things you'd better know," said Sim Gage, suddenly judge in this
court, suddenly assembled. "Some things I know now. You come down to
my house your own self. It was you set my barn a-fire and burned my
house and my hay, and killed my stock. It was you carried that girl
off. I know why you done it, too. You wasn't fighting that bunch in
here--they was with you. You was all on the same business, and you
know it. You made trouble before the war, and you're making it now,
when we're all trying to settle down in the peace."

He was beginning to tremble now as he talked. "Didn't she shoot
you?--Now, tell me the truth."

"Yes!" said the prisoner suddenly, seeing that in the other's eyes
which demanded the truth. "She did shoot me, and then ran away. She
took your gun. But I didn't set the fire. Honest to God, I don't know
how it got out. I swear--oh, my God--have mercy!"

But what he afterward would have sworn no man ever knew. There was a
rifle shot--from whose rifle none of the four ever could tell. It
struck Big Aleck fair below the eyes, and blew his head well apart. He
fell backward at the door of the tent.

They turned away slowly. Just for an instant they stood looking at the
sweeping blanket of smoke. They walked to the car, paying no further
attention to the figure which lay motionless behind them. The fire
might come and make its winding sheet.

It was coming. Wid Gardner lifted his head. "Wind's changing," said
he. "Hurry!"

They headed down the trail as fast as might be.

"_Wait_, now, Doc!" said Sim Gage, a moment after they started. "Wait
now!"

"What's up?" said Doctor Barnes. "Look at that smoke."

"Where's that little dog, now? We've forgot him."

He sprang out of the car, began stumbling back up the trail, his own
leg dragging.

"Cut off the car!" he called back. "I can't hear a thing."

As he stood there came up to him from the mountain side a sound which
made him turn and plunge down in that direction himself. It was a
shot. Then the bark of the Airedale, baying "treed."

The dog itself, keen of nose, and of the instinct to run almost any
sort of trail, even so very faint as this on which it was set, had in
part followed out the winding course of the fleeing girl after Sim Gage
himself had abandoned it, thinking it had been laid on that trail. And
now what Sim saw on ahead, down the hill, below the trail, was the
figure of Mary Warren herself, sitting up weakly,