, reeling, staggering, he
kept on. A hoarse cry came from him. Then a single rifle shot pealed
out. Jean heard the bullet strike. Jacobs fell to his knees, then
forward on his face.

Jean Isbel felt himself turned to marble. The suddenness of this
tragedy paralyzed him. His gaze remained riveted on those prostrate
forms.

A hand clutched his arm--a shaking woman's hand, slim and hard and
tense.

"Bill's--killed!" whispered a broken voice. "I was watchin'....
They're both dead!"

The wives of Jacobs and Guy Isbel had slipped up behind Jean and from
behind him they had seen the tragedy.

"I asked Bill--not to--go," faltered the Jacobs woman, and, covering
her face with her hands, she groped back to the comer of the cabin,
where the other women, shaking and white, received her in their arms.
Guy Isbel's wife stood at the window, peering over Jean's shoulder. She
had the nerve of a man. She had looked out upon death before.

"Yes, they're dead," she said, bitterly. "An' how are we goin' to get
their bodies?"

At this Gaston Isbel seemed to rouse from the cold spell that had
transfixed him.

"God, this is hell for our women," he cried out, hoarsely. "My son--my
son! ... Murdered by the Jorths!" Then he swore a terrible oath.

Jean saw the remainder of the mounted rustlers get off, and then, all
of them leading their horses, they began to move around to the left.

"Dad, they're movin' round," said Jean.

"Up to some trick," declared Bill Isbel.

"Bill, you make a hole through the back wall, say aboot the fifth log
up," ordered the father. "Shore we've got to look out."

The elder son grasped a tool and, scattering the children, who had been
playing near the back corner, he began to work at the point designated.
The little children backed away with fixed, wondering, grave eyes. The
women moved their chairs, and huddled together as if waiting and
listening.

Jean watched the rustlers until they passed out of his sight. They had
moved toward the sloping, brushy ground to the north and west of the
cabins.

"Let me know when you get a hole in the back wall," said Jean, and he
went through the kitchen and cautiously out another door to slip into a
low-roofed, shed-like end of the rambling cabin. This small space was
used to store winter firewood. The chinks between the walls had not
been filled with adobe clay, and he could see out on three sides. The
rustlers were going into the juniper brush.