objected. "I can go to sleep there, when--I'm--tired."

"And I can go to sleep there right now."

With his strong arms he half-lifted her and laid her in his warm place.
She yielded to his strength, sleepily and gratefully, and he drew the
blankets about her shoulders. The touch of his hand was in some way
wonderful,--so strong, so comforting. Then, reeling only a little, he
groped his way to the bed she had made upon the floor.

"Good night," he called, when he had pulled his blankets up. Guided by
a hope that flooded his heart with tremulous anticipations, he held out
his hand in the darkness toward her.

As if by a miracle, her own hand came stealing into his. No man could
tell by what unity of longing they had acted: but neither seemed
surprised to find the other's, waiting in the darkness. It was simply
the Mystery that all men see and no man understands.

He held the little hand in his for just a breath, as a man might hold a
holy thing that a prophet had blessed. Then he let it go.

"Good night, Bill," she told him sleepily.

In the hours of refreshing slumber that lasted full into the next
morning there was but one curious circumstance. In the full light of
morning it seemed to him that he heard the faint prick of a rifle, far
away. The truth was that for all his heavy sleep, some of his guardian
senses were awake to receive impressions, and the sound was a reality.
It was curiously woven into the fabric of his dreams.

There were four shots, one swiftly upon another. Four,--and the
figure four had a puzzling, yet sinister significance to his mind. He
didn't know what it was: he had a confused sense of some sort of an
inner warning, an impression of impending danger and treachery. Who was
it that had held up four fingers somewhere in his experience, and what
manner of signal had it been? But Bill didn't fully waken. His dreams
ran on, confused and troubled.

XXVII

The same rifle shots that brought bad dreams to Bill had a much more
lucid meaning for Joe Robinson and Pete the Breed, the two Indians that
were occupying Harold's cabin. The wind bore toward them from Harold's
new abode, the rifle was of heavy caliber, and the sound came clear and
unmistakable through the stillness. They looked from one to the other.

"Four shots," Pete said at last. "Lounsbury's signal."

Pete stood very still, as if in thought. "Didn't come heap too quick,"
he observed. "One day more you and me