Except for its malevolence of expression it was not a repulsive face, though its lower jaw was overly prominent. Its eyes were amber spots beneath heavy brows, and under the back-thrust, felt hat a heavy mass of chestnut hair bushed in curls about the temples. The lips were brightly red like a girl's, but over the whole countenance now lay a spirit both desperate and wicked.
Dog appreciated that what he did must be speedily done, and before the pause broke; before the startled accusers had realised the mission that had brought him his pistol had leaped from its holster; had, several times, risen and fallen in the grasp of a hand hinged on a steady wrist, and had barked each time its muzzle fell level.
Wreaths of smoke and the acrid smell of burnt powder drifted through the barber shop, and four bodies lay on the puncheon floor—of whom two were already dead.
Swiftly the night took Dog Burtree to itself, and almost as swiftly a posse was on the trail, with Joe Gregory, now high sheriff of Marlin County, riding a blood-sweat out of his black colt to assume command of the man-hunt.
The quarry circled over a wide arc of broken fastnesses and went to earth in an abandoned cabin thickly timbered about, and shielded back of huge boulders. There he barred the door and barked out his defiant challenge, "Come in an' git me!"
The cordon closed about the house and awaited the light of day. Until hunger and thirst conquered him, the few casualties were all of the refugee's making, but after two nights and a day of siege, a white rag appeared through a chink on the end of a ramrod.
"Tell Joe Gregory he kin come in," shouted the voice of the besieged man. "I'm ready ter surrender ter him—but not ter nobody else!"
"No," shouted back Gregory, who already wore a bandage about a grazed arm; "you come out, and come with your hands high."
So it was that Saul's single convert came, and it was three weeks afterwards that, the jury having spoken and the higher court having denied an appeal, Joe sat in a day-coach leaving Marlin Town, while in the seat facing him sat Dog Burtree, with irons on his wrists, and a journey before him which should have no return. He was going to the electric chair at Eddyville.
Word ran mysteriously through the length of the train that the slight, youthful prisoner in charge of the tall, grave-faced sheriff was the Holly Hill murderer, and passengers sauntered, with specious carelessness and inquisitive side glances, past the section where he sat.