The Texan was walking rapidly toward the house. In Robin’s seething brain the thought arose: “They knew I was here. They followed me. He thinks Mark has downed me.” He stepped, scarcely conscious of his stocking feet, out into the snow. As the foresight of his rifle lined on the Texan’s breast, Thatcher stopped dead in his tracks, flung both arms high in the air. Robin held his fire. Ripe to kill as he was he couldn’t shoot. He walked toward the Texan, the anger dying out of him like a receding tide. But for all that he cursed the man, slapped him brutally, raged at him with tears in his voice, disarmed him and drove him into the house. Thatcher grew pale at sight of his confederate stretched on the floor. Then Robin stood still to collect his thoughts. He beheld himself yet between the devil and the deep sea. He had killed the Block S wagon boss as he had publicly declared he would. Adam Sutherland would remember that. “Turn your face to the wall,” he commanded Thatcher. “Kid, for God’s sake!” “You dirty dog!” Robin gritted. “_I_ don’t murder men from ambush, nor shoot ’em in the back. You do what I say.” Thatcher obeyed. Robin took a piece of clothesline and tied his wrists tightly, backed him up to a bunk nailed to the wall and lashed him securely to a corner of that. Then he put on his boots, his overcoat, took both their guns and shut the cabin door on the prisoner and the dead. He saddled his own horse, turned out the other two, hastened their going with a flicking rope-end. In half an hour he would be on the high benches. Until Bud Cartwright and Ed Doyle returned he was safe from pursuit--probably longer. He knew Doyle and Cartwright. They would not hasten to sound an alarm over any one killing Shining Mark. He mounted and loped away up Birch Creek straight for the Bar M Bar. CHAPTER XIV--THE LINE OF LEAST RESISTANCE Dark had fallen. The winter night was setting its teeth hard when Robin dismounted in the Mayne yard. He had forgotten about being tired. His brain had kept a strange sort of time to the drum of hoofs on the frozen ground. He couldn’t make a decision. His instinct was to stand his ground. Yet he knew the risk of that. Sutherland would be implacable. Once a fighting man himself, for a long time Sutherland had frowned on gun fighting on his range. He had grown old and rich. Both publicly and privately he was strong for law and order, set against feuds. He was a fanatic in loyalty. He would never believe that Mark Steele had forced the issue. He would say he meant to see justice done when in reality he would be seeking revenge on an alien rider who had killed one of his trusted men.