"Only me—got Ed—cleaned out—hurry."

It was John. His face was a monstrous red stain. His coat was drenched with blood. His left arm—shattered from the shoulder.

"Hurry 1" he gasped. "Go. I'm O. K. Only got me in the shoulder. Ed's done up. Oh, for God's sake, go and be quick about it."

Ed was dead. John was dying. My father broken-hearted.

And all thanks to me! Never was anybody so whipped with remorse, so crushed. Pretty work my crude violence had done at last ! My unbridled temper was the real murderer. If I had not come on this visit! If I had only stayed on the range! If they had only hanged me in Las Cruces! Like a pack of hounds the bitter thoughts kept baying at me as I went that quarter of a mile to the saloon.

When I lunged through that door the crowd snapped apart like a taut string. Some scooted under the gambling table—others made for the door. The place was cleared.

And there on the floor, lying in a huge blot of warm blood, his face downward, was my brother Ed. He had been shot through the head, just at the base of the brain.

All that was good and human and soft in me rushed into my throat, cried itself out and died that hour that I sat there with Ed's head in my lap and his blood soaked into my hands and my clothes. Death was stealing into my soul with a blight more fatal than the wrecking of my brother's body.

No one spoke—no one put out a hand to me, until presently the doctor leaned forward. "Al, let me do something; get up now."

At the words the saloon was suddenly a-hum with voices. Men crowded about me. Sentences seemed to rush from them like pebbles down a cliff.

"He was right there—playing pitch," some one began. Another and another interrupted.

"They struck from behind— "

"They sneaked in---"

"They soaked him when he was down— "