He went out and led up the horses to the door. He came back and started to untie Buck Olney's feet, then bethought him of the statement he had promised to write. He got a magazine and tore out the frontispiece--which, oddly enough, was a somber picture of Death hovering with outstretched wings over a battlefield--and wrote several lines in pencil on the back of it, where the paper was smooth and white. "How's that?" he asked, holding up the paper so that Buck could read what he had written. "I ain't in the mood to sit down and write a whole book, so I had to boil down your pedigree. But that will do the business all right, don't you think?" Buck read with staring eyes, looked into Ward's face, and opened his lips for protest or pleading. Then he followed Ward's glance to the knife on the table and shut his mouth with a snap. Ward laughed grimly, picked up the knife, and ran his thumb lightly over the edge to test its keenness. "Put a fresh edge on it for me, huh?" he commented. "Well, we may as well get started, I reckon. I'm getting almighty sick of seeing you around." He loosened the rope that hound Buck to the chair and stood scowling down at him, drawing in a corner of his lip and biting it thoughtfully. Then he took his revolver and held it in his left hand, while with his right he undid the rope which hound Buck's hands. "Stick your hands out in front of you," he commanded. "You'll have to ride a ways; there isn't any gallows tree in walking distance." "For God's sake, Ward!" Buck's voice was hoarse. The plea came out of its own accord. He held his hands before him, however, and he made no attempt to get out of the chair. He knew Ward could shoot all right with his left hand, you see. He had watched him practice on tin cans, long ago when the two were friends. "You know what I told you," Ward reminded him grimly and took up the knife with a deadly air that made the other suck in his breath. "Hold still! I'm liable to cut your throat if I make a mislick." Really, it was the way he did it that made it terrible. The thing itself was nothing. He merely drew the back of the blade down alongside Buck's ear, and permitted the point to scratch through the skin barely enough to let out a thin trickle of blood. A pin would have hurt worse. But Buck groaned and believed he had lost an ear. He breathed in gasps, but did not say a word. "Go ahead; talk all you want to, Buck," Ward invited, and wiped the knife-blade on Buck's shoulder before he returned the weapon to its sheath in his inside coat pocket.