s own he flung all his weight and
strength into one mighty movement that hurled man and weapon from him.

Plunging, staggering, clutching at the air, Turrentine gave ground. The
moonlight flickered on the blade in his upflung hand as, with a strangled
hoarse cry he reeled backward over the bluff.

There was a rending sound of breaking branches, a noise of rolling rocks;
then deadly silence. For a long moment the men left standing on the cliff
strained eyes and ears to where Blatch had gone down, then,

"Keep off!" shouted Creed as the three others began silently to close in
on him. "Stand back, boys. We've had enough of this. Draw off and let me
get down and see what's happened to him." He kept slowly backing away,
striving not to be hemmed in against the rock behind him. The others
warily followed.

"Let you down and finish him, ye mean--don't ye?" screamed Andy with all
a boy's senseless rage.

"You're a fine one to bring law and order into the Turkey Tracks," Wade
taunted savagely. "You've brought murder--that's what you've done."

"He drew a knife on me," cried Bonbright. "You all saw that. I only
shoved him away. I never meant to throw him over the bluff."

"Nobody seen no knife but you, Creed Bonbright," Jeff doggedly
asseverated. "All three of us seen you fling Blatch over the bluff. You
ain't in no court of law now. Yo' lies won't do you no good. Yo' where we
kill the feller that done the killin'."

"How?" said Creed, still backing, feeling his way slowly, seeking for
some break in the rise behind, the others coming a little closer. "By
jumpin' on to him somewhere out at night, four to one--or even three to
one?"

"Yes, by God! thataway, ef we cain't do it no better way," panted Wade.

Years before--heaven knows how many--a little seep of water began to
gather between two huge stones in the small broken bluff behind Creed.
Winter after winter the crevice through which the trickle came enlarged,
the water caught in a natural basin and froze with all its puny might to
heave the stones apart. The winter before this slow process had closed
leaving a wedge of rock trembling upon its base, ready to fall into a
crevice. Yet the opening was masked with vine leaves, and when the spring
rains finally washed away the mould and the crude doorway tottered and
sank, the gap thus left was unnoted, invisible to the sharpest eye.

Bonbright pressing close against the rock to pass, stepping warily when
it was forward,