His tightly clenched fist connected, staggering the giant and drawing a grunt of pain. But Frost whirled around and backhanded him with a blow that knocked the detective to the ground. Frost picked up his ruined rifle and raised it to the sky like a long steel club. Isaac Bell whipped his derringer from his hat.

“Drop it!” he said. “You’re a dead man.”

Frost swung the rifle.

Bell squeezed the trigger.

A blaze of light and an explosion fifty times louder than a pistol shot sent the rifle pinwheeling forty feet. Frost was smashed flat on the ground. Six feet away, Isaac Bell remained on his feet, ears ringing, staring down at his fallen adversary in astonishment. The smell of burning flesh hung in the air. Frost’s face was black, his beard burned, his shirt and trousers smoldering, the soles blown off his boots.

Life was leaking from Frost’s eyes. He sucked air through his charred lips. But his voice was still strong, harsh and thick with scorn. “You didn’t get me. Lightning bolt hit my rifle.”

“I had you dead to rights,” answered Bell. “The lightning just happened to get you first.”

Frost croaked bitter laughter.

“Is that why Van Dorns never give up? You got weather gods on your side?”

Isaac Bell gazed down triumphantly at the dying criminal. “I didn’t need weather gods,” he said quietly. “I had Wally Laughlin on my side.”

“Who the hell is Wally Laughlin?”

“He was a newsboy. You murdered him and two of his friends when you dynamited the Dearborn Street news depot.”

“Newsboy? . . . Oh yeah, I remember.” He shuddered with pain and forced out another jibe. “I’ll hear about it in Hell. How old was he?”

“Twelve.”

“Twelve?” Frost lay back. His voice grew weak. “Twelve was my grand year. I’d been a little runt getting used by every Tom, Dick, and Harry. Then all of a sudden I started growing and growing, and everything went my way. Won my first fight. Got my first gang. Killed my first man—twenty years old, he was, full grown.”

A hideous parody of a smile twisted Frost’s burnt lips.

“Poor little Wally,” he muttered sarcastically. “Who knows what the little bastard could have made of himself.”

“He made a memory of himself,” said Isaac Bell.

“How’d he do that?”

“He had a kind soul.”

BELL STOOD UP and gathered his weapons.

Harry Frost called after him. Suddenly there was fear in his voice. “Are you leaving me here to die alone?”

“You’ve left crowds to die alone.”

“What if I told you something you don’t know about Marco Celere?”

Bell said, “Marco Celere showed up in Yuma three days ago, fit as a fiddle. You ran from the only murder you didn’t commit.”

Frost levered himself up on one elbow and shot back, “I know that.”