"Good! It is the first streak of luck I've had in a year. I'll join your crowd, Sam, if you'll let me. Captain Jack and Joe are as good friends as I ever had--always barring one." "And that is?" "My old six-shooter here. Truth-Teller I call it. It never speaks without saying something. But come, old boy--I see a sign ahead. I must take in a little benzine to wash the car-dust out of my throat." Bill pointed to a saloon near at hand, and the two old scouts and companions moved toward it. As they did so, a young man, roughly dressed, with a face fair and smooth, though shadowed as if by exposure to sun and and wind, stepped from behind a shade tree, where he had stood while these two talked, listening with breathless interest to every word. His hair, a deep, rich auburn, hung in curling masses clear to his shoulders, and his blue eyes seemed to burn with almost feverish fire as he gazed in the direction the scouts had taken. "So! He remembers Abilene, does he?" And the tone of the young man was low and fierce us an angered serpent's hiss. "And he thinks his time is near. So do I. But he shall not die in a second, as his victim did, I would prolong his agonies for years, if every hour was like a living death; a speechless misery. Let him go with Sam Chichester and his crowd. The avenger will be close at hand! His Truth-Teller will lie when he most depends on it. For I--I have sworn that he shall go where he has sent so many victims; go, like them all, unprepared, but not unwarned. No, he thinks that death is near; I'll freeze the thought to his very soul! He is on the death-trail now? With me rests when and where it shall end." The face of the young man was almost fiendish in its expression as he spoke. It seemed as if his heart was the concentration of hate and a fell desire for revenge. He strode along the streets swiftly, and, glancing in at the saloon which the two men had entered, paused one second, with his right hand thrust within his vest, as if clutching a weapon, and debating in his mind whether or not to use it. A second only he paused, and then muttering, "It is not time yet," he passed on. "He went a little way up the same street and entered a German restaurant. Throwing himself heavily on a seat, he said: "Give me a steak, quick. I'm hungry and dry. Give me a bottle of the best brandy in your house." "We've got der steak, und pread, und peer, und Rhein wine, but no prandy," said the German, who kept the place. "Cook the steak in a hurry, and send for some brandy then!" cried the young man, throwing down a golden eagle. "Your beer and wine are like dishwater to me. I want fire--fire in my veins now." "Dunder and blixen! I shouldn't dink as you wus want much more fire as dere is in your eyes, young fellow. But I send for your prandy." The young man threw one glance around the room to see if he were the only occupant.