“Too late, Arizona,” called the tall man.  “Too late for one job, partner, but just in time for the next!”

Arizona cursed softly, steadily, through snarling lips.

“What job?”

“Sinclair!  He’s gone, but he’ll be back any minute.  And it’ll need us both to down him, Arizona.  We’ll split on Sinclair’s reward.”

Disgust and wrath consumed Arizona.  Without other answer he strode to the prostrate form, slashed the rope and tore the handkerchief from between the teeth of Cold Feet.  The schoolteacher sat up, gasping for breath, purple of face.

“Leave him be!” cried Sandersen, his voice shrill with anger.  “Leave him be!  He’s the bait, Arizona, and we’re the trap that’ll catch Sinclair.”

But Arizona cursed again bitterly.  “Leave that bait lie till the sun burns it up.  You’ll never catch Sinclair with it.”

“How come?”

From around the rock Sandersen appeared and walked down to the fat man.

“Because Sinclair’s already caught.”

If he had expected the tall man to groan with disappointment, there was a surprise in store for him.  Sandersen exclaimed shrilly for joy.

“Sinclair took!  Took dead, then!”

“Dead?  Why?”

“You don’t mean he was taken alive?”

“Yes, I sure do!  And I done the figuring that led up to him being caught.”

The slender form of Jig rose before them, trembling.

“It isn’t true!  It isn’t true!  There aren’t enough of you in Sour Creek to take Riley Sinclair!”

“Ain’t it true?” asked Arizona.  “All right, son, you’ll meet him pronto in the Sour Creek jail, unless the boys finish their party of the other day and string you up before you get inside the jail.”

This brought a peculiar, low-pitched moan from Cold Feet.

“Cheer up,” said Sandersen.  “You ain’t swinging yet awhile.”

“But he’s hurt!  If he’s alive, he’s terribly wounded?”

Arizona beat down the appealing hand with a brutal gesture.

“No, he ain’t particular hurt.  Just his neck squashed a bit where the sheriff throttled him.  He didn’t fight enough to get hurt, curse him!”

Frowning, Sandersen shook his head.  “He’s a fighting man, Arizona, if they ever was one.”

It seemed that everything infuriated the fat man.

“What d’you know about it, Lanky?” he demanded of Sandersen.  “Didn’t I run the affair?  Wasn’t it me that planted the whole trap?  Wasn’t it me that knowed he’d come into town for you or Cartwright?”

“Cartwright!” gasped Jig.

“Sure!  We nailed him in Cartwright’s room, just the way I said we would.  And they laughed at me, the fools!”

He might have gathered singular inferences from the lowered head of Jig and the soft murmur:  “I might have known—­I might have known he’d try for me.”

“And I might have had the pleasure of drilling him clean,” said Arizona, harking back to it with savage pleasure, “but I shot out the light.  I wanted him to die slow, and before the end I wanted to pry his eyes open and make him see my face and know that it was me that done for him!  That was what I wanted.  But he turned yaller and wouldn’t fight.”