A hail of bullets met his rush. Sam Graybull’s horse somersaulted, shot between the eyes. Sam tried to kick his feet from the stirrups. Too late. Horse and man crashed together. A dull pain shot through the killer’s leg. That leg was pinned under the dead weight of the horse. Bullets spatted and droned. Sam Graybull emptied his carbine. Two of the posse felt the searing sting of the outlaw’s bullets. Sam pulled his six-gun--the .45 that had taken deadly toll of human life. His thumb fanned the hammer. “Come an’ git it! Come on, you red necks!” Black lips bared from tobacco stained teeth. Slit eyes swollen almost shut. It took guts. Something white hot stabbed Sam Graybull’s chest. He hardly felt it. Above the flat spat of rifles in the dawn, sounded the mirthless laugh of Sam Graybull. A laugh that sounded like the death rattle. Tumbing the hammer of an empty gun. Then the weary head dropped back into the snow. Sam Graybull, killer, was dead. The last of the whisky gurgled out of the uncorked jug into the trail. * * * * * “He must have got drunk, blind drunk, and lost his way.” “The sheriff pulled the dead outlaw clear of the horse. Grimly triumphant, the grizzled old officer examined the body of the killer. Then he opened the pouch and found the note. As he read it, there in the sunrise of that winter morning, the warm glow of victory chilled. He turned to a man who carried a small black bag instead of a gun. “This is fer you, Doc. You’re wanted down on the river.” He handed over the note. Then he turned to his men. “Handle Sam easy, boys. He come back a-purpose, to do the only decent thing he ever done in his life. Pete Peralta’s wife is about to have a baby. Sam Graybull come to fetch Doc. Handle ’im easy.” The sheriff and Doc Steele rode along the trail together. Doc read aloud the postscript to Pete Peralta’s note. “The bank money is in a sack under the hay at my cabin. What bounty there is on my hide goes to Pete Peralta. If the kid’s a boy, name him Graybull. Use the bounty money to educate him. So long” --SAM GRAYBULL. And so it was that Doc Steele brought into the world a boy named Graybull Peralta. Some of the A.E.F. will remember him as Captain Graybull Peralta, the fighting chaplain of the --th Division, made up of men from the cow country. He was killed in action in the Argonne. In the pocket of his blouse was a bullet drilled, blood soaked Bible. In his hand was a bone handled six-gun with six notches filed on its age yellowed handle. Major Steele, who found him, gently removed the empty gun from the dead captain’s hand. He looked with memory misted eyes at the face of the fighting parson. The bared lips, the swollen, slitted eyes. “Handle him gently, men,” he told the stretcher bearers. “Gently, as we handled his father twenty years ago. May the son of Sam Graybull find fat meat in the Shadow Hills!”