at two to one. Such a long chance against the game-keeper was never before heard of, and of course the money came in a stream. The peculiar thing about that game was that the banker threw twentyseven nearly always when a man had been encouraged by repeated winnings to plank down all he had.

It looked good to Reese Wolcott, edging nearer and nearer with the press, and he was fairly a-tremble when he came near enough to reach under a man's arm and put ten dollars on the board. Hun, his brown face as unreadable as a slab of bacon, his alert eye shooting here and there in the crowd, measuring men and weighing them, sized him up at once for a sheepherder. There is something so unmistakably pathetic in a sheepherder's face, the mark of lone watches and vast silences such as you see in the face of one born deaf and dumb, that a man used to the country never reads amiss. So Hun passed the sign to his cappers, and they crowded in, jostling and wedging, until Reese found himself with his stomach against the board.

Reese won. Again he won, proceeding cautiously with small bets, like one unable to swim feeling his way across an unfamiliar stream with his staff. His head began to whirl with the bewilderment of easy money; he began to see, coming nearer and nearer, things of which he had long dreamed, like a procession of shadows, which became almost palpable when his hand encountered the rapidly growing pile of paper money in the side pocket of his canvas coat. It was a sure thing. At last he had come across a sure thing, controverting in an instant all the hard lessons of his hard life, each one of which had hammered its hard moral into his head: "There's nothing in this world. that's sure." What a deception! This was like shearing money from a sheep. It seemed a pity to take it; it was like robbing a blind man when he was drunk. Again and again the bills piled up before him as the dice clicked out of Hun Shanklin's box. A little at a time, a little at a time, but so sure!

Then the inspiration took hold of Reese. Why not finish the thing in short order instead of fooling the night away on dribs? Why not whack it all down, winnings and all, and clean the blockhead

Reese's hand went to the bosom of his coat. "Wait a minute," he said. There was a pocket inside-a pocket buttoned fast with a flap, the button reinforced with strong thread. In his eagerness Reese worked a finger under the flap and ripped it loose. "Wait a minute," he said. Down in the bottom of that pocket was an old flat wallet, greasy from long possession and long handling, and in it a sum of money, greasy from much counting, with a few bills newer than the rest,-those added by Reese before he left McDougall's ranch to take a run down to civilization,—the whole making up the thousand dollars he had been almost eight years in putting

away.

"Wait a minute," he said; "wait a minute, podner, till I git m' money out." And Hun waited, the dice clicking ominously as he moved his hand.

Soon it was all down there, and Reese stood with his hands hovering over it, guarding it, waiting. It was a sure thing. Hun Shanklin lifted his box, scarcely glancing at the money under the sheepherder's hands, shook it quite honestly, and tilted out the dice. Then he reached out with one brown paw and laid hold of Reese Wolcott's money. The old man bent forward, pressing his chest upon it, screaming as if the gambler's hand had closed around his heart.

"Wait a minute!" he begged; "wait a minute!"

"Git off!" said Hun. "You lose; count 'em."

Slowly the old man's eyes sought the dice, slowly he counted the upturned spots. "Twenty-seven," said he-"twentyseven!" Then Hun Shanklin pulled his money across the board.

"Wait a minute," said the old man. "Can't you stake-'

It did n't need that to tell Hun that he was dusted, shaken out, stripped, and the cappers crowded in again and forced the old man away. Reese found an empty chair near the open front. An Indian sat in the next one, sourly viewing the drinking at the tables in which his careful

government allowed him to take no nearer part, and thinking his thoughts, whatever they were. There Reese sat until the crowd thinned, even until the last man had gone. The cappers gathered about Hun then, each receiving his daily wage and each going his way, and soon Hun was left alone, with the great heaps of money at his hand, with the dice-box standing ready, with a big black revolver, insolently threatening, well within reach. Reese approached him. "I jist wanted to ast you, podner," said he, "if you 'd stake a man to a few dollars, enough to hold me till I can strike a job. You cleaned me out; that's what you done."

Hun was counting his gains. He looked up resentfully. "What do you take this for?" he demanded. "This here ain't no gospel-joint; this here's a gamblin'-house. Do you git that? Now you snake out!"

Reese moved toward the front. There he paused. "You ain't square," said he; "you ain't neither a gambler nor a gentleman."

