Up in its covert the rifle barrel moved an inch or two, then steadied
and stopped, the bone-sight at its tip resting full on the broad of the
drunken rider's breast. The boney finger moved inward from the trigger
guard and closed ever so gently about the touchy, hair-filed
trigger--then waited.

For the uncertain hand of Trantham, every movement showing plain in the
crystal, hard, white moon, was slowly bringing from under the flap of
the right-side saddlebag something that was round and smooth and shone
with a yellowish glassy light, like a fat flask filled with spirits. And
Anse Dugmore waited, being minded now to shoot him as he put the bottle
to his lips, and so cheat Trantham of his last drink on earth, as
Trantham had cheated him of his liberty and his babies--as Trantham had
cheated those babies of the Christmas fixings which the state's five
dollars might have bought.

He waited, waited----

* * * * *

This was not the first time the high sheriff had stopped that night on
his homeward ride from the tiny county seat, as his befuddlement
proclaimed; but halting there in the open, just past the forks of the
Pigeon Roost, he was moved by a new idea. He fumbled in the right-hand
flap of his saddlebags and brought out a toy drum, round and smooth,
with shiny yellow sides. A cheap china doll with painted black ringlets
and painted blue eyes followed the drum, and then a torn paper bag, from
which small pieces of cheap red-and-green dyed candy sifted out between
the sheriff's fumbling fingers and fell into the snow.

Thirty feet away, in the dead leaves matted under the roots of an uptorn
dead tree, something moved--something moved; and then there was a sound
like a long, deep, gurgling sigh, and another sound like some heavy,
lengthy object settling itself down flat upon the snow and the leaves.

The first faint rustle cleared Trantham's brain of the liquor fumes. He
jammed the toys and the candy back into the saddlebags and jerked his
horse sidewise into the protecting shadow of the bluff, reaching at the
same time to the shoulder holster buckled about his body under the
unbuttoned overcoat. For a long minute he listened keenly, the drawn
pistol in his hand. There was nothing to hear except his own breathing
and the breathing of his horse.

"Sho! Some old hawg turnin' over in her bed," he said to the horse, and
holstering the pistol he went racking on down Pigeon Roost Creek, wi