erienced once after standing for hours under the spell of
Niagara. Something seemed to have been silenced in the world.

He was troubled over the outcome of that treacherous assault. He felt
that the shadow of the resultant tragedy was already stretching away
from there like the penumbra of an eclipse which must soon engulf
those homesteads on the river, and exact a terrible, blasting toll.

Dalton was huddled there, his life wasting through the wound in his
wrist, blood on his face from the blow that had laid him still. The
dead man across the bed remained as he had fallen, his arms stretched
out in empty supplication. There was a pathos in the fellow's pose
that touched Macdonald with a pity which he knew to be undeserved. He
had not meant to take his life away in that hasty shot, but since it
had happened so, he knew that it had been his own deliverance.

Macdonald stripped the garment back and looked at Dalton's hurt. There
would be another one to take toll for in the cattlemen's list unless
the drain of blood could be checked at once. Dalton moved, opening his
eyes.

It seemed unlikely that Dalton ever would sling a gun with that member
again, if he should be so lucky, indeed, as to come through with his
life. The bone was shattered, the hand hung limp, like a broken wing.
Dalton sat up, yielding his arm to his enemy's ministrations, as
silent and ungracious as a dog. In a little while Macdonald had done
all that he could do, and with a hand under the hollow of Dalton's arm
he lifted him to his feet.

"Can you ride?" he asked. Dalton did not reply. He looked at the
figure on the bed, and stood turning his eyes around the room in the
manner of one stunned, and completely confounded by the failure of a
scheme counted infallible.

"You made a botch of this job, Dalton," Macdonald said. "The rest of
your crowd's outside where Thorn dropped them--he snatched your gun
from the floor and killed both of them."

Dalton went weakly to the door, where he stood a moment, steadying
himself with a hand on the jamb. Macdonald eased him from there to the
gate, and brought the horses which the gang had hidden among the
willows.

"Tell Chadron to send a wagon up here after these dead men," Macdonald
said, leading a horse to the gate.

He helped the still silent Dalton into the saddle, where he sat
weakly. The man seemed to be debating something to say to this
unaccountably fortunate nester, who came untouched through all