The spectator., 1920-03-09

when Curly wakened. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. Mac was nowhere in sight. Probably he had gone to get the horses.
 X sound broke the stiffness of the desert. Flandrau leaped to his feet, and at the same instant Mac came running over the brow of the hill. smoking revolver was in his hand. From behind the hill gun cracked then secondhand 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 its holster under the live oak. Every moment he ex- | pected 10 see Mac 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.
 A bullet sent up n Spurt of dust m | front of him. another just on the left. Riders were making a 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 1 lifted the red-thatched head. A little l hole showed back of the left ear and another at the right temple. bullet had piowed through the boys skull. l 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 noth- 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
 "We 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 sort of way Then things cleared.
 Hes coming to all right one said. How is CulIson?'
 This was said to another who had just come up.
 Hard ht. Looks about all in. Get him in the side"
 The rage died out of Curly. In q 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 horse thief | 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 sawed-or little fellow known as Dutch. Flandrau had seen him in the Map of Texas country n 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 human being to them: rather a wolf to be stamped out of existence as soon as 1t was conven. tent.
 At a shift in the group Flan1lrau's eyes fell on his friend lying in the sand with face turned whitely to tho sky he never would see again. A lump came into the boys throat and he had to work 1t down before he spoke.