found Mackenzie's rifle.

"Let him up," he said.

Mackenzie stood, his captor twisting his arms behind him with such
silent ease that it was ominous of what might be expected should the
sheepherder set up a struggle to break free.

"Bud, I've come over after my guns," said Hector Hall, speaking close
to Mackenzie's ear.

"They're up at the wagon," Mackenzie told him, with rather an injured
air. "You didn't need to make all this trouble about it; I was keeping
them for you."

"Go on up and get 'em," Hall commanded, prodding Mackenzie in the ribs
with the barrel of his own gun.

The one who held Mackenzie said nothing, but walked behind him, rather
shoved him ahead, hands twisted in painful rigidity behind his back,
pushing him along as if his weight amounted to no more than a child's.
At the wagon Hall fell in beside Mackenzie, the barrel of a gun again
at his side.

"Let him go," he said. And to Mackenzie: "Don't try to throw any
tricks on me, bud, but waltz around and get me them guns."

"They're hanging on the end of the coupling-pole; get them yourself,"
Mackenzie returned, resentful of this treatment, humiliated to such
depths by this disgrace that had overtaken him that he cared little
for the moment whether he should live or die.

Hall spoke a low, mumbled, unintelligible word to the one who stood
behind Mackenzie, and another gun pressed coldly against the back of
the apprentice sheepman's neck. Hall went to the end of the wagon,
found his pistols, struck a match to inspect them. In the light of the
expiring match at his feet Mackenzie could see the ex-cattleman
buckling on the guns.

"Bud, you've been actin' kind of rash around here," Hall said, in
insolent satisfaction with the turn of events. "You had your lucky day
with me, like you had with Swan Carlson, but I gave you a sneak's
chance to leave the country while the goin' was good. If you ever
leave it now the wind'll blow you out. Back him up to that wagon
wheel!"

Mackenzie was at the end of his tractable yielding to commands, seeing
dimly what lay before him. He lashed out in fury at the man who
pressed the weapon to his neck, twisting round in a sweep of passion
that made the night seem to burst in a rain of fire, careless of what
immediate danger he ran. The fellow fired as Mackenzie swung round,
the flash of the flame hot on his neck.

"Don't shoot him, you fool!" Hector Hall interposed, his voice a growl
between his teeth.

Mackenz