It
was then I yelled for you."

"D'ye mean you saw him--when he shot them?"

"I didn't see what he _looked_ like," scornfully, "with four yelling,
tumbling men between him and me. But I guess he was the man I'd been
looking for. I fired and missed him, and when I lit for him over the men
he'd killed he was gone. I emptied my gun into the dark on chance and
yelled some more for you, and it was then I got it myself. As I turned
around in the doorway, Sullivan," he pointed to the only man whose gun
had been fired, "that I thought was _dead_, sat up and let me have it in
the arm." He pointed to the ripped blue print. "You see what I'd have
got if it had caught me straight! And that's all there was to it."

"D'ye mean"--I bit back Hutton's name. I had no time to hatch up a lie
about him, and I was not going to drag in Paulette--"that--whoever was
there, never even fired at you?"

"How do I know who he fired at?--I couldn't see inside of his head! I
know he _hit_ those chumps who could have got him if they had obeyed
orders--let alone that if they'd stayed out I'd have got him clean
myself when he came in. As it was, he cleared out before I could do it,"
said Macartney blackly, but the excitement had gone from his voice.
"Call a couple of the bunk-house men to carry these four back to their
shack and clean up this mess, will you? And come into my room while I
tie up this cut. It's no good going after whoever was here now."

I knew that: also that I could get after him better single-handed at
Skunk's Misery, where he would not expect me; or I would have been gone
already. But I didn't air that to Macartney as I followed him into the
partitioned-off corner he called his room. He had the last two clean-ups
in his safe there, and he nodded to it as he hauled off his shirt for me
to bind up his arm.

"With what's there, and what you and Wilbraham have in his office, we've
too much around to be healthy," he observed succinctly, "and I guess
some one's got wind of it. I don't know that it'll be any healthier for
you to try running it out to Caraquet and get held up on the road! But I
suppose it's got to go."

I nodded. I knew it was hand to mouth with Dudley: he had no cash to
call on but the mine output, and immediate payments had to be made on
the machinery we were using. But I was not excited about being held up
on the Caraquet road,--after I'd once been to Skunk's Misery. I was not
red-hot about hurrying there, either; I