, I
suppose. I never did the like before." He half shuddered at the memory.

"I am sorry," she said.

"Yes! So am I."

"Sorry that you failed, for you will never have as good a chance again.
What was the matter with your aim? I have seen you hit a knot-hole,
shooting from the hip."

"The man is charmed," declared Gale. "He's bullet-proof."

"There are people," she agreed, "that a gunshot will not injure. There
was a man like that among my people--my father's enemy--but he was not
proof against steel."

"Your old man knifed him, eh?"

She nodded.

"Ugh!" the man shivered. "I couldn't do that. A gun is a straight man's
friend, but a knife is the weapon of traitors. I couldn't drive it
home."

"Does this man suspect?"

"No."

"Then it is child's play. We will lay a trap."

"No, by God!" Gale interrupted her hotly. "I tried that kind of work,
and it won't do. I'm no murderer."

"Those are only words," said the woman, quietly. "To kill your enemy is
the law."

The only light in the room came from the stove, a great iron cylinder
made from a coal-oil tank that lay on a rectangular bed of sand held
inside of four timbers, with a door in one end to take whole lengths of
cord-wood, and which, being open, lit the space in front, throwing the
sides and corners of the place into blacker mystery.

When he made no answer the squaw slipped out into the shadows, leaving
him staring into the flames, to return a moment later bearing something
in her hands, which she placed in his. It was a knife in a scabbard,
old and worn.

"There is no magic that can turn bright steel," she said, then squatted
again in the dimness outside of the firelight. Gale slid the case from
the long blade and held it in his palm, letting the firelight flicker
on it. He balanced it and tested the feel of its handle against his
palm, then tried the edge of it with his thumb-nail, and found it honed
like a razor.

"A child could kill with it," said Alluna. "Both edges of the blade are
so thin that a finger's weight will bury it. One should hold the wrist
firmly till it pierces through the coat, that is all--after that the
flesh takes it easily, like butter."

The glancing, glinting light flashing from the deadly thing seemed to
fascinate the man, for he held it a long while silently. Then he spoke.

"For fifteen years I've been a haunted man, with a soul like a dark and
dismal garret peopled with bats and varmints that flap and flutter all