Sudden The Marshal of Lawless

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Out of a pale blue sky unflecked by the tiniest cloud, the sun, a disk of polished brass, blazed down, and perhaps for the fiftieth time the red-faced, grizzled driver of the stage-coach cursed it.

"If hell's any hotter'n this, damn me if I don't go an' get religion," he said to the express messenger who sat on the box beside him.

They were descending a narrow, winding defile, the weather-scarred, rock walls of which were bare save for scattered clumps of brush and cactus clinging precariously where an earth-filled crevice afforded root-hold, and the four wicked-eyed mules comprising the team required careful handling if the lumbering vehicle were to reach the end of the decline as a whole. None knew this better than Bill Eames, the driver; and though he talked, hands and eyes were concentrated on his job. Lurching, swaying, jolting over a rough road originally scoured out by torrents and enlivened by chunks of debris from the ridges on either side the coach went on, and presently, sweeping round a bend, the finish of the gully came in view. Eames eased his drag on the reins a little and gave a grunt of relief.

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