The curtain parted, and a figure darkened the doorway—a slender, lithe figure that moved on springs. Out of its sardonic, devil-may-care face gleamed malevolent eyes which rested for a moment on Dailey, before they came home to the sheriff. “And what is it Leroy would never do?” a gibing voice demanded silkily. Scotty pulled himself together and tried to bluff, but at the look on his chief’s face the words died in his throat. Collins did not lift a finger or move an eyelash, but with the first word a wary alertness ran through him and starched his figure to rigidity. He gathered himself together for what might come. “Well, I am waiting. What it is Leroy would never do?” The voice carried a scoff with it, the implication that his very presence had stricken conspirators dumb. Collins offered the explanation. “Mr. Dailey was beginning a testimonial of your virtues just as you right happily arrived in time to hear it. Perhaps he will now proceed.” But Dailey had never a word left. His blunders had been crying ones, and his chief’s menacing look had warned him what to expect. The courage oozed out of his heart, for he counted himself already a dead man. “And who are you, my friend, that make so free with Wolf Leroy’s name?” It was odd how every word of the drawling sentence contrived to carry a taunt and a threat with it, strange what a deadly menace the glittering eyes shot forth. “My name is Collins.” “Sheriff of Pica County?” “Yes.” The eyes of the men met like rapiers, as steady and as searching as cold steel. Each of them was appraising the rare quality of his opponent in this duel to the death that was before him. “What are you doing here? Ain’t Pica County your range?” “I’ve been discussing with your friend the late hold-up on the Transcontinental Pacific.” “Ah!” Leroy knew that the sheriff was serving notice on them of his purpose to run down the bandits. Swiftly his mind swept up the factors of the situation. Should he draw now and chance the result, or wait for a more certain ending? He decided to wait, moved by the consideration that even if he were victorious the lawyers were sure to draw out of the fat-brained Scotty the cause of the quarrel. “Well, that don’t interest me any, though I suppose you have to explain a heap how come they to hold you up and take your gun. I’ll leave you and your jelly-fish Scotty to your gabfest. Then you better run back home to Tucson. We don’t go much on visiting sheriffs here.” He turned on his heel with an insolent laugh, and left the sheriff alone with Dailey. The superb contempt of the man, his readiness to give the sheriff a chance to pump out of Dailey all he knew, served to warn Collins that his life was in imminent danger. On no hypothesis save one—that Leroy had already condemned them both to death in his mind—could he account for such rashness. And that the blow would fall soon, before he had time to confer with other officers, was a corollary to the first proposition.