Only another hundred steps!—Less. Not one has a rifle out. What a chance!—They got us, Simm, but at dear cost.”

“Lower that rifle!”

Wade heard but paid no attention to this, although a strange stifled cry from his dying chief tore at his heartstrings. Wade raised the rifle higher, his mind active and deadly. He gloated in his one gift, an instinctive and unerring skill with firearms. At that distance he could kill three or four of these rangers in less than half that many seconds—before they could swerve their horses. And a fiendish joy possessed him. Luck was on his side. If at his first shots they did not scatter like quail Mahaffey’s squad.

“Wade!”

It was not the inflection of command in Bell’s voice that struck through Wade. The rifle wavered half leveled. Mahaffey’s rangers rode out from behind the line of bushes.

“Wade, I’m—your real father. . . . Your mother loved me. . . . Jim Holden never knew.”

“Oh, God!” cried Wade, stricken to the soul. That had been the bond between him and this robber chief. A bolt shot back within his breast. He wheeled. He leaped back to kneel.

“My father! . . . Oh, why didn’t you tell me long ago?”

“I couldn’t, son. I’m glad—now. . . .