Struve looked at him, as a cornered wolf might have done.  “What will you do?”

“I’ll give you up to him.  I’ll tell him to come in and get you.  I’ll show him the way in, you white-livered cur!” bullied the cattleman, giving way to one of his rages.

“You’d better not,” snarled the convict.  “Not if you want to live.”

As they stood facing each other in a panting fury the door opened, to let in Siegfried and the ranger.

Jed’s rage against Struve died on the spot.  He saw his enemy, the ranger, before him, and leaped to the conclusion that he had come to this hidden retreat to run him down for the Squaw Creek murders.  Instantly, his hand swept to the hilt of his revolver.

That motion sealed his doom.  For Struve knew that Siegfried had brought the ranger to capture him, and suspected in the same flash that Briscoe was in on the betrayal.  Had not the man as good as told him so, not thirty seconds before?  He supposed that Jed was drawing to kill or cover him, and, like a flash of lightning, unscabbarded and fired.

“You infernal Judas, I’ll get you anyhow,” he cried.

Jed dropped his weapon, and reeled back against the wall, where he hung for a moment, while the convict pumped a second and a third bullet into his body.  Briscoe was dead before Fraser could leap forward and throw his arms round the man who had killed him.

Between them, they flung Struve to the ground, and disarmed him.  The convict’s head had struck as he went down, and it was not for some little time that he recovered fully from his daze.  When he did his hands were tied behind him.

“I didn’t go for to kill him,” he whimpered, now thoroughly frightened at what he had done.  “You both saw it, gentlemen.  You did, lieutenant.  So did you, Sig.  It was self-defense.  He drew on me.  I didn’t go to do it.”

Fraser was examining the dead man’s wounds.  He looked up, and said to his friend:  “Nothing to do for him, Sig.  He’s gone.”

“I tell you, I didn’t mean to do it,” pleaded Struve.  “Why, lieutenant, that man has been trying to get me to ambush you for weeks.  I’ll swear it.”  The convict was in a panic of terror, ready to curry favor with the man whom he held his deadliest enemy.  “Yes, lieutenant, ever since you came here.  He’s been egging me on to kill you.”

“And you tried it three times?”

“No, sir.”  He pointed vindictively at the dead man, lying face up on the floor.  “It was him that ambushed you this morning.  I hadn’t a thing to do with it.”

“Don’t lie, you coward.”

They carried the body to the next room and put it on a bed.  Tommie was dispatched on a fast horse for help.

Late in the afternoon he brought back with him Doctor Lee, and half an hour after sunset Yorky and Slim galloped up.  They were for settling the matter out of hand by stringing the convict Struve up to the nearest pine, but they found the ranger so very much on the spot that they reconsidered.