But now the Kid answered for himself.  He rose to his knees among the stunted manzanita bushes not twenty steps from them and for a moment knelt there, his big bulky body wavering as he tried to bring his rifle to rest at his shoulder, his eyes peering out wildly from a blood smeared face.  But his gesture was awkward and slow and uncertain; he was too badly hurt to shoot straight or quick, and Thornton, swift and sure and yet merciful withal, was before him.  The Kid’s rifle clattered to the ground; the Kid’s left arm, the bone broken, dropped uselessly to his side.  He tried to steady the gun with his one good arm alone, but it shook hopelessly.  He dropped it and turned bloodshot eyes on Thornton.

“Damn you,” he said tonelessly.  “Better do a clean job, you white-livered coward, or I’ll see you hang yet for killin’ Charlie....”

“I was outside when he was shot,” said Thornton coolly.  “I saw just as much as you did.  Somebody shot him from behind me.”

“Liar!” jeered Bedloe.  “An’...”

“Don’t be a fool, Bedloe,” snapped Comstock.  “The man you want is the same man we want; only the other day he had a quarrel with Charlie and got a bullet alongside the head....”

“Not Ben Broderick!” gasped the Kid stupidly.  “Not him!”

“I think your little friend Jimmie Clayton knew,” said Comstock.  “And you ought to know that Thornton isn’t that kind.”

With widening eyes the Kid stared at him.  At last he got again to his knees; finally and shakily to his feet.

“Jimmie tol’ me to watch him,” he muttered thickly.  “An’ him an’ Charlie did have words....”

He stared at them stupidly, hesitated, pondered the matter.  Then he turned and went lumbering down the road.  Comstock, stepping forward swiftly, called out: 

“I say, Bedloe!  None of that....”

But Bedloe neither turned again nor paused.  Thornton’s hand shut down hard on Comstock’s arm.

“He’s going after Broderick,” he said sharply.  “Don’t you see?  He’ll know where Broderick is.  And we don’t.  Besides ...  I don’t know just why we should stop him....  If Broderick did kill Charlie....”

Comstock went back to administer to Hap Smith and the guard.  Thornton watched the Kid go to a horse hidden in a clump of trees; then as Bedloe rode down into the road and passed on whither it led, sitting slumped-forward and seeming at each step about to fall, Thornton rode after him.  The Kid did not so much as look around; perhaps it mattered to him not in the least just then who followed or how many ... so that they left him to ride on ahead....

It was straight into the town of Dead Man’s Alley that the Kid’s way led.  The high sun glared down into a deserted street when he and Buck Thornton, a hundred yards behind him, passed by the Here’s How saloon and the Brown Bear and at last drew rein at Henry Pollard’s gate.  A couple of men at the lunch counter stared curiously after the Kid; they even got down hastily from their high stools and stared more curiously still when they saw who it was who followed.