“Mebbe-so you kill um good,” the man had said at parting, and as Endicott rode he knew that he would kill, and for him the knowledge held nothing of repugnance—­only a wild fierce joy.  He looked at the revolver in his hand.  Never before had the hand held a lethal weapon, yet no slightest doubt as to his ability to use it entered his brain.  Above him, somewhere upon the plain beyond the bench rim, the woman he loved was at the mercy of a man whom Endicott instinctively knew would stop at nothing to gain an end.  The thought that the man he intended to kill was armed and that he was a dead shot never entered his head, nor did he remember that the woman had mocked and ignored him, and against his advice had wilfully placed herself in the man’s power.  She had harried and exasperated him beyond measure—­and yet he loved her.

The trail grew suddenly lighter.  The walls of the coulee flattened into a wide expanse of open.  Mountains loomed in the distance and in the white moonlight a riderless horse ceased snipping grass, raised his head, and with ears cocked forward, stared at him.  In a fever of suspense Endicott gazed about him, straining his eyes to penetrate the half-light, but the plain stretched endlessly away, and upon its surface was no living, moving thing.

Suddenly his horse pricked his ears and sniffed.  Out of a near-by depression that did not show in the moonlight another horse appeared.  It, too, was riderless, and the next instant, from the same direction sounded a low, muffled cry and, leaping from his saddle, he dashed toward the spot.  The sage grew higher in the depression which was the head of a branch of the coulee by means of which the trail gained the bench, and as he plunged in, the head and shoulders of a man appeared above a bush.  Endicott was very close when the man pushed something fiercely from him, and the body of a woman crashed heavily into the sage.  Levelling the gun, he fired.  The shot rang loud, and upon the edge of the depression a horse snorted nervously.  The man pitched forward and lay sprawled grotesquely upon the ground and Endicott saw that his extended hand grasped a revolver.

Dully he stared at the thing on the ground at his feet.  There was a movement in the scrub and Alice Marcum stood beside him.  He glanced into her face.  And as her eyes strayed from the sprawling figure to meet his, Endicott read in their depths that which caused his heart to race madly.  She stepped toward him and suddenly both paused to listen.  The girl’s face turned chalk-white in the moonlight.  From the direction of the coulee came the sound of horses’ hoofs pounding the trail!

CHAPTER VII

THE ARREST