead, Buck. Hones' to Gawd, I wisht I was dead!"

"Poor little old Jimmie," Thornton muttered just as he had muttered the words once before, gently, pityingly. "Is there anything I can do, Jimmie."

Jimmie drew back his hand and lay still for a little, his eyes seeming unnaturally large as he turned them upwards, filled at once with a sort of defiance and an abject, cringing terror.

"Nothin'," he said a little sullenly. His eyes dropped and ran to the fingers of his hand which were plucking nervously at his coat. He parted his lips as though he would say something else and then closed them tightly; even his eyes shut tight for a moment. Thornton watched him, waiting. It was easy to see that Jimmie Clayton had upon the tip of his tongue something he wished to say, and that he hesitated ... through fear?

"What is it, Jimmie?" Thornton asked after a while.

Jimmie lifted his head quickly, his eyes flew open with a look in them almost of defiance as he blurted out:

"Do you know who shot you ... that time down in Juarez?"

"Was it you, Jimmie?" asked Thornton.

Jimmie's eyes grew larger; all defiance fled from them and the terror came back.

"You ... you think ..." he faltered. "You thought all along...."

"Was it you, Jimmie?"

The voice was soft, the eyes gentle and now a little smile accompanied the words. It was so easy to forget what had happened so long ago, to disregard it when one looked into this man's eyes and saw there the end of the earthly story of a man who had not been a good man because he had never had a chance, who had never really earned his spurs as a Western badman, because he was of too small calibre, who was after all a vessel that had come imperfect from the hands of the potter. Now Jimmie answered, his voice hushed, his eyes wide, his soul filled with wonderment:

"It was ... me, Buck!"

"Well, Jimmie, I'm sorry. But it can't be helped now, can it? And I'll forget it if you will." He looked at the worn, frail form, and knew that Comstock was right and that little Jimmie Clayton was lying in the valley of the shadow of death. So he added, his voice very low and very gentle, "I'll even shake hands if you will, Jimmie."

Jimmie closed his eyes but not quick enough to hide the mistiness which had rushed into them. His breathing was irregular and heavy, its sound being the only sound in the dugout. He did not put out his hand.

Finally, his voice steadier than it had been before, he spoke again.

"You've been square with me, Buck. I want to be square with you.... There's a frame-up to get you. Now don't stop me an' I'll talk as fast as I can. It hurts me to talk much." He pressed a thin hand upon his side, paused a moment, and then went on.

"I think Broderick's the man as has been putting over most of the stick-ups around here for quite some time. Him and Pollard in together.

I ain't squealin' on a pal when I tell you this, neither," with a little flash of his old defiance. "Broderick's no pal of mine. The dirty cur.

He could of got me clear.... He wanted to make 'em give me up, to git the reward.... Their game is to make folks think you been doing these things, and to send you up for 'em."

He stopped to rest, but even now did not look to see what effect his words had upon his hearer.

"I don't know much about it," he went on after a moment. "You can find out. But I do know they stole a saddle of yours, and a horse. They're going to stick up the stage out of Rock Creek Mines next week; there's going to be some shooting, and a horse is going to get killed. That'll be your horse, Buck. An' it'll have your saddle on."

He had told his story. He told nothing of how he knew, and Thornton did not press him, for he guessed swiftly that somehow the telling would implicate Kid Bedloe, who was a pal... and little Jimmie Clayton was not going to squeal on a pal.

Half an hour after he had come to the dugout Thornton left it. For Clayton would not talk further and would not let him stay.

"I got a horse out there," he had said irritably. "I can get along. I'm going to move on in the morning. So long, Buck."

So Thornton went back to his horse, wondering if, when tomorrow came, Jimmie Clayton would not indeed be moving on, moving on like little Jo to the land where men will be given an even break, where they will be "given their chance." His foot was in the stirrup when he heard Clayton's voice calling. He went back into the dugout. The light was out and it was very dark.

"What is it, Jimmie?" he asked.

"I was thinking, Buck," came the halting answer, "that ... if you don't care ... I _will_ shake hands."

Thornton put out his hand a little eagerly and his strong fingers closed tightly upon the thin nervous fingers of Jimmie Clayton. Then he went out without speaking.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE SHOW DOWN

Upon the first day of the month the stage leaving the Rock Creek Mines in the early morning carried a certain long, narrow lock-box carefully bestowed under the seat whereon sat Hap Smith and the guard. Also a single pa.s.senger: a swarthy little man with ink-black hair plastered down close upon a low, atavistic forehead and with small ink-black eyes.

In Dry Town beyond the mountains, to which he was evidently now returning from the mines, he was known as Blackie, bartender of the Last Chance saloon. This morning he had been abroad as early as the earliest; he seemed to take a bright interest in everything, from the harnessing of the four horses to the taking on of mail bags and boxes. In a moment when Hap Smith, before the mine superintendent's cabin, was rolling a cigarette preparatory to the long drive, Blackie even stepped forward briskly and gave the guard a hand with the long, narrow lock-box.

Keen eyed and watchful as Blackie was he failed to see a man who never lost sight of him or of the stage until it rolled out of the mining camp through the early morning. The man, unusually tall, wearing black s.h.a.ggy chaps, grey soft shirt and neck-handkerchief and a large black hat, kept the stage in view from around the corner of the wood shed standing back of the superintendent's cabin. Then, swinging up to the back of a rangy granite-coloured roan, he turned into the road.

"We're playing to win this time, Comet," he said softly. "And, as we said all along, Blackie's the capper for their game. Shake a foot, Comet, old boy. Maybe at the end of a hard day's work we'll look in on ... her."

When, an hour later, the stage made its brief stop in Miller's Flat to take on mail bags Blackie was leaning out smoking a cigar and looking about him alertly. A lounger near the post-office door turned to watch in great seeming idleness. His eyes met the bartender's for a second and he nodded casually.

"How's everything?" he asked in the customary inconsequential manner of casual acquaintanceship.

"Fine," said Blackie in a tone of equal casualness. "Couldn't be better."

The stranger slouched on his way, climbed into the saddle of the horse he had left by the door, and rode off.... And Buck Thornton, from the bend in the road where he had halted Comet under a big live oak tree, noted how the horseman rode on his spurs when once he had pa.s.sed from the sight of the stage driver.

"Taking the Red Canon trail," he marked with satisfaction. "Carrying the word to Broderick and Pollard that there's been no slip-up and that the box is really aboard. And now.... Shake a foot, Comet; here's where we put one over on Blackie."

The man who had pa.s.sed the time of day with the saloon man had disappeared over a ridge and out of sight; Thornton consequently rode swiftly to overtake the stage. Before the four running horses had drawn the creaking wagon after them a half mile Hap Smith stopped his horses in answer to the shout from behind him and stared over his shoulder wonderingly.

"What the h.e.l.l ..." he began. And then with a shade of relief in his tone and yet half hesitatingly, the frown still on his face as Thornton rode close up, "It's you, is it? I thought for a minute...."

"That it was Broderick?" laughed Thornton. "You didn't think so, did you, Blackie?"