made you shave, so she wouldn’t have to take you lookin’ like a sheep-herdin’ greaser, if she was a-goin’ to take you instead of me.  After that I come right out an’ told her just where I stood, an’ from then on I’ve played the game square.  The women ain’t divided up right in this world.  There ought to have be’n two of her, but they ain’t another in the whole world, I reckon, like her; so one of us had to lose.  An’, now, seein’ how I’ve lied you into all this misery, you ought to just naturally up an’ knock hell out of me.  We’ll still keep the game fair an’ square.  I’ll throw away my gun an’ you can sail in as quick as you get your sleeves rolled up.  But, I doubt if you can get away with it, at that.”

Endicott laughed happily, and in the darkness his hand stole across and gripped the hand of the Texan in a mighty grip:  “I wish to God there was some way I could thank you,” he said.  “Had it not been for you, I never could have won her.  Why, man, I never got acquainted with myself until the past three days!”

“There ain’t any posses out,” grinned Tex.  “The fellow I met in the coulee there by Antelope Butte told me.  They think you were lynched.  He told me somethin’ else, too—­but that’ll keep.”

As they were saddling up, the following morning, the Texan grinned:  “I’ll bet old Long Bill Kearney’s in a pleasin’ frame of mind.”

“He’s had time to meditate a little on his sins,” answered Alice.

“No—­not Long Bill ain’t.  If he started in meditatin’ on them, he’d starve to death before he’d got meditated much past sixteen—­an’ he’s fifty, if he’s a day.”

“There are four of us and only three horses,” exclaimed Endicott, as he tightened his cinch.

“That’s all right.  The horses are fresh.  I’m light built, an’ we’ll change off makin’ ’em carry double.  It ain’t so far.”

The morning sun was high when the horses turned into the coulee that led to Long Bill’s ranch.  Bat, who had scouted ahead to make sure that he had not succeeded in slipping his bonds and had plotted mischief, sat grinning beside the corral fence as he listened, unobserved, to the whimpering and wailing of the man who lay bound beside the cabin door.

“What’s the matter, Willie?” smiled Tex, as he slipped from his seat behind Endicott’s saddle.  “Didn’t your breakfast set right?”

The man rolled to face them at the sound of the voice, and such a stream of obscene blasphemy poured from his lips as to cause even the Texan to wince.  Without a word the cowboy reached for a bar of soap that lay awash in the filthy water of a basin upon a bench beside the door, and jammed it down the man’s throat.  The sounds changed to a sputtering, choking gurgle.  “Maybe that’ll learn you not to talk vile when there’s ladies around.”

“Water!” the man managed to gasp.

“Will you quit your damn swearin’?”

Long Bill nodded, and Tex held a dipper to his lips.