door, one hand upon it, ready to throw it open.
In this position she stood for a few minutes, and then from somewhere
in the flat came a slight sound--and then, after a short interval,
another.

She shrank back again, a sudden fear chilling her, her hands clasped
over her breast.

"Someone is shooting," she said aloud.

She waited long for a repetition of the sounds. But she did not hear
them again. Tremblingly she returned to the cabin and resumed her
chair at the table, fighting against a growing presentiment that
something had gone wrong with Ben. But she could not have told from
what direction the sounds had come, and so it would have been folly for
her to ride out to investigate. And so for an hour she sat at the
table, cringing away from the silence, starting at intervals, when her
imagination tricked her into the belief that sound had begun.

And then presently she became aware that there was sound. In the vast
silence beyond the cabin door something had moved. She was on her feet
instantly, her senses alert. Her fear had left her. Her face was
pale, but her lips closed grimly as she went to the rack behind the
door and took down a rifle that Ben always kept there. Then she turned
the lamp low and cautiously stepped to the door.

A pony whinnied, standing with ears erect at the edge of the porch. In
a crumpled heap on the ground lay a man. She caught her breath
sharply, but in the next instant was out and bending over him. With a
strength that seemed almost beyond her shy dragged the limp form to the
door where the light from the lamp shone upon it.

"Ben!" she said sharply. "What has happened?" She shook him slightly,
calling again to him.

Aroused, he opened his eyes, recognized her, and raised himself
painfully upon one elbow, smiling weakly.

"It ain't anything, sis," he said. "Creased in the back of the head.
Knocked me cold. Mebbe my shoulder too--I ain't been able to lift my
arm." He smiled again--grimly, though wearily. "From the back too.
The damned sneak!"

Her eyes filled vengefully, and she leaned closer to him, her voice
tense. "Who, Ben? Who did it?"

"Ferguson," he said sharply. And again, as his eyes closed: "The
damned sneak."

She swayed dizzily and came very near dropping him to the porch floor.
But no sound came from her, and presently when the dizziness had
passed, she dragged him to the door, propped it open with a chair, and
then dragged him on through th