Hun's hand moved to the butt of the black revolver, and Reese stepped out into the road. His start was gone. And that was the third time. Now he was getting old, too old ever to save enough again to make a beginning as flockmaster and hold his head up among men. The first time it had been the cattlemen, the second the hard winter and the wolves. And now it was just plain foolishness in shutting his eyes and letting a man rob him. It meant a whole lot to him, the loss of that money. It meant back to the range, with the hope of twenty years gone forever. Wages were not what they used to be, and ewes were four dollars a head. Nothing in sight, not a thing, except to go back to the lone vigils with the dogs, back to the white wastes and straining silences, to the days of brooding on the bare hillsides; back to the hateful, grinning skeleton of a world that is only dust and sage and greasewood, with a little bunch-grass and sheep-sage scattered in it to make it a lure. Oh, what could a man who had never been immersed in that vacuum of stillness know of it! Of the boring in the brain, of the compress of loneliness, of the qualms and fears and sudden fits, when you talk and curse and roar like a beast, to come up suddenly and spring to your

feet, ready to tear the voice out of the throat that has broken your solitude, only to slink down like a beaten dog when you realize that it was your own. And Reese faced around to it as the glow of morning quickened in the east, saying as he

went:

"I can lose at a square game like a man, but I'll kill a thief every day in the week if I can. When I git enough ahead to buy a gun, and a ticket back to the country where the Almighty's curse hain't burnt the trees all off the face of the earth, I 'm a-comin' back here to kill that there long, hungry, one-eyed son of a-a -rattlesnake."

IT is a country raw and unfinished, like the conception of some crude artist, or the groundwork of stupendous labor only begun and then abandoned. There are heaps of tumbled hills, seamed with ledges that lie face to the sky, just as nature threw down the material long ago, and dry gorges, where pied rattlesnakes stretch in the sun; a country of deceptions, its dust-white ravines powder-dry to-day, to-morrow courses down which growl and rave mad currents of yellow water; this morning as balmy and bright as April, this afternoon the broken landscape hidden in the snow-charged breath of a northern storm.

Reese Wolcott had been through the same experience a score of times before in his many years on the Wyoming rangecaught with his band when the blizzard came,-trusting to the treacherous warmth of late autumn to hold, miles away from the wagons, following water and good grazing, carrying out the orders of the boss. But never before had he been in that pickle, never so utterly unprovided-for and unprepared. Reese and another man were handling four thousand sheep between them, tenting together and cooking their own grub. During the day they often grazed two or three miles apart, and they were apart the afternoon the blizzard struck, stealing down out of the northeast, whipping its outriders of scurrying snow before it, like spindrift of the sea. Reese would never have been caught if he had been himself. Since his loss at Poison Creek he had come into a way of sitting for hours with the tips of his left-hand fingers in the mouth of his

empty inside pocket, thinking. And so the blizzard caught him.

If he had noticed in time he might have checked the sheep and run them behind the hill, where Tom Stewart was doubt less collecting his; but now it was too late. After their manner, they had turned their tails to the wind, and were drifting ahead of the storm. Instinct, Reese knew, would thus guide them to shelter, and in such a contingency a wise herder would follow his flock. Well, there was nothing else to do now. The snow was already driving so thick that it would have been impossible to beat back to camp against it. No man could keep his sense of direction in a storm like that; but a sheep could, and if a man stuck to them, he could wedge among them when they crowded at the foot of a ledge or into a dry creek bed, and there crouch and suffer and wait. He might lose his feet or his hands, his ears or the end of his nose, but save his life. And when a man has a debt to pay before he quits, that is a point he is bound to consider.

Reese pushed forward into the flock. The sheep were not hurrying. They plodded slowly in what appeared to be a persistent determination to keep on the move, if need be, until the storm had blown past.

COMPLETE darkness had fallen. It seemed to Reese that he had been trudging along with the sheep for hours, one hand on the back of a big wether, when he first heard the cry. It came to him thinly, trembling down the racking wind, and was blurred by the time it had penetrated the thick felt of his storm-cap. He paused a moment, and the sheep, crowding blindly forward, crushed against his legs like drift upon an obstacle in the current of a stream. He moved on again, wondering, and the call wavered down to him out of the mouth of the storm.

Reese lifted the flap of his cap and listened. When it sounded again it was plain enough to distinguish that it was a signal made by a human being, and as there was only one other human being within miles of him, Reese concluded that Tom his mate was trying to guide him back to camp.

