I left White to look after the horses as we reached the town, and went into a hotel to get a nip, for which I felt a very great need.

White noticed a couple of rough-looking chaps behind the barn as he put the horses away and quietly slipped to a window where he could overhear their conversation.
"We'll go in while he is taking a drink," one of them was saying, "and shoot him from behind.

He'll never have a chance." Without a word to me, White hurried into the hotel and got behind the door.

Presently the two men entered, both with drawn revolvers.

But before they could raise them White covered them with his own weapon and commanded them sternly to throw up their hands, an order with which they instantly complied after one look at his face.
I wheeled at the order, and recognized his two captives as the men I was looking for, a pair of horse-thieves and murderers whom I had been sent to apprehend.