"Tough luck, to be shot down in his own home."
"Yes, and by a woman. It wouldn't 'a' been so disgraceful if Dale'd 'a' done it, but to think of that little Cattle Kate drillin' him through the gizzard when she was drawin' her last breath! That girl was a queen, Ed; she was the queen of trumps."
Barrett did not dispute poor Cattle Kate's right to this lowly royalty, nor speak any word of the sad and gloomy things which freighted his heart. However his going might be classed, disgraceful or merely unfortunate, it was best that Nearing should go, and that he should take with him the secret so nearly revealed. So nearly revealed, indeed, that all who had heard Dale Findlay's unfinished accusation could guess the rest. The rest, all but the name. There was no doubt what Nearing's crime had been.
It was as if some subtle current carried Barrett's thought to Fred, who spoke thoughtfully, in the voice of a man moving out of his meditations.
"It was the Englishman," he said.
"It must have been," Barrett agreed.
"I never said so before, but I always had my notion who it was plugged that poor feller down there in the canyon when he was ridin' off singin', I'll bet a dime, the way he always went."
"Poor cuss!" said Barrett, the picture rising before him.
It must have been in the dusk of day, he thought, for in the dusk the tragedies of Eagle Rock canyon commonly fell.
"Well, Hal Nearing had his good points," Fred al-
