“I ain’t lyin’!” Marino almost screamed. “It’s the truth! I wanted to start clean! I been a long time livin’ down--what I used to be. Then, that night--I must have been crazy, I guess. I’d been drinkin’ too much an’ I thought I could turn a trick just once more an’ go back home an’ live straight. My mother--I killed her, I guess, ’cause she died when she found out what I was. It was then I promised my sister I’d give up--that stuff. Oh, you might as well know it all,” he burst out, his words tumbling over one another as if in agony to escape before being called back. “I was a bandit--that knife was marked with my initials, Teddy. My real name’s Jules Kolto--” “You--Jules Kolto?” Pop cried incredulously. “I heard lots about you years ago! Then yuh are a Mex, after all!” “Yep, I’m Mex,” Kolto went on bitterly. “A Mex, a hoss thief, an’ a bandit. Now you know. If yuh want to string me up, go ahead!” he exclaimed defiantly. “I ain’t any good to nobody, least of all to myself! So do what you want with me--an’ I won’t do no cryin’, neither!” He took a deep breath, then a sudden tremor shook his frame. “Take it easy, son,” Mr. Manley said kindly. “You ain’t in no fit condition to be hung. What you want is rest an’ food. Hangin’ wouldn’t make you feel a bit better. Guess you’ve learned yore lesson. Jules Kolto! Well, well! And you been straight for so many years only to backslide an’ have the money you stole taken from you by another thief! The longer we live the queerer things we see,” and Mr. Manley smiled grimly. “Yore hoss--or, rather, the one you stole--is picketed over yonder. We found him. You took a mighty poor way to start straight. No good ever comes of stolen money. An’ while I ain’t a preacher, I’m preachin’ now. “You wanted to get to Mexico an’ see yore sister, maybe live there the rest of yore life, an’ to do that you undid all the work of ten years in one grand spree. Suppose you had gotten away with it? What would yore sister have said to you? Think she’d have anything to do with stolen money when she’d made you promise to quit? An’ what else was that you said--that yore mother died when she found out that you was a bandit? Then you went ahead and stole again! Humans are funny animals,” and Mr. Manley shook his head. “I can’t figure ’em. “Now listen, Jules Kolto. I’ll give you another chance. You help us find Denver Smith an’ his gang an’ get our cattle back. Then you come home with me an’ work--work until that four hundred is paid. Then you can find yore sister an’ she won’t be ashamed to see you. Jules Kolto, I’m offerin’ you a chance to go straight. Will yuh take it?” Jules stood up. He threw back his head and the gleam from the fire shone on the face of a man with his jaw set firmly and with the light of a new purpose in his eyes.