“Years and years of flight with the breath of an oven to breathe! Years and years of rising and falling, rising and falling, and my throat was tight with the driving smoke. The good brute began to wheeze and cough. I felt the tremor of his wearying muscles, the slight unsteadiness of the knees. I prayed for the river—prayed like a kid at his mother’s knee. I begged the brute to keep his legs; I cursed him when he tottered; I called him baby names and damned him in a breath. “And after years the day began—a sneaking shadow of a day, shamed out by the howling western dawn that met it on the run. A storm of sound was all about me. Neck and neck I raced with a buffalo bull that led the herd; his swollen tongue hung from his foaming mouth; his breath rumbled in his throat. Wheezing steers toiled up about me. Deer and elk raced side by side, slowly forging into the van. Grey wolves bounded past, whining and yelping. And my good brute beat away bravely at the few remaining miles. I felt the dry rasp of his lungs and the breaking of his big, strong heart. He stumbled—I gave him the spur to the heel; he gave no sign of pain. He was dying on his feet. “And the cheap, dirty day crept in through the smoke—and I thought of the Kid, and lost heart and cared no more about the race. But by and by I saw the river ahead, and we plunged in—a howling, panting flood of beasts, struggling for the farther shore. “The sky and the river whirled about me. I felt my horse totter up a sandbank and fall. Then the day went out, and I forgot. “O God! I wish I’d never waked up! Why didn’t the buffalo and the steers beat me into the sand? Why did I wake up?” Frenchy covered his face with his hands and the tears trickled through his fingers. “But the dead horse parted the herd, and I woke up and the fire was dead and the sun looked like a moon through the smoke. Three aching years ago, it was; and I’ve dragged my carcass about and tried to look like a man. But night and day the deuces have followed me and tortured me. They burn holes in the dark whenever I shut my eyes; four pairs of devils dance before me all day in the sunlight till my head whirls.” Frenchy picked up the four deuces and held them tremblingly before the staring crowd. “Look at ’em! Let ’em burn through your hides into your souls! There’s the blood of the Kid on ’em. The damned dirty deuces! They’ve got me in the last ditch! I’m done!” Frenchy crushed the cards and dashed them to the floor. He arose unsteadily to his feet, took his guns and staggered out of the barroom of the “Big 6.” * * * * * * Transcriber’s note: —Obvious errors were corrected.