d she
ran lightly to the door and tried to lift the bar. She got one end of
it from a socket, but the other stuck. She pulled frantically at it. It
finally came loose, with a suddenness that threw her off balance, and
she reeled against the bed, almost falling.

She saw Slade coming toward her, a bestial rage in his eyes, and she
threw herself again at the door, grasping it and throwing it wide open.
She tried to throw herself out of the opening, to the stairs that led
straight downward into the barroom. But the movement was halted at its
inception by Slade's arms, which went around her with the rigidity of
iron hoops, quickly constricting. She got a glimpse of the room
below--saw the bar and the men near it--all facing her way, watching
her. Then Slade drew her back and closed the door.

He did not bar the door, for she was fighting him, now--fighting him
with a strength and fury that bothered him for an instant. His strength,
however, was greater than hers, and at last her arms were crushed
against her sides with a pressure that almost shut off her breath.
Slade's face was close to hers, his lips loose; and his eyes were
looking into hers with an expression that terrified her.

She screamed--once--twice--with the full power of her lungs. And then
Slade savagely brought a big hand over her mouth and held it there. She
fought to escape the clutch, kicking, squirming--trying to bite the
hand. But to no avail. The terrible pressure on her mouth was
suffocating her, and the room went dark as she continued to fight. She
thought Slade had extinguished the light, and she was conscious of a
dull curiosity over how he had done it. And then sound seem to cease.
She felt nothing, saw nothing, heard nothing. She was conscious only of
that terrible pressure over her mouth and nose. And finally she ceased
to feel even that.

CHAPTER XL

PRIMITIVE INSTINCTS

Shorty and a dozen Circle L men--among them Blackburn and the three
others who had been wounded in the fight with the rustlers on the plains
the previous spring--had been waiting long in a gully at a distance of a
mile or more from the Hamlin cabin. Shortly after dark they had filed
into the gully, having come directly from the Circle L.

Hours before, they had got off their horses to stretch their legs, and
to wait. And now they had grown impatient. It was cold--even in the
gulley where the low moaning, biting wind did not reach them--and they
knew they could ha