out of the sheepfold at dawn when
his allotted task was done.

Better to go home and guard what was left, they said. All of them were
men for a fight, but it was one thing to stand up to something that a
man could see, and quite another to fight blindfolded, and in the
dark. Catching Mark Thorn was like trying to ladle moonlight with a
sieve. The country wasn't worth it, they were beginning to believe.
When Mark Thorn came in, it was like the vultures flying ahead of the
last, devastating plague.

The man whose boy had been shot down beside the little grass-roofed
barn was the last to leave.

"I'll stick to it for a year, Alan, if you think it's any use," he
said.

He was a gaunt man, with sunken cheeks and weary eyes; gray, worn,
unwashed, and old; one of the earth's disinherited who believed that
he had come into his rood of land at last. Now the driving shadow of
his restless fate was on him again. Macdonald could see that it was
heavy in his mind to hitch up and stagger on into the west, which was
already red with the sunset of his day.

Macdonald was moved by a great compassion for this old man, whose hope
had been snatched away from him by the sting of a bullet in the dawn.
He laid his hand on the old homesteader's sagging thin shoulder and
poured the comfort of a strong man's sympathy into his empty eyes.

"Go on back, Tom, and look after the others," he said. "Do your chores
by dark, morning and night, and stick close to cover all days and
watch for him. I'll keep on looking. I started to get that old hyena,
and I'll get him. Go on home."

The old man's eyes kindled with admiration. But it died as quickly as
it had leaped up, and he shook his long hair with a sigh.

"You can't do nothin' agin him all alone, Alan."

"I think I'll have a better chance alone than in a crowd, Tom. There's
no doubt that there were too many of us, crashing through the brush
and setting ourselves up against the sky line every time we rode up a
hill. I'll tackle him alone. Tell the neighbors to live under cover
till they hear I've either got him or he's got me. In case it turns
out against me, they can do whatever seems best to them."

CHAPTER VIII

AFOOT AND ALONE

Mark Thorn had not killed anybody since shooting the man at the plow.
There were five deaths to his credit on that contract, although none
of the fallen was on the cattlemen's list of desirables to be
removed.

Five days had passed without a trag