Chadron had taken up his quirt from the little round table where the hotel register lay. He turned now toward the outer door, as if in earnest about going his way and leaving Mark Thorn to follow his own path, no matter to what consequences it might lead. "If you're square enough to settle up with me for this job," said Thorn, "and pay me five hundred for what I've done, I'll leave your name out when I come to make that little speech." Chadron turned on him with a sneer. "You seem to have your hangin' all cut and dried, but you'll never go ten miles outside of this reservation if you don't turn around and put that job through. You'll never hang--you ain't cut out in the hangin' style." "I tell you I will!" protested Thorn hotly. "I can see it in the cards." "Well, you'd better shuffle 'em ag'in." "I know what kind of a day it's goin' to be, and I know just adzackly how I'll look when I hold up m' hands for them fellers to keep still. Shucks! you can't tell me; I've seen that day a thousand times. It'll be early in the mornin', and the sun bright--" The door leading to the dining-room opened, and Thorn left his description of that great and final day in his career hanging like a broken bridge. He turned to see who it was, squinting his old eyes up sharply, and in watching the stranger he failed to see the whiteness that came over Chadron's face like a rushing cloud. "Grab your gun!" Chadron whispered. "Just let it stay where it is, Thorn," advised the stranger, his quick hand on his own weapon before Thorn could grasp what it was all about, believing, as he did, in the safety of the reservation's neutral ground. "Macdonald is my name; I've been looking for you." The stranger came on as he spoke. He was but a few feet away from Thorn, and the old man-killer had his revolvers buckled around him in their accustomed place, while his death-spreading rifle stood near his hand, leaning its muzzle against the chimney-jamb. Thorn seemed to be measuring all the chances which he had left to him in that bold surprise, and to conclude in the same second that they were not worth taking. Macdonald had not drawn his revolver. His hand was on the butt of it, and his eye held Thorn with a challenge that the old slayer was in no mind to accept. Thorn was not a close-fighting man. He never had killed one of his kind in a face-to-face battle in all his bloody days. At the bottom he was a coward, as his skulking deeds attested, and in that moment he knew that he stood before his master. Slowly he lifted his long arms above his head, without a word, and stood in the posture of complete surrender. Nearer the outer door stood Chadron, to whom Macdonald seemed to give little attention, as if not counting him in the game. The big cattleman was "white to the gills," as his kind expressed that state. Macdonald unbuckled Thorn's belt and hung his revolvers over his arm. "I knowed you'd git me, Macdonald," the old scoundrel said.