He believed in his heart that it was a foolish thing to attempt, knowing as he

did how those storms swallowed a man up in a moment, sometimes while trying to beat his way out from house to barn, sometimes while groping from his doorway to the woodpile in the yard; but Reese breasted the wind and stumbled forward. Sooner than he expected. he cleared the flock, his dog tagging behind, and as the last sheep passed dimly and suddenly out of sight, he felt a heavy and discouraging pressure of loneliness. It seemed to him that Tom was beating about a good bit, which was rather unusual for a man with a snug camp at his back to be doing in a storm like that. Reese shouted impotently, running forward in little anxious starts when the voice sounded encouragingly near, standing breathlessly listening when it failed sometimes for many minutes together. His conclusion at length was that Tom, like himself, was separated from his flock, and was wandering.

His feet were numbing, and his fingers were stiff within his mittens. As he trudged on, stumbling over ant-hills and clumps of soap-weed, he beat his arms. across his chest to keep the blood coursing, feeling himself, as the fruitless pursuit of a voice spun out, growing into an ugly humor with Tom on account of his stupidity. At least there was no excuse for becoming lost; at least he could have remained with his sheep, and not gone dragging a man out there in the wilderness to hunt him up, bawling around like a bull calf at milking time.

They were so close together finally that an exchange of shouts became possible, and then Reese stumbled upon him quite unexpectedly and clapped a hand down heavily on his shoulder. The man started, leaped from the touch, and bounded away. Out of the dark a rod beyond he called: "Stand off! Come at me fair and open; don't sneak up like a wolf. I'm tired of this game of one man a-runnin' and ten a-chasin', and I 've been a-yellin' so you'd hear me and come on and fight it out."

It was neither Tom Stewart's voice nor Tom Stewart's way of receiving a friend. It nettled Reese, and he turned to go on about his business of locating camp. "You can go to podner," said he.

"I thought you was a friend of mine that 'd strayed off, and I don't know

"Ain't you

The stranger drew nearer. one of the sheriff's gang?" he asked. "No," said Reese; "I'm a-runnin' a band of sheep in this section, that 's all. Ain't nothin' fierce about me; you don't need to be scairt."

"I've been a-runnin' and a-dodgin' fer three days," he came up to Reese again as he spoke,-"and I 'm about all in. Pardner, I killed a man down at Poison Creek, he crowded me to it, I tell you, -and I 'd just as lief kill another as not. Lead off to your shack, wherever it is, and I'll foller you. The sheriff of Natrona County 's after me, and I 've run and dodged and doubled for three days. I'm all in, I tell you; all in. Do you git that?"

Reese Wolcott was listening. It seemed to him that he must know that man, surely would know him if he could see his face. His voice was familiar; he had heard that voice.

"It's a shame," said the stranger, coming quite close and crouching with his back to the wind beside Reese, "to chase a man around like a wolf, and me with all this money on me."

Reese grunted. "Mighty lot of good it's goin' to do you here, 'less you got enough to make a fire out of." Then wheeling suddenly and laying hold of the other's arm, he added: "Say, podner, what line of business did you foller down there in Poison Creek, if it 's any of my business?"

"Gambled," the fugitive answered; fugitive answered; "owned a gamblin'-house. Ain't you never heard of Hun Shanklin? Well, I'm him."

"I've heard tell of you," said Reese, grimly. "How much money you got?"

"I ain't got as much as a reg'lar the mornin' after pay-day, and that 's the God's truth,' truth," Hun Shanklin replied. "It's been more 'n three days since I slep' a wink or eat a mouth o' grub. My mind 's been runnin' on money ever since I come down out of the hills. Say, ain't you got nowhere to go out of this wind?" Reese Wolcott stood silent a little, debating with himself. At length he set out abruptly, calling back over his shoulder, "Come on!"

Hun Shanklin hurried after him.

Reese could not see that he reeled as he walked, that the stout gusts of wind almost upset his unsteady balance as he followed, his hands constantly outstretched, like one walking a foot-plank in the dark; but he heard him at times deploring the injustice of pursuit, with all that money on him, and he understood that it was the sane, indomitable craft of the man coming to his rescue when he tried to laugh off these fits of wandering and turn them into jests.

It was so dark that their figures loomed indistinctly to each other's sight, magnified out of all human proportion in that whirling obscurity. They were drifting aimlessly ahead of the storm, as the sheep had gone, Reese full of the resolution he had taken to keep Hun Shanklin on the move until the cold and exhaustion nipped the power from his legs. Then he would go down, guns and all, in a helpless huddle, and Reese would rob him. Yes, if necessary to preserve his own life, strip him of his clothing, as Hun Shanklin had stripped many a man of his last chance, and leave him there to reckon up his bill with the Almighty God. It would n't be robbing him, anyway, because Hun Shanklin carried other men's money, and at least a thousand sweat-grimed dollars of it had belonged to Reese Wolcott.

