ed upon the shrill-voiced man, plainly in
some sort of denunciation or accusation. He was the smallest of the
lot, and drew back hastily, step after step, offering the knife-edge of
his curses as the others clubbed their fists.

"... a lie!" he shrieked. "Fools...."

Gratton gnawed at his knuckles, Brodie puffed steadily, and the two
aggressors accepted windy denial as sign of guilt. One of them sprang
forward and struck; the little man whipped out a revolver and fired. The
shot sounded dull and muffled; a puff of smoke hung for a moment like
the smoke from the pipe, appearing methodically between the passive
onlooker's teeth; the man who had struck stopped dead in his tracks.
There came a second shot; then in sharp staccato succession four others,
followed by the ugly little metallic click announcing that the gun had
emptied itself. Before the last explosion the balancing body sagged
limply and sprawled in the snow.

King's first natural impulse was to break through the brush and run
forward. But his caution of the day commanded by circumstance, though
never a part of the man's headlong nature, remained with him,
counselling cool thought instead of hot haste. The man down was dead or
as good as dead; him King could not help. So he held back and watched.

There fell a brief silence while the man who had done the shooting and
the men about him, no less than the figure lying in the snow, were as
motionless as so many carven statues. At last Brodie spoke heavily.

"Benny's right. Bates had it coming to him. Times like this stealing a
side of bacon is worse'n murder. Bates stole it; he was going to try to
double-cross us and beat it out of here. Now he's dead, and good
riddance." He spat into the snow when he had done.

Benny, chattering wildly to himself now, began a hasty reloading of his
revolver. The man whom he had shot, whom Brodie named Bates, lay not
five steps from Benny's feet, his blood already congealing where it
flushed the snow. Oddly enough, King knew personally or by repute each
of the men before him with the single exception of the man who had paid
in full for his own--or some one else's--crime of stealing food at a
time when food meant a chance for life. To begin with, there was Swen
Brodie and there was Gratton. There was Benny, who had done the killing,
a degenerate, a morphine addict, and a thorough-going scoundrel. Beyond
him stood the burly ruffian of the big, awkward, bony frame, who had
brough