utch Henry first--as
the more alert and slippery of the two--and as quietly as possible the
silent invaders rode slowly along the creek past Gorman's place up to
Henry's.

Day was breaking as the riders, dismounting and leaving their horses on
the creek bottom, crept noiselessly, under Stone's guidance, up a wash
to the bench on which Henry's cabin stood. Hiding just below a shallow
bank at the head of a draw, they lay awaiting developments. Where
Stone had posted them they commanded the cabin perfectly. He had lived
part of one year with Henry when they two preyed jointly on the range
and he knew the ground well.

They had hardly disposed of themselves in this manner and were
beginning, in the gray dusk, to distinguish objects with some
certainty, when the door of the distant cabin opened and a mongrel
collie bounded out followed by a man who left the door ajar. The man,
carrying a water pail, set it down, yawned, stretched himself and
tucked his shirt slowly inside his trousers. Wild with joy the dog
danced, leaped and barked about his master--only to be rewarded by a
kick that sent him yelping to a little distance, where turning,
crouching with extended paws, whining and frantically wagging his tail,
the poor beast tried to beg forgiveness for its half-starved happiness.
The man, giving this demonstration no heed, picked up the pail and
started for the creek.

His path took him in a direction roughly parallel to the line along
which his hidden enemy lay.

"Don't fire at that man," exclaimed Van Horn to his companions under
cover of the draw. "That's not Dutch Henry," he whispered the next
moment. "Don't fire. I'll take care of him."

The rustler, quite unconscious of his deadly danger, tramped unevenly
on. His dog, no longer repulsed, dashed joyously back and forth,
scenting the trails of the night and barking wildly at his master by
turns. The man was walking hardly three hundred yards from where
Stone, rifle in hand, lay, and had reached the footpath leading from
the bench to the creek bottom when Stone, half rising, covered him
slowly with point-blank sights. In the path ahead, the dog had struck
a fresh gopher hole and, still yelping, was pawing madly into it, when
a rifle cracked. The man with the pail, swung violently half around by
the shock of a spreading bullet, jerked convulsively and the pail flew
clattering from his hand. He struggled an instant to keep his footing,
then collapsing, fe