nstant Dan stood watching the progress of the fire, then he
leaped through the door, swerved back as an arm of fire shot out at him,
ran forward again, caught up the doll and was outside rubbing away the
singed portions of brows and lashes.

He did not wait until the house was consumed, but when the flames stood
towering above the roof, shaking out to one side with a roar when the
wind struck them, he mounted Satan once more, and made for the valley.

He wanted to reach Alder at dark, and he gauged the time of his ride so
accurately that when he pulled out of the mouth of Murphy's Pass, the
last light of the day was still on the mountains and in the pass, but
it was already dark in the village, and a score of lights twinkled up at
him like eyes.

He left Satan and Bart well outside the town, for even in the dark they
might easily be recognized, and then walked straight down the street of
Alder. It was a bold thing to do, but he knew that the first thing
which is seen and suspected is the skulker who approaches from covert to
covert. They knew he had ridden into Alder before in the middle of the
night and they might suspect the danger of such another attack, but they
surely would not have fear of a solitary pedestrian unless a telltale
light were thrown upon his face.

He passed Captain Lorrimer's saloon. Even in this short interval it had
fallen into ill-repute after the killing at Alder. And a shanty farther
down the street now did the liquor business of the town; Captain
Lorrimer's was closed, and the window nailed across with slats. He went
on. Partly by instinct, and partly because it was aflame with lights, he
moved straight to the house at which he had learned tidings of three men
he sought on his last visit to Alder. Now there were more lights showing
from the windows of that place than there were in all the rest of Alder;
at the hitching racks in front, horses stood tethered in long double
rows, and a noise of voices rolled out and up and down the street.
Undoubtedly, there was a festival there, and all Alder would turn out to
such an affair. All Alder, including Vic Gregg, the seventh man. A
group came down the street for the widow's house; they were laughing and
shouting, and they carried lanterns; away from them Barry slipped like a
ghost and stood in the shadow of the house.

There might be other such crowds, and they were dangerous to Barry,
so now he hunted for a means of breaking into the house of the