The distance to the Circle Bar ranch was ten miles and Dunlavey had a good half hour’s start! He fairly lifted his pony over the first mile, though realizing that he could not hope to arrive at the Circle Bar in time to prevent Dunlavey from carrying out his design to kill Hollis. No, he told himself as he rode, he could not prevent him from killing Hollis, should he catch the latter unprepared, but he promised himself that Dunlavey should not escape punishment for the deed.
He had had some hope that Dunlavey would accept his defeat philosophically. The latter was not the only man he had seen who had been defeated by the law. Over in Colfax County and up in Wyoming he had dealt with many such men, and usually, after they had seen that the law was inevitable, they had resigned themselves to the new condition and had become pretty fair citizens. He had imagined that Dunlavey would prove to be no exception, that after the first sting of defeat had been removed he would meet his adversaries half way in an effort to patch up their differences. The danger was in the time immediately following the realization of defeat. A man of the Dunlavey type was then usually desperate.
So Allen communed with himself as he rode at a head-long pace down the Coyote trail, risking his neck a dozen times. Not once since he had left Dry Bottom had he considered his own danger.
He had been riding more than half an hour, and was coming up out of a little gully when he came upon a riderless pony, and close by it, browsing near a clump of shrubbery, another. He recognized one of them instantly as Dunlavey’s, and his teeth came together with a snap. He rode closer to the other pony, examining it. On one of its hips was a brand–the Circle Bar. Allen’s face whitened again. He had arrived too late. But he would not be too late to wreak vengeance upon Dunlavey.
He dismounted and cautiously approached the brush at the side of the trail. Parting it, he saw the roof of a cabin. He recognized it; he had passed it a number of times during his exploration of the country. He drew back and crept crept farther along in the brush, certain that he would presently see Dunlavey. But he had not gone very far when he heard voices and he cautiously parted the brush again and peered through.
He started back in surprise, an incredulous grin slowly appearing on his face. The incredulity changed to amusement a moment later–when he heard Hollis’s voice!
The young man was seated on the edge of the porch–smoking a pipe! Near him, seated on a flat rock, his face horribly puffed out, with several ugly gashes disfiguring it, his eyes blackened, his clothing in tatters, one hand hanging limply by his side, the fingers crushed and bleeding, was Dunlavey! Near him, almost buried in the sand, was a revolver. Allen’s smile broadened when he saw Dunlavey’s empty holster. Evidently he had met with a surprise!
While taking in these details Allen had not forgotten to listen to Hollis as the latter talked to Dunlavey. Apparently Hollis had about finished his talk, for his voice was singularly soft and even, and Dunlavey’s almost comical air of dejection could not have settled over him in an instant.
“... and so of course I had to thrash you–you had it coming to you. You haven’t been a man–you’ve acted like a sneak and a cur all through this business. You made a thrashing inevitable when you set Yuma on Nellie Hazelton. You’ll have plenty of marks to remind you of the one you gave me that night.” He pointed to his cheek. “I’ve got even for that. But I think I wouldn’t have trimmed you quite so bad if you hadn’t tried to shoot me a few minutes ago.”
He puffed silently at his pipe for a short time, during which Dunlavey sat on the rock and squinted pathetically at him. Then he resumed: