from playing a trick on me."

There was something so merciless and brutal in his eyes and voice that
Falkner felt like leaping upon him, even with his hands tied behind his
back.

He was glad, however, that Carr had decided to go. He was, filled with
an overwhelming desire to be rid of him, if only for an hour.

He went to the bunk and lay down. Corporal Carr approached, pulling a
roll of babiche cord from his pocket.

"If you don't mind you might tie my hands in front instead of behind,"
suggested Falkner. "It's goin' to be mighty unpleasant to have 'em
under me, if I've got to lay here for an hour or two."

"Not on your life I won't tie 'em in front!" snapped Carr, his little
eyes glittering. And then he gave a cackling laugh, and his eyes were
as green as a cat's. "An' it won't be half so unpleasant as having
something 'round your NECK!" he joked.

"I wish I was free," breathed Falkner, his chest heaving. "I wish we
could fight, man t' man. I'd be willing to hang then, just to have the
chance to break your neck. You ain't a man of the Law. You're a devil."

Carr laughed the sort of laugh that sends a chill up one's back, and
drew the caribou-skin cord tight about Falkner's ankles.

"Can't blame me for being a little careful," he said in his revolting
way. "By your hanging I become a Sergeant. That's my reward for running
you down."

He lighted the lamp and filled the stove before he left the cabin. From
the door he looked back at Falkner, and his face was not like a man's,
but like that of some terrible death-spirit, ghostly, and thin, and
exultant in the dim glow of the lamp. As he opened the door the roar of
the blizzard and a gust of snow filled the cabin. Then it closed, and a
groaning curse fell from Falkner's lips. He strained fiercely at the
thongs that bound him, but after the first few minutes he lay still
breathing hard, knowing that every effort he made only tightened the
caribou-skin cord that bound him.

On his back, he listened to the storm. It was filled with the same
strange cries and moaning sound that had almost driven him to madness,
and now they sent through him a shivering chill that he had not felt
before, even in the darkest and most hopeless hours of his loneliness
and despair. A breath that was almost a sob broke from his lips as a
vision of the Girl and the Kid came to shut out from his ears the
moaning tumult of the wind. A few hours before he had been filled with
hope--almost h