“Fair?” he asked in scorn.  “Since when have you been interested in playing fair?  Takes a man with some nerve to play fair.  You’ve spoiled my game, Gaspar.  You’ve blocked me every way from the start, Cold Feet.  I killed Quade, and they’s another in Sour Creek that needs killing.  That’s something you can do.  Go down and tell the sheriff when he happens along and show him my confession.  Go down and tell him that I ain’t running away—­that I’m staying close, and that I’m going to nab my second man right under his nose.  That’ll give him something to think about.”

He favored the schoolteacher with another black look and then swung out of the saddle, throwing his reins.  He sat down with his back to a stunted tree.  Gaspar dismounted likewise and hovered near, after the fashion of a man who is greatly worried.  He watched while Sinclair deliberately took out an old stained envelope and the stub of a pencil and started to write.  His brows knitted in pain with the effort.  Suddenly Gaspar cried:  “Don’t do it, Mr. Sinclair!”

A slight lifting of Sinclair’s heavy brows showed that he had heard, but he did not raise his head.

“Don’t do what?”

“Don’t try to kill that second man.  Don’t do it!”

Gaspar was rewarded with a sneer.

“Why not?”

The schoolteacher was desperately eager.  His glance roved from the set face of the cowpuncher and through the scragged branches of the tree.

“You’ll be damned for it—­in your own mind.  At heart you’re a good man; I swear you are.  And now you throw yourself away.  Won’t you try to open your mind and see this another way?”

“Not an inch.  Kid, I gave my word for this to a dead man.  I told you about a friend of mine?”

“I’ll never forget.”

“I gave my word to him, though he never heard it.  If I have to wait fifty years I’ll live long enough to kill the gent that’s in Sour Creek now.  The other day I had him under my gun.  Think of it!  I let him go!”

“And you’ll let him go again.  Sinclair, murder isn’t in your nature.  You’re better than you think.”

“Close up,” growled the cowpuncher.  “It ain’t no Saturday night party for me to write.  Keep still till I finish.”

He resumed his labor of writing, drawing out each letter carefully.  He had reached his signature when a low call from John Gaspar alarmed him.  He looked up to find the little man pointing and staring up the trail.  A horseman had just dropped over the crest and was winding leisurely down toward the plain below.

“We can get behind that knoll, perhaps, before he sees us,” suggested Jig in a whisper.  His suggestion met with no favor.

“You hear me talk, son,” said Sinclair dryly.  “That gent ain’t carrying no guns, which means that he ain’t on our trail, we being figured particularly desperate.”  He pointed this remark with a cold survey of the “desperate” Jig.