rtney sent me over to see. Anything I can do for you?"

"Take that lantern out of my eyes, and hustle me up some breakfast.
I--I'm sorry about Billy!" I was not; I was startled,--and worse. It had
not been Dudley who had dismissed him, asinine as he had been about
Billy and old Thompson, or he would have told me. It had been Macartney,
getting rid of him and my teamsters under my very nose; and--as
Macartney's parting grin recurred to me--if his man had any one with him
in Billy's vacant shack they had been put there to get rid of _me_.

"Get me a bucket of water and make coffee, if you haven't done it," I
said, yawning. "I'll come in--as soon as I've fed my horse."

But I did neither. I stopped yawning, too. Through the frosty window, as
the man disappeared for the shack, I saw a light in its doorway and two
more of Macartney's men standing in it, black between the lamp and the
gray morning glimmer. I stirred some meal into the water Macartney's man
had brought, drank a mouthful before I let my horse have just enough to
rinse his throat with, and threw on his saddle. It was flat on his neck
that I came out the stable door, and what Macartney's men meant to have
done I don't know, for I was down the road toward La Chance like a
rocket. And before I had made a mile I knew I had got off none too soon,
for we were going to have snow at last, and have it hard.

Before I cleared the corduroy road it cut my face in fine stinging
flakes, and by the time I was halfway to La Chance it was blinding me.
It came on a wind, too, and I cursed it as I faced it, with my horse
toiling through the heavy, sandy stuff that was too cold and dry to
pack. The twenty-two miles home took me most of the day. It was close on
dusk when I fumbled through drifting, hissing snow and choking wind, to
the door of the La Chance stable. And the second I got inside I knew
Macartney's man had told the truth, and Macartney had fired my
teamsters with Billy Jones. There was not a soul about the place, and
ten hungry horses yelled at me at once as I stamped my half-frozen feet
on the floor. I would have shouted for Charliet if it had not seemed
quicker to feed them myself. I yanked down a forkful of hay for each of
them, after I saw to my own horse. And if you think I was a fool to
worry over dumb beasts, just that small delay made a difference in my
immediate future that likely saved my life. If I had raced off for the
house at once I might have met with--