the spot. Hal Dozier stiffly invited Hank to join them in the manhunt; he was met by a solemn silence, and the request was not repeated. Dozier had done a disagreeable duty, and the whole posse was glad to be free of the traitor. In the meantime the morning was brightening rapidly, and Dozier led out his men.
They went to their horses, and, coming back to the place where Andrew had made his halt and fired his three shots, they took up the trail.
It was as easy to read as a book. The sign was never wanting for more than three steps at a time, and Hal Dozier, reading skillfully, watched the decreasing distance between heel indentations, a sure sign that the fugitive was growing weak from the loss of the blood that spotted the trail. Straight on to the doorstep of Pop's cabin went the trail. Dozier rapped at the door, and the old man himself appeared. The bony fingers of one hand were wrapped around the corncob, which was his inseparable companion, and in the other he held the cloth with which he had been drying dishes. Jud turned from his pan of dishwater to cast a frightened glance over his shoulder. Pop did not wait for explanations.
"Come in, Dozier," he invited. "Come in, boys. Glad to see you. Ain't particular comfortable for an oldster like me when they's a full-grown, man-eatin' outlaw layin' about the grounds. This Lanning come to my door last night. Me and Jud was sittin' by the stove. He wanted to get us to bandage him up, but I yanked my gun off'n the wall and ordered him away."
"You got your gun on Lanning—off the wall—before he had you covered?" asked Hal Dozier with a singular smile.
"Oh, I ain't so slow with my hands," declared Pop. "I ain't half so old as I look, son! Besides, he was bleedin' to death and crazy in the head. I don't figure he even thought about his gun just then." "
Why didn't you shoot him down, Pop? Or take him? There's money in him."
"Don't I know it? Ain't I seen the posters? But I wasn't for pressin' things too hard. Not me at my age, with Jud along. I ordered him away and let him go. He went down yonder. Oh, you won't have far to go. He was about all in when he left. But I ain't been out lookin' around yet this morning. I know the feel of a forty-five slug in your inwards."
He placed a hand upon his stomach, and a growl of amusement went through the posse. After all, Pop was a known man. In the meantime someone had picked up the trail to the cliff, and Dozier followed it. They went along the heel marks to a place where blood had spurted liberally over the ground. "Must have had a hemorrhage here," said Dozier. "No, we won't have far to go. Poor devil!"
And then they came to the edge of the cliff, where the heel marks ended. "He walked straight over," said one of the men. "Think o' that!"