Gunman's Reckoning

"But I was too late. I took the straight cut for the ford, and when I got there I found that Donnegan had been there before me. Joe Rix was lyin' on the floor. When he got to th...

She called up the picture of Lord Nick, half-broken, but still terrible, she well knew. She pitied him, but when did pity wholly rule the heart of a woman? And as for Nelly Lebr...

Fear for his sake stimulated her; but above and beyond this, indeed, there was a mighty feminine curiosity. She smelled the secret; it reeked through the house, and she was devo...

"Not another word." There were tears in the eyes of Lord Nick, and he frowned them away. "Confound it, Garry, you unman me. I'll be weeping like a woman in a minute. But now, si...

He lifted his eyes slowly from a glittering, distant rock, and brought his glance toward her by degrees. He had a way of exciting people even in the most commonplace conversatio...

The fifty empty freights danced and rolled and rattled on the rough road bed and filled Jericho Pass with thunder; the big engine was laboring and grunting at the grade, but fiv...

Of one thing he felt more and more confident, that Donnegan did not have his revolver with him. Otherwise, he would have used it before. For what was darkness to this devil, Don...

"Don't leave me, Lou. You know what it means. He wants to get you out of the way so that the colonel can be alone with me. Don't go, Lou! Don't go!"

That he should have done all this merely to focus all eyes upon him, and particularly the eyes of a girl, did not occur to anyone. It looked rather like the bravado of a man who...

"Between you and me," went on the fat man, "deceptive words are folly. A waste of energy." He flushed a little. "You are, I believe, the first man who has ever laughed at me." T...

"If that's all, I can fix you up and send you back with enough to carry the colonel along. Look here--why, I have five hundred with me. Take it, Lou. There's more behind it, but...

"Now," and he sighed, "I feel that the crisis is passed. With a man of your caliber, Donnegan, I fear a snap judgment above all things. Since you give me a chance to appeal to y...

"You shouldn't ask that," agreed Donnegan. "But I saw you the queen of The Corner, worshiped by all men. What could I do? I am not rich. I am not big. You see?"

Jack Landis flashed a glance of suspicion down at her, but her dancing eyes had quite forgotten him. They were following the progress of Donnegan down the street. He rode slowly...

"Which there's no good talking any more," declared the ancient vixen. "Are you wanting to make trouble for her with the colonel? Be off, young man. It ain't the first time I've...

He noted a cowboy sitting in his saddle while he rolled a cigarette. Obviously he had come in to look things over rather than to share in the mining, and he made the one sane, c...

He turned his back again upon the gaping giant, and drawing up a broken box before the open door he sat down to contemplate the night. Not a sound behind him. It might be that t...

Yet really very few left. The rest valued a chance to see the fight beyond the fear of random slugs of lead which might fly their way. Besides, where such men as Donnegan and bi...

But Lord Nick, with the gun in his hand, stared at it dumbly, turned the empty cylinder. And the full horror crept slowly on his mind. He had not killed his brother, he had murd...