would not be one chance in a thousand of Hal's getting away. Four deadly rifles would be covering him. It must be that a sort of madness had come on Dozier, advancing in this manner, unsupported by a posse. Or, perhaps, he had no idea that the outlaws could be so close. He expected a daylight encounter high up the mountains.
But Andrew went swiftly down the ravine.
Broken cliffs, granite bowlders jumped up on either side of him, and the rocks were pale and glimmering under the moon. This one valley seemed to receive the light; the loftier mountains rolling away on each side were black as jet, with sharp, ragged outlines against the sky. It was a cold light, and the chill of it went through Andrew. He was afraid, afraid as he had been when Buck Heath faced him in Martindale, or when Bill Dozier ran him down, or when the famous Sandy cornered him. His fingers felt brittle, and his breath came and went in short gasps, drawn into the upper part of his lungs only.
Behind him, like an electric force pushing him on, the outlaws watched his steps. They, also, were shuddering with fear, and he knew it. But stronger than the force behind was the desperate thrill, the old urge to cast himself away like a man on the cliff. A sort of terrible happiness was in Andrew, but a weakness in his legs made him walk slowly and more slowly. His knees were numb. A puma was crying among the mountains. He really did not hear the sound or recognize it; he only knew that something came on his ear like the moonlight on his eye, something that thrust a chill home to his heart.
Dozier was coming, fresh from another kill.
"Only one man I'd think twice about meeting," Allister had said in the old days, and he had been right. Yet
