he added gleefully. "When
we've passed the bones of John Kars to the camp dogs, why, we can jest
make up our bank roll how we darn please."

"Yes."

The man at the stove emptied and replenished his glass, and sat
handling it like one who treasures its contents. But there was a
frowning discontent in his eyes.

"We need to pass those bones along quick," he demurred. "We haven't
done it yet."

The half-breed at the counter searched the discontented face with
speculative eyes.

"You guessin' we can't?"

There was incredulity in his tone.

"I don't guess a thing. We've just--got to." The surly determination
was unconvincing.

"An' why not?" The half-breed's eyes were widely questioning. "It
don't worry me a thing. We fixed Mowbray all right. He was no blamed
sucker. I tell you right here there's no white outfit goin' to dip
into my basket, an' get away with it. We'll hammer 'em good and
proper. An' if that don't fix 'em, why, I guess there's always the
starvation racket. That don't never fail when it's backed by winter
north of 'sixty.' Them curs'll get his bones all----"

But the man at the stove was no longer paying attention. He had turned
in his chair, and his eyes were on the door. His glass was poised in
the act of raising it to his lips. It remained untouched.

"I thought----" Nor did he complete that which he had been about to
say.

The door was thrust wide with a jolt. There was the swift clash of a
knife ripping the cotton window behind him. Then came an incredulous
ejaculation, as two guns were held leveled in the doorway.

"God! Murray McTavish!"

The movements of those moments were something electrical. Everything
seemed to happen at once. Every man playing his little part in the
drama of it was accustomed to think and act in the moment of emergency.
These men owed their present existence to their capacity for survival
where danger was ever lurking.

Seconds counted on the fingers on one hand were sufficient to decide
the issue. A shot sung in through the uncovered window which carried
back no "spat" to the man who fired it. But the eyes which had guided
it beheld the half-breed at the counter sprawl across the account book
which had yielded him so much satisfaction. Almost at the instant of
his fall a lean, agile, dusky, disreputable figure leaped into the room
through the aperture which his knife had freed of its covering.

Kars in the doorway had been no less s