The review. [volume] (High Point, N.C.) 1908-19??, 1920-01-15

when Curly wakened. He sat up and
rubbed his eyes Mac was nowhere in
sight. Probably he had gone to get the
horses.
sound broke the stiffness of the
desert. Flandrau Ieaped to his feet,
and at the same instant Mac came
running over the brow of the hill. A
smoking revolver was in his hand.
From behind the hill gun cracked
then secondhand a third. Mac
stumbled over his feet and pitched
forward full length on the ground. His
friend ran toward him, forgetting the
revolver that lay in it's holster under
the live oak. Every moment he ex-
pected to see Mae jump up. but the fig
ure stretched beside the cholla never
moved. Flandrau felt the muscles
round his heart tighten. He had seen
sudden death before, but never had it
come so near home.
bullet sent up a squirt of dust in
front of him, another just on the left.
Riders were making half circle
around the knoll and closing in on him.
In his right mind Curly would have
been properly frightened. But now he
thought only of Mac lying there so still
in the sand. Right into the fire zone
he ran. knelt beside his partner and
lifted the red-thatched head A little
hole showed back of the left ear and
another at the right temple. A bullet
had plowed through the boys skull.
Softly Flandrau put the head back
in the sand and rose to his feet. The
revolver of the dead puncher was in
his hand. The riders were closing in
On him. The nearest called to him to
surrender. Almost at the same time
a red-hot pain shot through the left
arm of the trapped rustler. Someone
had nipped him from the rear.
Curly saw red. Surrender motif
ing! He would go down fighting. AS
fast as he could blaze he emptied
Macs gun. When the smoke cleared
the man who had ordered him to give
up was slipping from his horse. Curly
was surprised. but he knew he must
have hit him by chance.
eve got him. His guns empty"
some one shouted.
Cautiously they closed in. keeping
him covered all the time. OF sudden
the plain tilted up to meet the Sky.
Flandrau felt himself, swaying on his
feet. Everything went black. The
boy had tainted
When he came to himself strange
faces were all around him and there
were no bodies to go with them. They
seemed to float about in an odd, casual
0f ol0 rod
Hes coming to all right" one said.
'HOw is CullisOn?"
This was said to another who had
just come up.
Hard hit Looks about all in. Got
him in the side"
The rage died out of Curly. In
flash he saw all that had come of this
drunken spree: the rustling of the
Bar Double NJ stock. the discovery,
the death of his friend and maybe of
CullisOn. the certain punishment that
would follow. He, was a horse thief
caught almost in the act. Perhaps he
was murderer, too. And the whole
thing had been entirely unpremedi-
tated.
you've played h" one of the
men told the boy.
He was a sawed-off little fellow
known as Dutch. Flandrau had seen
him in the Map of Texas country a
year or two before. The rest were
strangers to the boy All of them
looked at him out Of hard, hostile eyes.
He was scarcely a human being to
them : rather a wolf to be stamped out
of existence as soon as it was conven-
lent.
At shift in the group Flandrau's
eyes fell on his friend lying in the
sand with face turned whitley to the
sky he never would see again. A lump
came into the boys throat and he had