rse, setting his steps in the direction of his own
house.

"She said--fer _her_ sake," he repeated in a dazed voice, touched with
tenderness. "I reckon I've got ter undertake hit."

Never before had the woods been so efficiently picketed. Never had the
net of relentless pursuit been so tight-drawn and close of mesh. For a
long distance he eluded its entanglement though at times, as it grew
dark, he saw the glimmer of lanterns whose portent he understood.

But finally the clouds broke and a cold moon shone out to aid the pack
and cut to a forlorn hope the chances of the quarry.

As Bear Cat went creeping from shadow to shadow he could hear faint
sounds of pursuit closing in upon him. He came at length upon a narrow
road that must be crossed and for a while he bent low, listening, then
stole forward, reassured.

But as he reached the farther side, the black solidity of a hill-side
broke not in one but in several tongues of flame and the bark of three
rifles shattered the quiet.

Bear Cat doubled back and cut again into the timber which he had left,
running now to put a margin of distance between himself and the greater
numbers. That fusillade and its echoes would bring other rifles and
reinforcements.

After a few pantingly stressful minutes he found himself standing at
the lip of a steep bluff, and a roar of water beneath warned him that
the creek, some twenty feet below, had been swollen from a trickling
thread to a seething caldron.

He gazed questioningly about, gauging his chances with swift
calculation, since there was no time for indecision.

"I aimed ter come, Blossom," he breathed between his teeth, "but I've
done failed!" He stepped out to look over the ledge and for a moment
his figure was silhouetted in the open light. Then again the curtain of
blue-black shadow was shot through with fiery threads and a rifle
barked sharply, trailing a broken wake of echoes.

Bear Cat Stacy's two hands went high above his head, his right still
clutching his rifle. He swayed for the duration of a breath, rocking on
his feet, then plunged forward and outward.

The next morning, no worms were found hanging in the highway, but, back
at the Quarterhouse, Kinnard Towers turned in his hand a battered hat
that had been retrieved from floating drift.

"Yes, I reckon thet's his hat," he commented after a close scrutiny. "I
reecollect seein' thet raw-hide thong laced round hit, endurin' his
speech over thar. Wa'al, he elec