its butt-end,
steel-jacketed, was undamaged. He compared it with a cartridge from
Smoke's belt.

"That's plain enough evidence, stranger, to satisfy a blind man. It's
soft-nosed an' steel-jacketed; yourn is soft-nosed and steel-jacketed.
It's thirty-thirty; yourn is thirty-thirty. It's manufactured by the
J. and T. Arms Company; yourn is manufactured by the J. and T. Arms
Company. Now you come along, an' we'll go over to the bank an' see jest
how you done it."

"I was bushwhacked myself," Smoke said. "Look at the hole in my parka."

While Blackbeard examined it, one of the voyageurs threw open the breech
of the dead man's gun. It was patent to all that it had been fired once.
The empty cartridge was still in the chamber.

"A damn shame poor Joe didn't get you," Blackbeard said bitterly. "But
he did pretty well with a hole like that in him. Come on, you."

"Search the other bank first," Smoke urged.

"You shut up an' come on, an' let the facts do the talkin'."

They left the trail at the same spot he had, and followed it on up the
bank and then in among the trees.

"Him dance that place keep him feet warm," Louis pointed out. "That
place him crawl on belly. That place him put one elbow w'en him shoot."

"And by God there's the empty cartridge he done it with!" was
Blackbeard's discovery. "Boys, there's only one thing to do--"

"You might ask me how I came to fire that shot," Smoke interrupted.

"An' I might knock your teeth into your gullet if you butt in again.
You can answer them questions later on. Now, boys, we're decent an'
law-abidin', an' we got to handle this right an' regular. How far do you
reckon we've come, Pierre?"

"Twenty mile, I t'ink for sure."

"All right. We'll cache the outfit an' run him an' poor Joe back to
Two Cabins. I reckon we've seen an' can testify to what'll stretch his
neck."

It was three hours after dark when the dead man, Smoke, and his captors
arrived at Two Cabins. By the starlight, Smoke could make out a dozen or
more recently built cabins snuggling about a larger and older cabin on
a flat by the river bank. Thrust inside this older cabin, he found it
tenanted by a young giant of a man, his wife, and an old blind man. The
woman, whom her husband called "Lucy," was herself a strapping creature
of the frontier type. The old man, as Smoke learned afterwards, had
been a trapper on the Stewart for years, and had gone finally blind the
winter before. The camp of Two Cabin