nd its appearance was in no wise deceptive. Its members, all save one,
had begun their evening at the Quarterhouse bar. The one exception was
George Kelly, a young man recently married, who had gone there to talk
other business with Towers. George had an instinctive tendency toward
straightforwardness, but he had also an infirmity of character which
caused him to follow where a more aggressive nature led--and he had
fallen under Kinnard's domination. His small tract of tillable land was
mortgaged, and Kinnard held over him the lash of financial supremacy.
He could fight, but he could not argue, and when the unofficial posse
was sent out that night, being in the place, he lacked the courage to
refuse participation.

They had found the footprints of the fugitive and had met two men who
claimed to have seen him in the flesh, but Bear Cat himself had eluded
them and near midnight they halted to rest. They threw themselves down
in a small rock-walled basin which was broken at one point by a narrow
gorge, through which they had come. It was a good place to revel in
after labor because it was so shut-in that the bonfire they kindled
could not be far seen. The jugs were opened and passed around. It had
set in to rain, and though they could endure that bodily discomfort
while they had white liquor, their provident souls took thought against
the rusting of their firearms. The guns were accordingly placed under a
ledge of rock a few feet distant, all save one. Kelly lacking the
buoyant courage of drunkenness, preferred to keep his weapon close at
hand. He listened moodily and unresponsively to the obscene stories and
ribald songs, which elicited thick peals of laughter from his
companions. They had hunted hard, and now they were wassailing hard.
The long march home would sober them so they need not restrain their
appetites.

Some impulse led Kelly to raise his eyes from the sordid picture in the
red waver of the fire and glance toward the doorlike opening of the
gorge. The eyes remained fixed--and somehow the rifle on his knees did
not come up, as it should have done. A figure stood there silently,
contemptuously looking on, and it was as gaunt and gray as that of a
foraging wolf. It was as lean and sinewy, too, and out of the face
glowed a pair of eyes dangerously narrow and glittering.

Then with a scornful laugh the figure stepped forward, bending lithely
from the waist, with two steel-steady hands gripping two automatic
pis