ering under the eye of the guard
with drawn sword.

The leader's voice rang with a note of triumph.

"You people whose lives have been spared will stay in this house until
sunrise. And the less you say about what's happened to-night the longer
you'll live."

He turned to his guard.

"Come on."

Brown had just mounted his horse to lead the procession back to the camp
in the ravine, when the first peal of thunder in a spring shower crashed
overhead.

He glanced up and saw that the sky was being rapidly overcast by swiftly
moving clouds. A few stars still glimmered directly above.

The storm without was an incident of slight importance. The rain would
give him a chance to test the men inside. He ordered his followers to
take refuge in the long shed under which Harris stabled the horses and
vehicles of travelers.

He stationed a sentinel at the door of the house.

His orders were clear.

"Cut down in his tracks without a word, the man who dares to come out."

The swordsman threw a saddle blanket around his shoulders and took his
place at the doorway.

The storm broke in fury. In five minutes the heavens were a sea of
flame. The thunder rolled over the ravine, the hills, the plains in
deafening peals. Flash after flash, roar after roar, an endless throb of
earth and air from the titanic bombardment from the skies. The flaming
sky was sublime--a changing, flashing, trembling splendor.

Townsley was the only coward in the group of stolid figures standing
under the shed. He watched by the lightning the expression of Brown's
face with awe. There was something terrible in the joy that flamed in
his eyes. Never had he seen such a look on human face. He forgot the
storm and forgot his fears of cyclones and lightning strokes in the
fascination with which he watched the seamed, weather-beaten features
of the man who had just committed the foulest deed in the annals of
American frontier life. There was in his shifting eyes no shadow of
doubt, of fear, of uncertainty. There was only the look of satisfaction,
of supreme triumph. The coward caught the spark of red that flashed from
his soul.

For a moment he regretted that he had not joined the bloody work with
his own hand. He was ashamed of his pity for the stark masses of flesh
that still lay on the deluged earth. In spite of the contagion of
Brown's mind which he felt pulling him with resistless power, his own
weaker intellect kept playing pranks with his memory.