mured the sheriff. He pushed up his hat brim so that it covered his
eyes more perfectly. "Boys, get ready. They're comin' now!"

Mat Henshaw took up the word, and repeated it, and the whisper ran
down the line of men who lay irregularly among the rocks, until at
last Sliver Waldron brought it to a stop with a deep murmur. Not even
a whisper could altogether disguise his booming bass. It seemed to Vic
Gregg that the air about him grew more tense; his arm muscles commenced
to ache from the gripping of his hands. Then a door creaked--they could
tell the indubitable sound as if there were a light to see it swing
cautiously wide.

"They're goin' out the back way," interpreted the sheriff, "but they'll
come around in front. They ain't any other way they can get out of here.
Pass that down the line, Mat."

Before the whisper had trailed out half its course, a woman screamed in
the house. It sent a jag of lightning through the brain of Vic Gregg; he
started up.

"Get down," commanded the sheriff 'curtly. "Or they'll plant you."

"For God's sake, Pete, he's killin' his wife--an'--he's gone mad--I seen
it comin' in his eyes!"

"Shut up," muttered Glass, "an' listen."

A pulse of sound floated out to them, and stopped the breath of Gregg;
it was a deep, stifled sobbing.

"She's begged him to stay with her; he's gone," said the sheriff. "Now
it'll come quick."

But the sheriff was wrong. There was not a sound, not a sign of a rush.

Presently: "What sort of a lass is she, Gregg?"

"All yaller hair, Pete, and the softes' blue eyes you ever see."

The sheriff made no answer, but Vic saw the little bony hand tense about
the barrel of the rifle. Still that utter quiet, with the pulse of the
sobbing lying like a weight upon the air, and the horror of the waiting
mounted and grew, like peak upon peak before the eyes of the climber.

"Watch for 'em sneakin' up on us through the rocks. Watch for 'em close,
lads. It ain't goin' to be a rush."

Once more the sibilant murmur ran down the line, and the voice of Sliver
Waldron brought it faintly to a period.

"Three of 'em," continued the sheriff, "and most likely they'll come at
us three ways."

Through the shadow Vic watched the lips of Glass work and caught the end
of his soft murmur to himself: ".... all three!"

He understood; the sheriff had offered up a deep prayer that all three
might fall by his gun.

Up from the farther end of the line the whisper ran lightly, sw