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Of a sudden, loping easily over the frost-bound prairie and following the winding trail of a cowpath, appeared the approaching figure of a horse and rider. It came on steadily, clear to the gathered group, and stopped. An instant and the newcomer understood the scene and a curse sprang to his lips. Another instant and his own mustang was spurred in close by the strugglers. His right hand raised in air and bearing a heavy quirt, descended; not upon the broncho, but far across the cursing, devilish face of the man, its rider. Then swift as thought and simultaneously as twin machines, the hands of the intruder and of the struggling “buster” went to their hips.

The spectators held their breaths; not one stirred. Before them they saw the hands which had gone to hips flash up and forward like pistons from companion cylinders, and they saw two puffs of smoke like escaping steam.

Smoothly, as a scene in a rehearsed play, the reports mingled, the riders, scarcely ten feet apart, tottered in their saddles, and slowly, unconsciously resistant even in death, the two bodies slipped to earth.

But there the unison ended. The mustang which “Slim” Rawley rode stood still in its tracks; but before the spectators could rush in, the “devil” broncho, relieved of the hand upon the curb, sprang away, and with the “buster’s” foot caught fast in the stirrup ran squealing, kicking, crazy mad out over the prairie, dragging by its side the limp figure of its unseated enemy.

Calmar Bye watched the whole spectacle as in a dream. So swift had been the action, so fantastic the denouement, that he could not at first reconcile it all with reality. He went slowly over to the prostrate “Slim” Rawley, whom the others had laid out decently upon the ground, half expecting him to leap up and laugh in their faces; but the already stiffening figure with the fiendish scowl upon its face, was convincing.

Besides,–gods, the indifference of these men to death! The party of onlookers were already separating–one division, mounted, starting in pursuit of the escaping broncho, along the narrow trail made by the dragged man; the others impassively reconnoitring for spades and shovels, were stolidly awaiting the breaking of the lock of frost-bound earth at the hands of a big, red-shirted cowboy with a pick!

“Here, Bye,” suggested one toiler, “you’re an eddicated man; say a prayer er something, can’t ye, before we plant old ‘Slim.’ He wa’nt sech a bad sort.”

The tenderfoot complied, and said something–he never knew just what–as the dry clods thumped dully upon the huddled figure in the old gunny sack. What he said must have been good, for those present resisted with difficulty a disposition to applaud.

This labor complete, the cowboys scattered, miles apart, each to his division of the herd, which for better range had been distributed over a wide territory. Bye was in charge of the home bunch, and sat long after the others had left, upon the new-formed mound in the ranch dooryard.

Far over the broad, rolling prairies, as yet bare and frost-bound, the sun shone brightly. A half-mile away he could see his own herd scattered and grazing. The stillness after the sudden excitement was almost unbelievable. Minutes passed by which dragged into an hour. Over the face of the sun a faint haze began to form and, unnoticeable to one not prairie-trained, the air took on a sympathetic feel, almost of dampness. A native would have sensed a warning; but Calmar Bye, one time writer, paid no heed. An instinct of his life, one he had thought suppressed, a necessity imperative as hunger, was gathering upon him strongly–the overwhelming instinct to portray the unusual.

Under its guidance, as in a maze, he made his way into the rough, unplastered shanty. Automatically he found a pencil and collected some scraps of coarse wrapping paper. Already the opening words of the tale he had to tell were in his mind, and sitting down by the greasy pine-board table, he began to write.