r
of emphasis, but he told himself that that far-off cry of reassurance
sounded like the voice of God.

"Help!" he called desperately, sunk to his armpits in the snow. "Help!
Come quick!"

Night was so near that it had just about closed down when Bruce came
fighting his way up the canyon through the drifts to Griswold's side.
They wasted no time in words, but between them dragged and carried the
unresisting sportsman to the cabin.

The lethargy which had been so nearly fatal was without sensation, but
after an hour or so of work his saviors had the satisfaction of hearing
him begin to groan with the pain of returning circulation.

"Git up and stomp around!" Uncle Bill advised, when Sprudell could
stand. "But," sharply, as he stumbled, "look where you're goin'--that's
a corp' over there."

The admonition revived Sprudell as applications of snow and ice water
had not done. He looked in wide-mouthed inquiry at Bruce.

Bruce's somber eyes darkened as he explained briefly:

"We had a fuss, and he went crazy. He tried to get me with the ax."

There was no need to warn Sprudell again to "look where he was goin',"
as he existed from that moment with his gaze alternating between the
gruesome bundle and the gloomy face of his black-browed host.
Incredulity and suspicion shone plainly in his eyes. Sprudell's
imagination was a winged thing, and now it spread its startled pinions.
Penned up with a murderer--what a tale to tell in Bartlesville, if by
chance he returned alive! The fellow had him at his mercy, and what,
after all, did he know of Uncle Bill? Even fairly honest men sometimes
took desperate chances for so fat a purse as his.

Sprudell saw to it that neither of them got behind him as they moved
about the room.

Casting surreptitious glances at the bookshelf, where he looked to see
the life of Jesse James, he was astonished and somewhat reassured to
discover a title like "Fossil Fishes of the Old Red Sandstone of the
British Isles." It was unlikely, he reasoned, that a man who voluntarily
read, for instance, "Contributions to the Natural History of the United
States," would split his skull when his back was turned. Yet they
smacked of affectation to Sprudell, who associated good reading with
good clothes.

"These are your books--you _read_ them?" There was skepticism, a covert
sneer in Sprudell's tone.

"I'd hardly pack them into a place like this if I didn't," Bruce
answered curtly.

"I suppose not," he h