im, was a vexing question.

Van Horn started down the foot trail back to the bottom and around to
the first hiding place. Lingering with a companion to look at Gorman
in his blood, Stone turned for approval: "See where I hit him?" he
grinned. "Poor light, too."

A brief council was held in the draw. Watched for more than an hour,
not the slightest sign of life about the lonely cabin could be
detected. Various expedients, none of them very novel, were tried to
draw Henry's fire should he be within. But these were of no avail. A
dozen theories were advanced as to where Henry might or might not be.
To every appearance there was not, so far as the enemy could judge, a
living man within miles of the spot. The older heads, Pettigrew,
Doubleday, Van Horn, even Stone, talked less than the others; but they
were by no means convinced that the house was empty.

One of the least patient of the cowboys at length deliberately exposed
himself to fire from the sphinx-like cabin. He stood up and walked up
and down the edge of the draw. Nothing happened. Emboldened, he
started out into the open and toward the cabin. No shot greeted him.
A companion, jumping up, hurried after him; a third, a Texas boy,
sprang up to join them. For those watching from hiding it was a
ticklish moment. Toward the draw there was a considerable growth of
mountain blue-stem, none of it very high and gradually shortening
nearer the house. The three men were hastening through the grass,
separated by intervals of perhaps fifty feet. The foremost got within
a hundred yards of the cabin door, which still stood open as Gorman had
left it, before Van Horn's fear of an ambush vanished. He himself, not
to be too far behind his followers, then rose to join the procession
through the blue stem and the crack of a rifle was heard. Van Horn,
with a shout of warning, dropped unhurt into the draw. But the last
man of the three in the field stumbled as if struck by an ax. Of the
two men ahead of him, the hindermost dropped into the grass and crawled
snakelike back; the man in front dropped his rifle and started at top
speed for safety; from the edge of the draw his companions sent a
fusillade of rifle fire at the cabin.

Apparently the diversion had no effect on the marksman within. He
fired again; this time at the Texan crawling in the blue stem, and the
half-hidden man, almost lifted from the ground by the blow of the
bullet, dropped limp. Meantime the