rable to a man who has
slept out for four nights late in the fall; but a glance was all Ward
gave to it.

His eyes searched the bluff below him and upon either side. Of a
sudden they sharpened. He brought his rifle forward with an
involuntary motion of the arms. He stood so for a breath or two,
looking down the hill. Then he went forward stealthily, on his toes;
swiftly, too, so that presently he was close enough to see the
carbuncle scar on the neck of the man crouched behind a rock and
watching the cabin as a cat watches a mouse-hole. A rifle lay across
the rock before the man, the muzzle pointing downward. At that
distance, and from a dead rest, it would be strange if he should miss
any object he shot at. He had what gamblers call a cinch, or he would
have had, if the man he watched for had not been standing directly
behind him, with rifle-sights in a line with the scar on the back of
his thick neck.

"Throw up your hands!" Ward called sharply, when his first flare of
rage had cooled to steady purpose.

Buck Olney jumped as though a yellow-jacket had stung him. He turned a
startled face over his shoulder and jerked the rifle up from the rock.
Ward raised his sights a little and plugged a round, black-rimmed hole
through Buck's hat crown.

"Throw up your hands, I told you!" he said, while the hills opposite
were still flinging back the sound of the shot, and came closer.

Buck grunted an oath, dropped the rifle so suddenly that it clattered
on the rock, and lifted his hands high, in the quiet sunlight.

"Get up from there and go on down to the shack--and keep your hands up.
And remember all the reasons I've got for wanting to see you make a
crooked move, so I'll have an excuse to shoot." Ward came still closer
as he spoke. He was wishing he had brought his rope along. He did not
feel quite easy in his mind while Buck Olney's hands were free. He
kept thinking of what Billy Louise had said to him about shooting this
man, and it was the first time since he had known her that he disliked
the thought of her.

Buck got up awkwardly and went stumbling down the steep slope, with his
hands trembling in the air upon either side of his head. From their
nervous quivering it was evident that his memory was good, and that it
was working upon the subject which Ward had suggested to him. He did
not give Ward the weakest imitation of an excuse to shoot. And so the
two of them came presently down upon the level