unch of horses gave me a queer feelin'." Jean
gazed all around the grassy, cattle-dotted valley he was crossing so
swiftly, and toward the village, but he did not see any sign of the
dark group of riders. They had gone on to Greaves's store, there, no
doubt, to drink and to add more enemies of the Isbels to their gang.
Suddenly across Jean's mind flashed a thought of Ellen Jorth. "What
'll become of her? ... What 'll become of all the women? My sister?
... The little ones?"

No one was in sight around the ranch. Never had it appeared more
peaceful and pastoral to Jean. The grazing cattle and horses in the
foreground, the haystack half eaten away, the cows in the fenced
pasture, the column of blue smoke lazily ascending, the cackle of hens,
the solid, well-built cabins--all these seemed to repudiate Jean's
haste and his darkness of mind. This place was, his father's farm.
There was not a cloud in the blue, summer sky.

As Jean galloped up the lane some one saw him from the door, and then
Bill and Guy and their gray-headed father came out upon the porch. Jean
saw how he' waved the womenfolk back, and then strode out into the
lane. Bill and Guy reached his side as Jean pulled his heaving horse
to a halt. They all looked at Jean, swiftly and intently, with a
little, hard, fiery gleam strangely identical in the eyes of each.
Probably before a word was spoken they knew what to expect.

"Wal, you shore was in a hurry," remarked the father.

"What the hell's up?" queried Bill, grimly.

Guy Isbel remained silent and it was he who turned slightly pale. Jean
leaped off his horse.

"Bernardino has just been killed--murdered with his own gun."

Gaston Isbel seemed to exhale a long-dammed, bursting breath that let
his chest sag. A terrible deadly glint, pale and cold as sunlight on
ice, grew slowly to dominate his clear eyes.

"A-huh!" ejaculated Bill Isbel, hoarsely.

Not one of the three men asked who had done the killing. They were
silent a moment, motionless, locked in the secret seclusion of their
own minds. Then they listened with absorption to Jean's brief story.

"Wal, that lets us in," said his father. "I wish we had more time.
Reckon I'd done better to listen to you boys an' have my men close at
hand. Jacobs happened to ride over. That makes five of us besides the
women."

"Aw, dad, you don't reckon they'll round us up heah?" asked Guy Isbel.

"Boys, I always feared they might," replied the old m