. If they don't, I'm going to see how near I can come to
boring a hole in the place where he has his brains cached."

The man glared malignantly at Lawler; but when the first question came
it was answered instantly:

"How much did Warden pay you?"

"A hundred dollars."

"When were you to cut the fence?"

"When the norther struck."

"You saw us cache grub in the cabin?"

The man nodded.

"What if you had found a couple of line riders here? What were you told
to do if you found line riders here? I'm wanting the truth--all of it!"

The man hesitated. Lawler's pistol roared, the concussion rocking the
air of the cabin. The man staggered back, clapping a hand to his head,
where, it seemed to him, the bullet from the pistol had been aimed.

The man brought up against the rear wall of the cabin, beside the
fireplace; and he leaned against it, his face ghastly with fright, his
lips working soundlessly. The little man cowered, plainly expecting
Lawler would shoot him, too. And Lawler's gun did swing up again, but
the voice of the tall man came, blurtingly:

"Warden told us to knife any men we found here."

Lawler's lips straightened, and his eyes glowed with a passion so
intense that the men shrank, gibbering, in the grip of a mighty
paralysis.

Lawler walked to the table and sat beside it, placing the gun near his
right hand. The men watched him, fascinated; noting his swift movements
as he plunged a hand into a pocket and drew out a small pad of paper and
a pencil. He wrote rapidly upon a leaf of the pad; then got up, stepped
back and ordered the tall man to approach the table.

"Write your name below what I have written--and date it."

When both men had signed the paper, Lawler folded it, stuck it between
some leaves of the pad, and replaced pad and pencil in his pocket.

"That's all," he said. "You'll hang out here until the norther blows
itself out; then you'll hit the trail to town and tell your story to the
sheriff. I'll be doing the honors."

He sheathed his gun and flung open the door, stepping back as a white
avalanche rushed in; grinning broadly as he saw the men shrink from it.
He divined that the men thought he was going to force them out into the
storm immediately, and he grinned coldly.

"You can be tickled that I'm not sending you out into it, to drift with
the cattle you tried to kill," he said. "You'd deserve that, plenty.
You'll find wood beside the dugout. Get some of it in here and star