The wind howled down on them out of a sweep of nine hundred miles, across the dead, bare lands where no tree lifted its limbs in merciful shelter, where nothing save the hills, cold, unclothed, grimcheeked, intervened to break the ferocity. of its savage assault. It seemed as though the land was kindred to the storm, as if both had sprung from some unkind dame whose heritage was an unending battle against the sons of men, and the wind raged across it like a king coming home in invincible power to reclaim his own.

Knee-high sage, now half-hidden by the drifted snow, was all the fuel the arid plateau offered, and at its roots, pale, sapless, and ugly to the eye, clung the

sheep sage upon which the flocks had fed. That was all. The desert afforded no more. It was a sterile breast which nature lifted in mockery to the famished lips of man. The only shelter was some ledge at the foot of a butte, or the sheer bank of some deep-cut, trickling stream. "I can live longer than he can," said Reese Wolcott over and over again; "I got to live longer than him."

An age had dwindled away, an age of torture, of indistinct recollections, of aching eye-balls, of growing weariness, and of dying hope, and it was still dark. How long would he last, how long would that bony shadow that was following him endure? The man was not fighting for his life, thought Reese, but for the money he carried. No man ever made such a fight as that for life alone. How long, how long, you son of a rattlesnake! how long!

For Reese himself it had become a terrific struggle. The mind lived in the cold mass of flesh like a spark under the wet ashes of a fire, but the body, insensible longer to the danger-calls of pain, was unresilient. It was the instinct of life against the instinct of death; the tangible factor of soul, carrying, by an awful strain, the dragging weight of its abidingplace.

It happened at length that Hun was down-down, with his face in the snow and his arms flung out like a man slain on the battle-field.

Reese Wolcott knew how it would be when he almost threw himself, in panting ferocity, across the body-no more feeling there than in a log. He was insensible; Hun Shanklin could never bear testimony in this world again, and he had so much business of his own in the next that it was a question if he would ever get time to do it there. It was stiff work getting off a man's mittens with the fingers as balky and clumpy as sticks of ice, and when Reese got them stowed in his pockets, he began to experience a revulsion of feeling regarding his right to plunder and abandon his companion. It was against the nature of the man to do it, although it did look as if Providence had guided Hun Shanklin to him. But could Providence be made a party to a transaction a man would want to cover up from everybody, even from himself? And yet Hun Shank

lin had given him no show,-when, in his career of iniquity, had he ever given any man a show?—for his money.

Reese fumbled across the man's chest for the opening of his coat, and stopped when his hand found it. "Wait a minute," said he; "wait a minute." It 'd be hell to leave a man there to die, inhuman, terrible. If he did it, and got out himself, the shadow of Hun Shanklin, mumbling about money, would follow him all the rest of his days. No, a man could n't do that. A man would save him first, and settle afterward. Of course. Reese took the two heavy revolvers from Hun's holsters and dropped them in the snow. So much less to carry. He unbuckled the cartridgebelt and flung it aside, then worked his frozen hands into his mittens again.

He must get up and blunder on, the wind driving him; and besides the weight of his own body, he must bear that of Hun Shanklin's, and cling to it till they both went down and stretched stiff for the snow to sift over and cover, and hide till the next chinook came blowing over the hills. A man could n't do anything else. But when Reese attempted to get up, his legs refused to obey him. seemed as if he had lost his legs from the knees downward, and he put his hand back there to feel for them.

It

They were freezing, or already frozen, and as senseless and heavy as so much ice. In such an extremity there remained only one remedy that a man could apply if he had nerve enough and strength. Reese drew his right-hand mitten off with his teeth and fumbled for his clasp-knife in the side pocket of his coat. The fingers could not identify the spring which released the blade, but he managed to get it between his teeth. Then, holding the knife as firmly as he could in his well-nigh unfeeling hand, he reached back and drove the blade again and again through the frozen boot-top into the flesh of his leg, twisting around when he had finished with it, and applying the same remedy to the other.

There was no more pain than if he had sunk the blade into the earth, but Reese had great faith in the operation. It was one of good repute among sheepherders, and he had seen the scarred calves of the old-timers even when he began; so it was old-old and tried. "Twenty years on