Then—­he saw it only dimly through his red anger and hardly felt it at all—­Jig’s hands were tearing at his wrists.  He looked up in dull surprise into the face of John Gaspar.

“For heaven’s sake,” Jig was pleading, “stop!”

But what checked Sinclair was not the schoolteacher.  Cartwright had been fighting with the fury of one who sees death only inches away.  Suddenly he grew limp.

“You!” he cried.  “You!”

To the astonishment of Sinclair the gaze of the beaten man rested directly upon the face of Jig.

“Yes,” Gaspar admitted faintly, “it is I!”

Sinclair released his grip and stood back, while Cartwright, stumbling to his feet, stood wavering, breathing harshly and fingering his injured throat.

“I knew I’d find you,” he said, “but I never dreamed I’d find you like this!”

“I know what you think,” said Cold Feet, utterly colorless, “but you think wrong, Jude.  You think entirely wrong!”

“You lie like a devil!”

“On my honor.”

“Honor?  You ain’t got none!  Honor!”

He flung himself into his saddle.  “Now that I’ve located you, the next time I come it’ll be with a gun.”

He turned a convulsed face toward Sinclair.

“And that goes for you.”

“Partner,” said Riley Sinclair, “that’s the best thing I’ve heard you say.  Until then, so long!”

The other wrenched his horse about and went down the trail at a reckless gallop, plunging out of view around the first shoulder of a hill.

15

Sinclair watched him out of sight.  He turned to find that Jig had slumped against the tree and stood with his arm thrown across his face.  It reminded him, with a curious pang of mingled pity and disgust, of the way Gaspar had faced the masked men of Sour Creek’s posse the day before.  There was the same unmanly abnegation of the courage to meet danger and look it in the eye.  Here, again, the schoolteacher was wincing from the very memory of a crisis.

“Look here!” exclaimed Sinclair.  His contempt rang in his voice.  “They ain’t any danger now.  Turn around here and buck up.  Keep your chin high and look a man in the face, will you?”

Slowly the arm descended.  He found himself looking into a white and tortured face.  His respect for the schoolteacher rose somewhat.  The very fact that the little man could endure such pain in silence, no matter what that pain might be, was something to his credit.

“Now come out with it, Gaspar.  You double-crossed this Cartwright, eh?”

“Yes,” whispered Jig.

“Will you tell me?  Not that I make a business of prying into the affairs of other gents, but I figure I might be able to help you straighten things out with this Cartwright.”

He made a wry face and then rubbed the side of his head where a lump was slowly growing.