uckheath in--now, what do you make out
of that?"

Stoddard shoved the letter from the Eastern mining man back in its
pigeon-hole.

"Well," he said slowly, "I didn't expect that. I thought of course Shade
was safely out of the country. I--Passmore, I'm sorry they've got him."
After a little silence he spoke again. "What do I make of it? Why, that
there are some folks up on Big Unaka who need pretty badly to appear as
very law-abiding citizens. I'll wager anything that Groner and Rudd
Dawson brought Shade in."

Uncle Pros nodded seriously. "Them's the very fellers," he said. "Reckon
they've talked pretty free to you. I never axed ye, Gray--how did they
treat ye?"

"Dawson was the best friend I had," Stoddard returned promptly. "When I
got to the big turn on Sultan--coming home that Friday morning
--Buckheath met me, and asked me to go down to Burnt Cabin and
help him with a man that had fallen and hurt himself on the rocks.
Dawson told me afterward that he and Jesse Groner were posted at the
roadside to stop me and hem me in before I got to the bluff. I've
described to you how Buckheath tried to back Sultan over the edge, and I
got off on the side where the two were, not noticing them till they tied
me hand and foot. They almost came to a clinch with Buckheath then and
there. You ought to have heard Groner swear! It was like praying
gone wrong."

"Uh-huh," agreed Pros, "Jess is a terrible wicked man--in speech
that-a-way--but he's good-hearted."

"That first scrimmage showed me just what the men were after," Stoddard
said. "Buckheath plainly wanted me put out of the way; but the others
had some vague idea of holding me for a ransom and getting money out of
the Hardwicks. Dawson complained always that he thought the mills owed
him money. He said they must have sold his girl's body for as much as a
hundred dollars, and he felt that he'd been cheated. Oh, it was all
crazy stuff! But he and the others had justified themselves; and they
had no notion of standing for what Buckheath was after. I was one of the
cotton-mill men to them; they had no personal malice.

"Through the long evenings when Groner or Dawson or Will Venters was
guarding me--or maybe all three of them--we used to talk; and it
surprised me to find how simple and childish those fellows were. They
were as kind to me as though I had been a brother, and treated me
courteously always.

"Little by little, I got at the whole thing from them. It seems that