izzle! Ef she don't come soon I gotta git over thar an' trail
her. . . . An' that means givin' up the job . . . an' mebbe losin'
out. Suthin' 's happened; she never took so long before. . . . But
pshaw! what with Whiskers 'n' Juno--they'd take's good keer o' her as I
cud myself."

He resumed his seat, but not the whittling, leaning against a tree with
closed eyes. But he was not resting, for deep sighs broke from him,
and his muscles were not loose.

Suddenly his eyes opened wide with a look of alarm, though not a muscle
twitched. His quick ears had caught a sound among the trees at his
back. On the instant he appraised the risk of the gleaming water
before him, and then, like a part of the shadows, seemed to melt into
the ground. The clump of spruce was there, and the shadows, just as
they had been all these years, but not a shaving, not a mark.

Far out in the current the smooth gleam of the water was broken in
moving eddies. Some round object was making its way toward the bank.
In the cover of another cluster of trees further down the bank the
halfbreed leaned out over the water and waved a warning hand. He dare
not whistle or shout. But the round object, not forty yards out,
turned sideways, revealing the head of a large dog.

At the same moment a rifle snapped from the thickets behind, and even
as the halfbreed flattened out he noted the swift flash of spume close
to the dog's head. Instantly the head dived. Instantly, too, the
second cluster of trees was empty, though there had been no sound, no
perceptible movement.

Yards further down the stream the head reappeared, directed now to the
far bank and moving more swiftly. A second shot from the thicket told
of a watchful enemy.

Before the echo had returned from the opposite bank, a third shot, this
time that of a revolver, split the evening silence. A stifled
exclamation of alarm, and then the crashing of hasty flight up the
slope.

The half breed thrust his gun in his belt and glided across the open to
pick up a rifle with shattered stock.

"Don't know wot makes me so squeamish these days," he drawled, with a
slow smile. "He sartin desarved it in the throat. That Pole 'n' me's
goin' to butt agin each other some more. I never was wuth shucks when
it comes to justice . . . an' I allus suffer fer it after. Look at
Bilsy, an' Dutch Henry, an' a bunch more!"

He carried the broken rifle to the river's edge and whistled. The dog,
now nea