Page:The Baron of Diamond Tail (1923).pdf/89

 with nothing more to be said.

The horse snorted blood, which spattered Barrett in a hot baptism as it sank down to struggle no more. Barrett had reached the shelter of the animal's body, his pistol was in his hand with one wrench from the encumbering folds of the blanket, when the rustler rode forward to pitch in his concluding shot at close range.

It seemed to Barrett that only the outstretched legs of his horse separated him from the oncoming rustler when he rose to his knees and fired. In a quickening dash of hoofs the thief's horse went past; the dust of its going was before his eyes, in his nostrils, with the ecent of earth long dry. On the ground a little way off the rider lay, his arms flung out as men who die by violence 'most commonly fling them when they fall, as if in protest against the blind turning of fortune which will not give them always the way of their own wilful hearts.

"You could have killed a man anywhere, you didn't have to come to this country to do it!"

Barrett heard those words again, heard them rise from the well of his conscience as plainly as he had heard them that morning from Alma Nearing's lips. But he had come to that country, and he had killed a man. There he lay, unworthy of life as he had been, violent, dishonest, aggressive toward the end that had overtaken him. Dead, his outstretched arms lifted above his head. But he had been a man, and the golden bowl that held the essence of his immortal soul was broken.

Nearing came galloping up, dust on his clothing as