Now they all knew he was not the manner of man they had supposed. Justice can be a harsh taskmaster, but Western men know their kind, and the lines were strongly drawn. When you have slept beside a man on the trail, worked with him, and with others like him, you come to know your kind. In the trail of the man Chat Lock, each rider of the posse was seeing the sort of man he knew, the sort he could respect. The thought was nagging and unsubstantial, but each of them felt a growing doubt, even Short and Kesney who were most obdurate and resentful.

They knew how a backshooter lived and worked. He had his brand on everything he did. The mark of this man was the mark of a man who did things, who stood upon his own two feet, and who if he died, died facing his enemy. To the unknowing, such conclusions might seem doubtful, but the men of the desert knew their kind.

The mill was dark and silent, a great looming bulk beside the stream and the still pool of the mill pond. They dismounted and eased close. Then according to a prearranged plan, they scattered and surrounded it. From behind a lodgepole pine, Hardin called out.

“We’re comin’ in, Lock! We want you!”

The challenge was harsh and ringing. Now that the moment had come something of the old suspense returned. They listened to the water babbling as it trickled over the old dam, and then they moved. At their first step, they heard Lock’s voice.

“Don’t come in here, boys! I don’t want to kill none of you, but you come an’ I will! That was a fair shootin’! You’ve got no call to come after me!”

Hardin hesitated, chewing his mustache. “You shot him in the back!” he yelled.

“No such thing! He was a-facin’ the bar when I come in. He seen I was heeled, an’ he drawed as he turned. I beat him to it. My first shot took him in the side an’ he was knocked back against the bar. My second hit him in the back an’ the third missed as he was a fallin’. You hombres didn’t see that right.”

The sound of his voice trailed off and the water chuckled over the stones, then sighed to a murmur among the trees. The logic of Locke’s statement struck them all. It could have been that way. A long moment passed, and then Hardin spoke up again. “You come in an’ we’ll give you a trial. Fair an’ square!”

“How?” Lock’s voice was a challenge. “You ain’t got no witness. Neither have I. Ain’t nobody to say what happened there but me, as Johnny ain’t alive.”

“Johnny was a mighty good man, an’ he was our friend!” Short shouted. “No murderin’ squatter is goin’ to move into this country an’ start shootin’ folks up!”

There was no reply to that, and they waited, hesitating a little. Neill leaned disconsolately against the tree where he stood. After all, Lock might be telling the truth. How did they know? There was no use hanging a man unless you were sure.

“Gab!” Short’s comment was explosive. “Let’s move in, Hardin! Let’s get him! He’s lyin’! Nobody could beat Johnny, we know that!” “Webb was a good man in his own country!” Lock shouted in reply. The momentary silence that followed held them, and then, almost as a man they began moving in. Neill did not know exactly when or why he started. Inside he felt sick and empty. He was fed up on the whole business and every instinct he had told him this man was no backshooter.

Carefully, they moved, for they knew this man was handy with a gun. Suddenly, Hardin’s voice rang out.

“Hold it, men! Stay where you are until daybreak! Keep your eyes open an’ your ears. If he gets out of here he’ll be lucky, an’ in the daylight we can get him, or fire the mill!”

Neill sank to a sitting position behind a log. Relief was a great warmth that swept over him. There wouldn’t be any killing tonight. Not tonight, at least.

Yet as the hours passed, his ears grew more and more attuned to the darkness. A rabbit rustled, a pine cone dropped from a tree, the wind stirred high in the pine tops and the few stars winked through, lonesomely peering down upon the silent men.

With daylight they moved in and they went through the doors and up to the windows of the old mill, and it was empty and still. They stared at each other, and Short swore viciously, the sound booming in the echoing, empty room.

“Let’s go down to the Sorenson place,” Kimmel said. “He’ll be there.”

And somehow they were all very sure he would be. They knew he would be because they knew him for their kind of man. He would retreat no further than his own ranch, his own hearth. There, if they were to have him and hang him, they would have to burn him out, and men would die in the process. Yet with these men there was no fear. They felt the drive of duty, the need for maintaining some law in this lonely desert and mountain land. There was only doubt which had grown until each man was shaken with it. Even Short, whom the markers by the trail had angered, and Kesney, who was the best tracker among them, even better than Hardin, and had been irritated by it, too.

The sun was up and warming them when they rode over the brow of the hill and had looked down into the parched basin where the Sorenson place lay.

But it was no parched basin. Hardin drew up so suddenly his startled horse almost reared. It was no longer the Sorenson place.

The house had been patched and rebuilt. The roof had spots of new lumber upon it, and the old pole barn had been made water tight and strong. A new corral had been built, and to the right of the house was a fenced in garden of vegetables, green and pretty after the desert of the day before.

Thoughtfully, and in a tight cavalcade, they rode down the hill. The stock they saw was fat and healthy, and the corral was filled with horses.

“Been a lot of work done here,” Kimmel said. And he knew how much work it took to make such a place attractive.

“Don’t look like no killer’s place!” Neill burst out. Then he flushed and drew back, embarrassed by his statement. He was the youngest of these men, and the newest in the country.

No response was forthcoming. He had but stated what they all believed. There was something stable, lasting, something real and genuine in this place.

“I been waitin’ for you.”

The remark from behind them stiffened every spine. Chat Lock was here, behind them. And he would have a gun on them, and if one of them moved, he could die.

“My wife’s down there fixin’ breakfast. I told her I had some friends comin’ in. A posse huntin’ a killer. I’ve told her nothin’ about this trouble. You ride down there now, you keep your guns. You eat your breakfast and then if you feel bound and determined to get somebody for a fair shootin’, I’ll come out with anyone of you or all of you, but I ain’t goin’ to hang.

“I ain’t namin’ no one man because I don’t want to force no fight on anybody. You ride down there now.”

They rode, and in the dooryard, they dismounted. Neill turned them, and for the first time he saw Chat Lock.

He was a big man, compact and strong. His rusty brown hair topped a brown, sun-hardened face but with the warmth in his eyes it was friendly sort of face. Not at all what he expected.

Hardin looked at him. “You made some changes here.”

“I reckon.” Lock gestured toward the well. “Dug by hand. My wife worked the windlass.” He looked around at them, taking them in with one sweep of his eyes. “I’ve got the grandest woman in the world.”

Neill felt hot tears in his eyes suddenly, and busied himself loosening his saddle girth to keep the others from seeing. That was the way he felt about Mary.

The door opened suddenly, and they turned. The sight of a woman in this desert country was enough to make any man turn. What they saw was not what they expected. She was young, perhaps in her middle twenties, and she was pretty, with brown wavy hair and gray eyes and a few freckles on her nose. “Won’t you come in? Chat told me he had some friends coming for breakfast, and it isn’t often we have anybody in.”