“Not that I wouldn’t like to have you along, but where I got to go, you’d be a weight around my neck.  Besides, your game is to show the folks down yonder that you ain’t a murderer, and that paper I’ve give you will prove it.  We’ll drift together along the trail part way, and down yonder I turn up for the tall timber.”

To all this Jig returned no answer, but in a peculiarly lifeless manner went to his horse and climbed in his awkward way into the saddle.  They went down the trail slowly.

“Because,” explained the cowpuncher, “if I save my hoss’s wind I may be saving my own life.”

Where the trail bent like an elbow and shot sheer down for the plain and Sour Creek, Riley Sinclair pointed his horse’s nose up to the taller mountains, but Jig sat his horse in melancholy silence and looked mournfully up at his companion.

“So long,” said Sinclair cheerily.  “And when you get down yonder, it’ll happen most likely that pretty soon you’ll hear a lot of hard things about Riley Sinclair.”

“If I do—­if I hear a syllable against you,” cried the schoolteacher with a flare of color, “I’ll—­I’ll drive the words back into their teeth!”

He shook with his emotion; Riley Sinclair shook with controlled laughter.

“Would you do all of that, partner?  Well, I believe you’d try.  What I mean to say is this:  No matter what they say, you can lay to it that Sinclair has tried to play square and clean according to his own lights, which ain’t always the best in the world.  So long!”

There was no answer.  He found himself looking down into the quivering face of the schoolteacher.

“Why, kid, you look all busted up!”

“Riley,” gasped Jig very faintly, “I can’t go!”

“And why not?”

“Because I can’t meet Jude.”

“Cartwright, eh?  But you got to, sooner or later.”

“I’ll die first.”

“Would your nerve hold you up through that?”

“So easily,” said Jig.  There was such a simple gravity and despair in his expression that Sinclair believed it.  He grunted and stared hard.

“This Cartwright gent is worse’n death to you?”

“A thousand, thousand times!”

“How come?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“I kind of wish,” said Sinclair thoughtfully, “that I’d kept my grip a mite longer.”

“No, no!”

“You don’t wish him dead?”

Jig shuddered.

“You plumb beat me, partner.  And now you want to come along with me?” Sinclair grinned.  “An outlaw’s life ain’t what it’s cracked up to be, son.  You’d last about a day doing what I have to do.”

“You’ll find,” said the schoolteacher eagerly, “that I can stand it amazingly well.  I’ll—­I’ll be far, far stronger than you expect!”

“Somehow I kind of believe it.  But it’s for your own fool sake, son, that I don’t want you along.”

“Let me try,” pleaded Jig eagerly.