“You fear him?” she asked curiously, for it had seemed impossible that this cold-blooded gunman feared any living thing.

He rolled a cigarette meditatively before he answered.

“Sure,” he said, “I fear him.  I ain’t a fool.  It was him that started me, and him that gave me the first main lessons.  But I ain’t got the nacheral talent with a gun that Sinclair has got.”

Nodding his head in confirmation, his expression softened, as with the admiration of one artist for a greater kindred spirit.

“The proof is that they’s a long list of gunfights in Sinclair’s past, but not more deaths than you can count on the fingers of one hand.  And them that he killed was plumb no good.  The rest he winged and let ’em go.  That’s his way, and it takes an artist with a gun to work like that.  Yep, he’s a great man, curse him!  Only one weak thing I ever hear of him doing.  He buckled to the sheriff and told him where to find you!”

Scratching a match on his trousers, the cowpuncher was amazed to hear Jig cry:  “You lie!”

He gaped at her until the match singed his fingers.  “That’s a tolerable loud word for a kid to use!”

Apparently he meditated punishment, but then he shrugged his shoulders and lighted his cigarette.

“Wild horses couldn’t have dragged it out of him!” Jig was repeating.

“Say,” said the fat man, grinning, “how d’you know I knew where you was?”

Like a blow in the face it silenced her.  She looked miserably down to the ground.  Was it possible that Sinclair had betrayed her?  Not for the murder of Quade.  He would be more apt to confess that himself, and indeed she dreaded the confession.  But if he let her be dragged back, if her identity became known, she faced what was more horrible to her than hanging, and that was life with Cartwright.

“Which reminds me,” said Arizona, “that the old sheriff may not wait for morning before he starts after you.  Just slope down the hill and saddle your hoss, will you?”

Automatically she obeyed, wild thoughts running through her mind.  To go back to Sour Creek meant a return to Cartwright, and then nothing could save her from him.  Halfway to her saddle her foot struck metal, her own gun, which Arizona had dropped after firing the bullet.  Was there not a possibility of escape?  She heard Arizona humming idly behind her.  Plainly he was entirely off guard.

Bending with the speed of a bird in picking up a seed, she scooped up the gun, whirling with the heavy weapon extended, her forefinger curling on the trigger.  But, as she turned, the humming of Arizona changed to a low snarl.  She saw him coming like a bolt.  The gun exploded of its own volition, it seemed to her, but Arizona had swerved in his course, and the shot went wild.

The next instant he struck her.  The gun was wrenched from her hand, and a powerful arm caught her and whirled her up, only to hurl her to the ground; Arizona’s snarling, panting face bent over her.  In the very midst of that fury she felt Arizona stiffen and freeze; the snarling stopped; his nerveless arm fell away, and she was allowed to stagger to her feet.  She found him staring at her with a peculiar horror.