I needed the poor little devil for a witness against Macartney he
would be no good lying dead somewhere in the bush, "and I'll come back
and pay you ten times two dollars for just waiting here till I come. But
you'll have to hide if that man comes back who sent you out with the
horse!" I knew Macartney would kill him in good earnest, if he came back
and found him with a living tongue in his head. "Don't you trust any one
but me--or some one who comes and gives you twenty dollars," I added
emphatically, just because that was the only absolutely unlikely event I
could think of. "And even then, you stay here till you see me!
Understand?"

He said he did; it was easy enough to creep out after dark and rob
rabbit traps; he was doing it now. And from the greed a fortune of
twenty dollars had lit in his wretched eyes, I knew he would go on doing
it till I came back. Of what wildly unexpected use he was to be to me in
his waiting, heaven knows I had no thought. I crept out of his burrow as
I had crept in, got back to my half-frozen horse, and rode hell for
leather back to the Halfway. And just there was where I slumped.

My horse had to be fed and rested; he was dead beat when I led him into
the unlocked stable, and when I had seen to him I meant to rouse up
Billy Jones and tell him all the ugly stuff I had unearthed--and seen
too--for the killing of four innocent men was hot in my mind. But I did
not, for the excellent reason that Billy was not back. His house was
dark, and his four horses still away from their vacant stalls. I sat
down on a heap of clean straw to wait for him, and I said I slumped. I
went sound, dead asleep. If I was hunting for excuses I might say it was
two in the morning, and I had been up most of the night before. But
anyhow, I did it. And I sat up, dazed, to see a lantern held in front
of my eyes and one of Macartney's men from La Chance staring at me.

It struck me even then that it was not he who was surprised; and the
sleep jerked out of me like wine out of a glass. "What are you doing
here? And where the devil's Billy?" I snapped, without thinking.

I saw the man grin. "Billy's fired," he returned coolly. "Him and his
wife got it in a note from Wilbraham, day before yesterday, when your
teamsters stopped here on their way to Caraquet. They doubled up their
teams with Billy's and took him and his wife along, and all their stuff.
And I guess they'd been fired too, for they ain't come back. Mr.
Maca