he two other partners drew
back in alarm.

"I'll not leave it here for the first comer," said the Left Bower,
calmly, "because we've been fools and he too. It's too good a weapon
for that."

"Drop it, I say!" said the Right Bower, with a savage stride towards
him.

The younger brother brought the rifle to a half charge with a white
face but a steady eye.

"Stop where you are!" he said collectedly. "Don't row with _me_,
because you haven't either the grit to stick to your ideas or the heart
to confess them wrong. We've followed your lead, and--here we are! The
camp's broken up--the Old Man's gone--and we're going. And as for the
d----d rifle"--

"Drop it, do you hear!" shouted the Right Bower, clinging to that one
idea with the blind pertinacity of rage and a losing cause. "Drop it!"

The Left Bower drew back, but his brother had seized the barrel with
both hands. There was a momentary struggle, a flash through the
half-lighted cabin, and a shattering report. The two men fell back from
each other; the rifle dropped on the floor between them.

The whole thing was over so quickly that the other two partners had not
had time to obey their common impulse to separate them, and
consequently even now could scarcely understand what had passed. It was
over so quickly that the two actors themselves walked back to their
places, scarcely realizing their own act.

A dead silence followed. The Judge and Union Mills looked at each other
in dazed astonishment, and then nervously set about their former
habits, apparently in that fatuous belief common to such natures, that
they were ignoring a painful situation. The Judge drew the barrel
towards him, picked up the cards, and began mechanically to "make a
patience," on which Union Mills gazed with ostentatious interest, but
with eyes furtively conscious of the rigid figure of the Right Bower by
the chimney and the abstracted face of the Left Bower at the door. Ten
minutes had passed in this occupation, the Judge and Union Mills
conversing in the furtive whispers of children unavoidably but
fascinatedly present at a family quarrel, when a light step was heard
upon the crackling brushwood outside, and the bright panting face of
the Old Man appeared upon the threshold. There was a shout of joy; in
another moment he was half-buried in the bosom of the Right Bower's
shirt, half-dragged into the lap of the Judge, upsetting the barrel,
and completely encompassed by the Left Bower and U