At the same instant, as Blant had probably anticipated, a man dashed into the passage from the rear, firing, closely followed by a second, also firing. Conjecturing at once that Todd had hired some stranger to call him out, in order that he and a confederate might attack him, Blant took instant deadly aim at both the men. The first--Todd--fell face forward into the light from the doorway; the second, with the cry, "It's me, Blant," also staggered forward a few steps, and Blant caught the dying Rich in his arms. Guessing Todd's whereabouts, Rich, disobeying commands, had jumped from the window to attack him from the rear, and had thoughtlessly exposed himself to Blant's deadly aim. [Illustration: "Blant caught the dying Rich in his arms."] Saxby said that Blant, in an agony, had lifted his friend, dashed water over him, worked for hours to restore him, refused to admit that he could be dead; and finally, when compelled to abandon hope, had laid the revolver to his own temple and fired, his father knocking it up in time to produce only a scalp wound, and Saxby and others who had come in overpowering him and taking it from him before he could fire again. They stood guard over him the rest of the night, while he raved over Rich's body. "Never did I see the likes of the love of them two boys," said Saxby, with tears in his eyes. "And Blant in gineral so quiet,--nobody'd a-dreamed he could keer so deep." Then, with the coming of daylight, Blant had called for his nag and had announced his determination to give himself up to the sheriff. "Since I haint permitted to kill myself, the law must kill me," he had declared, "for this misery is more than I can endure and live." In vain all tried to dissuade him; he was adamant. "So the whole passel of us come over with him," said Saxby. "Him and t'others stopped up here at the sheriff's, but I come ahead to fetch the news to the little Marrs chap." "Never!" I said, "it might kill him, now. He must not know a word of it." "I allowed it might holp him up some to hear Todd was safe dead," he apologized. "He must hear nothing," I said. Fifteen minutes later, a sad cavalcade came down the road. There were a dozen or more men, and last of all, between the sheriff and deputy, rode Blant, his face rigid with misery and horror. Pale, deathlike, unseeing, he rode. When I ran out in the road to give him a word of sympathy he looked straight through me, never seeing me. My boys and a gathering crowd followed in awed silence to the jail. XXIII DESPAIR, AND BUDDING ROMANCE _Thursday Evening._