ery softly. Then, of a
sudden, his shadowy visage became contorted and he jerked up his rifle
and threw a cartridge into the magazine.

"You dirty louse!" he roared at Leverett, "you was into this, too,
a-robbin' my little Eve----"

"Run!" yelled somebody, giving Leverett a violent shove into the woods.

In the darkness and confusion, Clinch shouldered his way out of the
circle and fired at the crackling noise that marked Leverett's course,
-- fired again, lower, and again as a distant crash revealed the
frenzied flight of the trap-robber. After he had fired a fourth shot,
somebody struck up his rifle.

"Aw," said Jim Hastings, "that ain't no good. You act up like a kid,
Mike. 'Tain't so far to Ghost Lake, n'them Troopers might hear you."

After a silence, Clinch spoke, his voice heavy with reaction:

"Into that there packet is my little girl's dower. It's all I got to
give her. It's all she's got to make her a lady. I'll kill any man
that robs her or that helps rob her. 'N'that's that."

"Are you going on after Quintana?" asked Smith.

"I am. 'N'these fellas are a-goin with me. N' I want you should go
back to my Dump and look after my girlie while I'm gone."

"How long are you going to be away?"

"I dunno."

There was a silence. Then,

"All right," said Smith, briefly. He added: "Look out for sink-holes,
Mike."

Clinch tossed his heavy rifle to his shoulder: "Let's go," he said in
his pleasant, misleading way, "-- and I'll shoot the guts outa any fella
that don't show up at roll call."

* * * * *

III

For its size there is no fiercer animal than a rat.

Rat-like rage possessed Leverett. In his headlong flight through the
dusk, fear, instead of quenching, added to his rage; and he ran on and
on, crashing through the undergrowth, made wilder by the pain of vicious
blows from branches which flew back and struck him in the dark.

Thorns bled him; unseen logs tripped him; he heard Clinch's bullets
whining around him; and he ran on, beginning to sob and curse in a
frenzy of fury, fear, and shame.

Shots from Clinch's rifle ceased; the fugitive dropped into a heavy,
shuffling walk, slavering, gasping, gesticulating with his weaponless
fists in the darkness.

"Gol ram ye, I'll fix ye!" he kept stammering in his snarlin, jangling
voice, broken by sobs. "I'll learn ye, yeh poor danged thing, gol ram
ye----"

An unseen limb struck him cruelly across the face, and a moose-bush
tripped hi