All this without a word spoken, only the pant and struggle of hard-drawn breaths.  Not until he stood on his feet again, with a bleeding-faced fellow rising with dazed eyes, and another clambering up unsteadily, with both hands pressed against his head, did the captors give voice.  And their voice was a yell of triumph that was taken up in two directions outside the hotel.

They became suddenly excited, riotously happy.  In the overflowing of their joy they were good-natured.  Some one caught up Sinclair’s hat and jammed it on his head.  Another slapped him on the shoulder.

“A fine, game fight!” said the latter.  It was the man with the smeared face.  He was grinning through his wounds.  “Hardest punch I ever got.  But I don’t blame you, partner!”

Presently he saw Sheriff Kern.  The latter was perfectly cool, perfectly grave.  It was his arm that had coiled around the neck of Sinclair and throttled him into submission.

“You didn’t come out to kill, Sinclair.  Why?”

“I ain’t used to slaughterhouse work,” said Sinclair with equal calm, although he was panting.  “Besides, it wasn’t worth it.  Murder never is.”

“Kind of late to come to that idea, son.  Now just trot along with me, will you?” He paused.  “Where’s Arizona?”

Cartwright lurched out of the room with his naked gun in his hand.  Red dripped from the shallow wound where Sinclair’s bullet had nicked him.  He plunged at the captive, yelling.

“Stop that fool!” snapped the sheriff.

Half a dozen men put themselves between the outlaw and the avenger.  Cartwright straggled vainly.

“Between you and me,” said Sinclair coldly to the sheriff, “I think that skunk would plug me while I got my hands tied.”

The sheriff flashed a knowing glance up at his tall prisoner’s face.

“I dunno, Sinclair.  Kind of looks that way.”

Although Cartwright had been persuaded to restore his gun to its cover, he passed through the crowd until he confronted Sinclair.

“Now, the tables is turned, eh?  I’ll take the high hand from now on, Sinclair!”

“It’s no good,” said Sinclair dryly.  “The gent that shot out the light had a chance to see something before he done the shooting.  And what he seen must have showed that you’re yaller, Cartwright—­yaller as a yaller dog!”

Cartwright flung his fist with a curse into the face of the cowpuncher.  The weight of the blow jarred him back against the wall, but he met the glare of Cartwright with a steady eye, a thin trickle of crimson running down his cut lips.  The sheriff rushed in between and mastered Cartwright’s arms.

“One more little trick like that, stranger, and I’ll turn you over to the boys.  They got ways of teaching gents manners.  How was you raised, anyway?”

Suddenly sobered, Cartwright drew back from dark glances on every side.

“Fellows,” he said, in a shaken voice, “I forgot his hands was tied.  But I’m kind of wrought up.  He tried to murder me!”