iled.

"You're not totin' one of them yourself, yet, I see?" he remarked
lazily.

Fat Joe spat in vast contempt. He clenched one pudgy hand and sat
watching the knuckles pale, iron-hard, beneath the seeming softness.

"Are you?" he countered.

This time Steve's laughter was soundless.

"Scarcely! We're going to hear some of them yap lots louder than they
do now, before the winter is over. But you might give that one back to
Garry in the morning. And, as for the rest of it, I suppose we'll be
quite likely to forget, won't we, Joe, that either of us has so much as
seen or thought of a gun to-night?"

Both of them had risen. Joe puckered his lips.

"Forget it? How can we," he demanded, "when we don't even know
anything to forget! Why, as I reckon it, we'll both get up in the
morning and regard it as a dream just too foolish even to bother to
relate."

Their eyes held for a moment, before Steve turned again toward the
door. And perhaps his manner was a little too unconcerned that
evening, a little too carefully careless, for almost before he had
lifted the latch Fat Joe stepped forward, one quick, protesting step,
and then stopped on second thought.

"You ain't goin'----" he began, and suffered that spoken protest also
to remain uncompleted.

"It's not late," Steve's voice was thoughtful. "It's not late, but
it's surely very quiet." He stood gazing out into the gloom. "Maybe
I'd best run down and see what ails our soloist to-night. Somehow, the
more I've thought about it, the more I've come to fear that he is
temperamental, Joe--too temperamental, for such a wearing proposition
as this one is likely to be. And you haven't slept much since I've
been gone. Oh, that was easy, just from your eyes! So you'd better
turn in. I'll just stroll down and let them know that I'm back home."

It is odd how much of finality there can be in the quietest of
statements. Eyes narrowed, Joe stood in the middle of the floor and
watched him depart without further objection. But the moment the
blackness had swallowed him up he backed to the bunk, fumbled for the
gun which Steve had tossed upon the blankets, and followed out into the
dark.

Stephen O'Mara stood a long time outside the door of the men's
bunkhouse that night, fingers upon the latch, before he made any move
to enter. But neither a wish to eavesdrop nor a desire to frame,
experimentally, the words he meant to speak was the reason behind that
pause.